Due to the graphic nature of this show, listener discretion is advised.

This episode includes dramatizations and discussions of murder, assault, and sex.

We advise extreme caution for children under 13.

Valentine's is a bittersweet day at most prisons.

The inmates' partners show up, chat with their loved one over a stale coffee,

buy some snacks from the vending machine.

Then, if they're really lucky,

they get their picture taken by an amateur photographer the prison hired for the day.

Then, it's a quick, supervised tug on the way out the door,

and the inmates is led back to their cell.

All that to say, having a loved one in prison is awful, especially if you're convinced

they don't deserve to be behind bars. Veronica Compton was one of those people.

From months, she'd been dating inmate Kenneth Bianchi, better known as the Hillside Strangler.

They met when Veronica asked to interview him for a play she was researching,

but one thing led to another, and now they've been writing letters back and forth

while he awaited his punishment for the role he played in the rape and murder of 10 women

in Los Angeles and two in Washington State. She was positive that the police had the wrong

guy. Even if he had strangled 10 women, it was certainly an accident. He didn't mean it.

Bianchi had met thousands of women in his life, and he'd only killed 10 of them.

Statistically, those were great odds. As Bianchi waited for the court proceedings to come

to a close, Veronica grew sick with worry. She lamented how stuck she felt. There was nothing

she could do to help her bow. Bianchi agreed that it was hopeless.

...