Kenneth Bianchi
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Kenneth Alessio Bianchi (born May 22, 1951 in Rochester, New York, USA) is, along with cousin Angelo Buono, Jr., one of the Hillside Stranglers. He is serving a prison term in Washington.
His biological mother was an alcoholic prostitute who gave him up for adoption at birth. He was adopted at three months by Frances Bianchi and her husband Nicholas Bianchi.
Bianchi was deeply troubled from a young age, described as "a compulsive liar" who "had risen from the cradle dissembling." While intelligent (with an I.Q. of 116), he was an underachiever who was quick to lose his temper. He was also diagnosed with petit mal seizures when he was five. As an adult, he dropped out of college after one semester, drifted through a series of menial jobs, and had a short marriage which ended when his wife walked out on him without an explanation. His one serious ambition was to be a police officer, but this aspiration was frustrated by his lack of formal education and a penchant for petty theft.
He started hanging around with Angelo Buono in late 1975, and was impressed with his cousin's fancy clothes, jewelry, and stories of getting any women he wanted and "putting them in their place." Before long, they worked together as pimps, and, by late 1977, had escalated to murder. They raped and murdered 10 women before they were arrested in early 1978.
At his trial, Bianchi pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, claiming that another personality, one "Steve Walker", had committed the crimes. Bianchi even managed to convince a few expert psychiatrists that he indeed suffered from multiple personality disorder, but investigators brought in their own psychiatrists to pick Bianchi's story apart. When one of the new psychiatrists mentioned to Bianchi that in genuine cases of the disorder, there tend to be three or more personalities, Bianchi promptly created another alias, "Billy." Eventually, investigators discovered that the very name "Steven Walker" came from a student whose identity Bianchi had previously attempted to steal for the purpose of fraudulently practicing psychology. Police also found a small library of books in Bianchi's home on topics of modern psychology, further indicating his ability to fake his claimed disorder.
Once his claims were subjected to this scrutiny, Bianchi eventually admitted that he had been faking the disorder. To acquire leniency for himself, he agreed to testify against Buono. However, in actually giving his testimony, Bianchi made every effort to be as uncooperative and self-contradictory as possible, apparently hoping to avoid being the ultimate cause of Buono being convicted. In the end, Bianchi's efforts were unsuccessful, as Buono was in fact convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.
