Murderous Personality

Was the Hillside Strangler a Jekyll and Hyde?

He hated and despised Kenneth Bianchi, 27, a security guard in Bellingham, Wash. "Ken doesn't know how to handle women," he snarled. "You gotta treat 'em rough." He spoke crudely of his sexual exploits with women and then said of Bianchi: "Boy, did I fix that turkey. I got him in so much trouble, he'll never get out."

The voice, according to Psychologist John Watkins of the University of Montana, came from a sort of Doppelganger, a second and hidden personality of the same Kenneth Bianchi, "a very pure psychopath." It expressed the personality's "general underlying hatred of women" and from time to time seized complete control of the normally mild-mannered Bianchi. It did indeed get him into serious trouble. In January, Bianchi was arrested and charged with strangling two young women, whose bodies were found that month stuffed into the rear of a car in Bellingham. Last week Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates announced that he had enough "hard physical evidence" to seek murder charges against Bianchi for ten of the 13 murders ascribed to the notorious "Hillside Strangler."

The brutal murders took place between September 1977 and February 1978 and brought a reign of terror to Los Angeles. Women were afraid to walk alone at night, even in residential areas. The strangler's victims included a prostitute and a runaway, whose nude bodies were found tossed into wooded areas. His eighth and ninth victims, however, were twelve-year-old girls, school chums at a Catholic elementary school who disappeared while out shopping. The killer dumped their bodies near Dodger Stadium.

When Bianchi stands trial in Los Angeles and Washington he is expected to plead not guilty by reason of insanity because of a dual personality. At first even Bianchi's defense attorney, Dean Brett, rejected the plea. "That's the stuff of novels," he told an associate. But when Brett had trouble communicating with Bianchi, tie called in a team of psychologists and psychiatrists. One of them, Watkins, hypnotized Bianchi and discovered the second personality. Watkins told TIME Correspondent Edward J. Boyer that while hypnotized, Bianchi identified ten of the 13 Hillside victims and admitted killing them. In subsequent sessions with Watkins, Bianchi's second personality merged without hypnosis. Says Watkins:

"The underlying personality would threaten me a good deal. He would get up and stride around. I was never quite sure but that he would attack me."

Bianchi's case, reminiscent of the bestselling book and hit movie The Three Faces of Eve, is similar to that of William Milligan, who was accused of raping four women students at Ohio State University two years ago. Defense psychiatrists reported that Milligan had ten personalities and that only one of them was responsible for the crimes. A judge found Milligan not guilty by reason of insanity, and he was committed to a mental hospital.

Watkins claims that Bianchi was not aware of his second personality until told about it by the experts. The psychologist insists that the Doppelganger is no alibi; it probably first emerged, he says, when Bianchi was nine years old. Other medical experts are now examining Bianchi to determine whether his disorder is organic, caused by a brain tumor. But Watkins and an associate believe that the dual personality stems from Bianchi's unhappy childhood.

He was adopted in infancy by Nicholas and Frances Bianchi of Rochester, N.Y. Nicholas, who was a welder, died when Kenneth was 14. Throughout his childhood, Kenneth often suffered from amnesia, which Watkins says is a symptom of dissociative reaction, the medical term for dual personality. Bianchi had frequent nightmares of being in a dark room with a strange presence, perhaps an awareness of the second personality, and severe migraine headaches. Says Watkins: "Headaches often occur when the personality underneath is trying to get out and the one on top is trying to maintain control. The battle is experienced as a severe headache." Friends from high school remember him as a loner. As an adult Bianchi was considered a ladies' man. With dark hair and a thick, slick mustache, he had no trouble attracting women.

Throughout high school Bianchi had one obsession: to become a policeman. He studied police science at Monroe Community College in New York but dropped out before finishing. He tried to find a job as a policeman in up state New York and failed. When he moved to Los Angeles in 1975, he sought, again in vain, for police jobs while living with his cousin, Angelo Buono, 44. Finally, Bianchi got a position at a land title company, but he pretended to colleagues that he was an undercover cop on the side. He carried an attache case in which he kept a phony highway patrol man's badge and identification, handcuffs, and photos of nude women. A neighbor recalls him as "sometimes too friendly, always trying to impress." At times, how ever, he had violent outbreaks of temper and threw heavy objects against the walls of his apartment.

One day he remarked to a coworker, "What would you think if I told you I'm the Hillside Strangler?" Someone passed the comment along to the police, but it was one of thousands of tips, and was ignored. After Bianchi's arrest in Bellingham, Los Angeles police took another look and discovered some remarkable coincidences. For six months he had lived in the same Glendale apartment building as Kristina Weckler, the Hill side Strangler's seventh victim. He lived across the street from Cindy Hudspeth, victim No. 13, and once lived in the Hollywood apartment building where Kimberly Martin, victim No. 12, was killed.

So far only the psychiatrists charged with defending Bianchi have spoken. Los Angeles police have not commented on the defense claim of a dual personality. In the meantime, the judge in Bellingham has appointed six experts to examine Bianchi and make their own diagnosis.

When they are done, Bianchi will be tried in Washington, in late summer at the earliest. If he is convicted, the prosecutor will ask for the death penalty.

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