Hillside Strangler Case | Mental Health & Personality | Who Was the Ringleader?

welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel hello this is dr. grande today's question asks if I can analyze the mental health and personality characteristics that may be at work in the hillside strangler case this case highlighted the concern over somebody faking multiple personality disorder which is now referred to as dissociative identity disorder or di D there were two people responsible for the hillside strangler murders Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono in this video I'm focusing on Bianchi just a reminder here that I'm not diagnosing anybody only speculating based on what could be happening in a situation like this so first I'll take a look at Bianchi's background then take a look at the crimes and what the outcome was I'll look at the amount of health and personality factors and I'll also answer the question who was the ringleader so between Bianchi and Buono who was really in charge so starting with the background Kenneth Bianchi was born on May 22nd 1951 in Rochester New York his mother was 17 at the time she was addicted to alcohol and she was a prostitute in August 1951 he was adopted by the Bianchi's he was their only child so just a side note here as I study these various killers and specifically serial killers there are several that have been adopted just to name a few Ted Bundy Joel Rifkin David Berkowitz and Aileen Wuornos there's an idea here that maybe adoption is connected to people becoming serial killers like maybe it contributes to that behavior I've checked into this a few times and read some different literature on this I'm not convinced there is a causal connection millions of people who are adopted avoid crimes entirely it is interesting that we see this many killers who were adopted so moving along with Bianchi's story at age 2 Bianchi's mother frances described him as a compulsive liar that's fairly young to be labeled a compulsive liar I can't recall ever seeing something like that before as I researched these killers in late November 1954 we see Francis takes bianche to a physician because he's not sleeping and he's frequently wetting the bed this is a common symptom of psychopathy in that same visit the physician indicates that Francis needs help so the physician was more worried about Bianca's mother than Bianca 1956 Bianca is often going into trance-like states characterized by his eyes rolling back in his head and him not paying attention to his surroundings he's also having frequent anger and temper tantrums Francis takes him to a physician she is told that Bianca has seizures but not to worry about it he will grow out of it January 1957 while playing on a jungle gym Bianchi falls off and injures his face head injuries are common with serial killers but it's not clear if this accident resulted in a concussion then we moved to the end of summer in 1957 Bianchi now aged six is once again brought to a physician because he's having episodes where his eyes are rolling back in his head in 1959 he is formerly treated for mental health symptoms and in 1960 he is treated for tics unruly behavior and involuntary urination not long after this he's diagnosed with passive aggressive person I disorder now this is a diagnosis that's no longer available in the DSM another difference nowadays is that somebody who was nine years old would usually not get a diagnosis of a personality disorder we don't see that too often currently in 1962 we see his IQ is assessed and his score is reported as 116 so that's over a standard deviation above the mean even with this high level intelligence he continues to get in trouble in school in 1964 when Bianchi was 13 his father died suddenly we see here that Bianchi shows no motions and does not cry from 1969 to 1976 we see a number of key events Bianchi gets married he's not satisfied with his wife he has several affairs that marriage only lasts a few months he works as a security guard he frequently steals jewelry and other items roles in a community college with the intent of becoming a police officer we see he would get married again the second marriage ends after eight months evidently his wife just left one day and we see he applies to be a police officer and is rejected so looking at this phase of life for Bianca I find it interesting that he had several affairs often serial killers really struggle in relationships with women so the relationships are more distant right so they have trouble talking to women or relating to women if he's having affairs then he seems comfortable having relationships with women he's approaching them he's talking to them he's interacting at several different levels so again kind of unusual for someone who had become a serial killer from 1971 to 1973 the alphabet murders took place in Rochester New York claiming three young female victims some circumstantial evidence tied Bianchi to these crimes but he was never charged in 1976 when Bianchi was 24 he moves to Los Angeles he spends a lot of time with his older cousin Angelo Buono Angelo has a lot of interest in violence and sex evidently Bianchi and Buono talk about this frequently this really reminds me of the Richard Ramirez case Ramirez had a cousin they looked up to that had these same interests over the next year we see Bianchi tries several times to get a job as a police officer he is unsuccessful he begins a romantic relationship with a woman named Kelly Boyd they would have a son together it was 1977 when we see Bianchi buys fake degrees in psychology and actually rents space from a licensed psychologist his mental health practice was not successful he only treated one client I hope that client got a refund I was thinking this client would have a legitimate concern about trusting a therapist after this like they could go to their next therapists and say my last therapist was awful he was literally a serial killer not many people could say that this really just provides more evidence to the importance of professional licensure usually being a serial killer is frowned upon by licensing board it's really one of the few things they agree on mostly because of all the killing involved it doesn't facilitate a good therapist client relationship Bianchi and Buono wanted to get into the prostitution business they wanted to buy a list of men who would be potential customers to women Deborah Noble and Yolanda Washington sold them a list like this but it was a fake I'm not sure what the long-term plan was here I guess they were hoping that Bianchi and Buono would notice like maybe they weren't serious and they really wouldn't try to contact people on that list this brings us to october 17 1977 Bianchi and Buono find you land to washington they strangle her after assaulting her sexually this is the first of the hillside strangler murders but it would not be the last between october 1977 and february 1978 they assaulted and murdered nine more women ranging in age from 12 to 28 often luring victims with fake police badges several bodies are found on hillsides leading to the name hillside strangler after this Bianchi moves to Bellingham Washington to be with Kelly Boyd and their son there are also reports that bono ordered Bianchi to leave because he was worried that Bianchi was a suspect while in Washington Bianchi works as a security guard and is accepted into a training program to be a reserve police officer so again we see him really pushing with this mission to become a cop January 1979 now in Washington we see two women 22 and 27 years old are reported missing and the police later find their bodies in an abandoned car bianche becomes a suspect because he tried to hire them to house it he actually left quite a few clues he was caught very quickly after the bodies were discovered during a search of Bianchi's home the police discovered jewelry that is connected to two of the Los Angeles victims so here we see the connection back to the hillside strangler murders Angelo Buono was arrested in October of 1979 after being implicated by Bianchi now looking at their convictions we see eventually Bianchi would plead guilty to five murders and would testify albeit poorly against Mona Bianchi tried to make it seem like he was psychotic so that bono would not be convicted both would be convicted and sentenced to life in prison Mona would die in 2002 with Bianchi sentence technically he was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole he was denied parole in 2017 he will have another chance in 2025 but I would be very surprised if he was ever released now moving to the mental health and personality characteristics though he may see in a case like this it's hard to imagine a serial killer with a more controversial mental health profile Bianca was diagnosed with many different disorders from many different professionals there were seven mental health professionals involved in the case they spent over 65 hours evaluating Bianca all that was recorded either on audio only or on video we see a number of different opinions came out of this before I go through what they reported I want to define insanity as they used the term it's not the same thing as psychosis although there is a substantial overlap and sanity essentially has two elements here the defendant cannot appreciate the criminality of their actions and the defendant does not have the ability to control their actions or conform their actions to the requirements of the law now looking at what the mental health professionals reported regarding Bianca two professionals were hired by the prosecution one said that Bianca was a sociopath and the other said that he had antisocial personality disorder so essentially the same construct both determined that he was not insane three professionals work for the defense one thought that Bianca had dissociative reaction bordering on psychosis the second one thought that he had severe multiple personality and the possibility of a brain disorder and in the last one dr. Watkins said the societal reaction multiple personality I mentioned his name specifically because he wrote an article in 1984 about Bianca's diagnosis and about the opinions of the other profession I'll talk about that article in a moment all three of the professionals working for the defense believed Bianca was insane both mental health professionals hired by the court found Bianca to be insane and one said he had multiple personality so again we see a lot of different opinions about what was going on with Bianca now going back to that 1984 paper I mentioned before written by dr. Watkins this article was really fascinating it's 34 pages of Watkins explaining what was going on with Bianca and defending his position that Bianchi was insane and suffered from multiple personalities Watkins came into the situation understanding the risks of trying to assess somebody like Bianca he knew that somebody like this could fake multiple personalities he knew that Bianca had a strong incentive to do that because he was facing the death penalty he was aware that Bianca had studied psychology and he knew that somebody would sub siapa 'they would be effective at manipulation going into this interview he actually thought that Bianca was sociopathic so that's what he was starting with in terms of a diagnostic profile so let's take a look at some of the evidence and how it was interpreted by Watkins Watkins felt that Bianca was willing to admit weaknesses and that a sociopath would not do that Watkins did not feel that Bianca's history showed antisocial behavior before the age of 15 the evidence that there were behavioral problems was attributed to multiple personalities so what we see here is with antisocial personality disorder a person has to have conduct disorder symptoms before the age of 15 so if we don't see those it's really difficult to justify that diagnosis I think the problem here is with Watkins there were some behaviors that Bianca had that would have qualified but he looked at multiple personality and thought okay that really explains that behavior so in a sense he did find behavioral problems he just gave them another explanation in the study Watkins talks at length about multiple hypnosis sessions and how this personality Steve Walker emerged the second time Bianca was hypnotized right so we have Ken Bianca and then Steve Walker this ostensibly is this other personality Watkins was amazed at how different Ken and Steve were from one other he no they had different scores on the Rorschach test their handwriting was different Steve would rip the filter off of cigarettes before smoking them and Ken would not and of course their general demeanor was different Steve Walker seemed like a sociopathic serial killer and Ken seemed like a nice guy Watkins was able to explain away the fact the police had discovered that on the fake diploma that Bianca had bought the one related to psychology the name on there was Steve Walker but Watkins believed this was only proof that Steve had exerted influence on Ken Steve must have put his name on the Diploma with all this in mind with all this disagreement about Bianca's mental health what happened in the end well eventually Bianchi admitted that he was lying about the multiple personalities and he was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder he said that he watched the movie Sybil read the book the three faces of Eve and had access to some other materials on psychology armed only with this he was able to trick multiple well trained experienced mental health professionals who were considered experts in their field if we look at Bianca's history antisocial personality does seem to align with his behavior we see repeated criminality lying impulsivity aggressiveness a disregard for safety irresponsibility and a lack of remorse he also attempted to become a police officer many times probably because of the excitement-seeking and that's tied to psychopathy another reason is that he probably thought that police officers could commit these crimes more easily because they knew the system in a sense this was a reasonable assumption we know that Bianca would ride along with Los Angeles Police as they were looking for the hillside strangler I think there is this sense when mental health professionals deal with multiple personality in these types of settings that the diagnostic category itself is trial because it's so controversial like if they can't figure out whether this person is lying or not they can't figure it out in any setting right it jeopardizes the whole category so they believe that they have an empirically valid method for determining who has the disorder and who does not of course in reality they don't have that at all all the psychometric tests all the interviewing all the theory none of it brought clarity to this case of course with the exception of the two professionals who came up with the right diagnosis I think what was really discovered in this case is that sociopaths have incredible powers of manipulation which cannot be underestimated they're able to fool friends and family as was the case with Bianca some can trick law enforcement and some can fool mental health professionals they put a lot of energy and thought into deception and playing on people's feelings it's incredibly discouraging that so many experts were fooled by Bianca it's one of the difficulties with having a diagnosis that is subjective the reality is that a lot of people could fake this disorder a number of people do and there is no way to be sure when somebody is faking or not now this could be said for a variety of mental disorders all of them can be faked but the consequences for somebody faking this disorder would potentially be freedom from the responsibility for criminal behavior as I mentioned before multiple personality is now referred to as D ID it's a controversial disorder that divides the mental health community it's cases like this that fuel skepticism and concerns that diagnostic procedures are not reliable and valid so now moving to the last question here on the hillside strangler case who was the ringleader so between Bianchi and Buono who was really in charge there's really no way to know for sure both of them took an active role in the murders Bianca was the one with the superficial charm he would try to fool the victims into believing he was a police officer or some other trusted individual bono was the career criminal with a violent past but not a history of committing murder I think he was also the one a little bit more worried about being caught for instance he was the one that stopped them killing Peter Laurie's daughter they had pulled her over but when bono saw her driver's license he let her go he was probably concerned that killing somebody like that would really draw a lot of attention from the police even more than they already had that when Bianchi went to Washington he continued to kill and bono stopped committing murders it seems as though Bianca really brought the murder element and bono responded he probably would not have killed without Bianca but it seems likely that Bianchi would have committed the murder without Bono that doesn't make Bianca the leader automatically rather just illustrates how they brought something different to the pair they each had a different role sometimes people say were the chances that two serial killers would know each other and then work together I think that really wasn't what was going on here I think that one was the killer and the other one followed so they both had the potential to kill but Bianca was really the killer to start with at the same time I don't know if bono was in charge but he was controlling how much risk they took as I mentioned which may explain why Bianca was arrested right away in Washington Mona wasn't there to regulate his behavior it would seem that bono was excited by Bianchi's drive his desire to kill in a sense this unlocked Bono's desire to kill and perhaps Bianca was excited by the structure that bono brought to their relationship I know whenever I analyze serial killer cases there will be a variety of opinions please put any opinions and thoughts in the comments section they always generate an interesting dialogue as always I hope you found my analysis of this topic to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 96,475

Keywords: Hillside Strangler, Kenneth Bianchi, Angelo Buono. dissociative identity disorder, multiple personality disorder, impulsivity, aggression, sense of entitlement, narcissism, grandiose narcissism, narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, psychopathy, sociopathy, hypersensitivity to criticism, mental health, counseling

Id: iLRPcgv2tso

Length: 19min 35sec (1175 seconds)

Published: Wed May 27 2020