Fatal Father Figures, Sinister Sons: The Hillside Stranglers and the “Operation Miranda” Killers
Sometimes called folie à deux, or “madness for two,” the phenomenon of team killers is a fascinating one. Usually when we think of murderers who work in pairs, we think of lovers and spouses, like Paul Bernardo and Karla Homulka, or Fred and Rosemary West. (I’ve profiled several more killer couples here, here, here, and here).
But team killers aren’t always romantically linked. Another form they can take is a twisted kind of father-son relationship, where one man, usually the older one, acts as an “alpha,” exerting his authority over the younger, more submissive man. Often the alpha male is the more precise one — he makes the plans, calls the shots (so to speak), and ensures the crime scene is clean (or well hidden). The beta male — usually more impulsive — takes orders and does more of the dirty work.
Let’s look at two particularly nasty cases that perfectly exemplify this “fatal father figure” dynamic: Leonard Lake and Charles Ng and the Hillside Stranglers.
In 1977 and ’78, Ken Bianchi and Angelo Buono were living in Los Angeles. Bianchi, Buono’s younger cousin, had been sent to live with Buono by his family. Bianchi had always been a troubled kid; he was given up for adoption when he was an infant, then spent several months being shuttled around the family before the Bianchis adopted him. Family and friends described him as a compulsive liar, prone to fits of rage. Lately, 25-year-old Bianchi had been getting into a lot of trouble at home — mostly petty thefts, but his parents were worried about him. (There are some who think Bianchi might have been responsible for the unsolved Alphabet Murders).
The Bianchis thought Buono, who was older and owned a successful auto upholstery shop, might be a good influence on the young man. But Buono was far from the straight-laced, mature man he appeared to be — he had a record for, among other things, assault and rape. He described himself as “a ladies’ man” — but was actually a sadistic misogynist. The 40-something liked to lure teenaged girls to his home with drugs and alcohol — then tie them up and rape them — or, as he put it, “putting them in their place.” He also kept some of them as prisoners and forced them into prostitution.
Bianchi seemed to fit right in with his older cousin’s cruel lifestyle, and in fact assisted him in pimping out the women and girls Buono kept imprisoned.
Their first murder victim (at least as a team) was a woman named Yolanda Washington, who was being forced into prostitution by the two. Apparently, Bianchi was angry that one of “their” prostitutes had lied to them, so he took out his rage on Washington. Bianchi strangled her to death in the back seat of Buono’s car. The pair dumped her body near the Ventura Highway, but not before raping her, stipping her naked, and cleaning her body.
It may have been at that point when Bianchi, or Buono, or both, discovered they enjoyed killing women. After that, they went on a serial-killing spree. They would cruise the seedy parts of LA for victims, where Bianchi would flash his security-guard badge to lure them into the car. Back at Buono’s house, the two would brutally torture and rape the women before strangling them to death. They would then dump the women’s bodies in the hills around LA.
As the two continued their murder spree, they began trying different methods of killing, such as injecting their victims with cleaning fluids, using carbon monoxide, or electrocuting them. They also varied their victim type; at first, they targeted prostitutes and runaways, but then they began picking up young schoolgirls and college students. In all, the pair killed 10 women and girls — one as young as 12.
The elder Buono, true to the profile, was meticulous and methodical. The two would sit down and discuss their plans and methods, with Buono always thinking ahead so as not to get caught. After each murder, he made sure there would be no clues, either in his home or on the bodies — though, thankfully, he was not able to wash them all away.
The police began to suspect that the killer — nicknamed “the Hillside Strangler” for the locations where the bodies were found — might actually be a team. Several of the bodies were found in places where it would have been impossible for a single person to carry them. Also, one of the victims’ cars was found abandoned in an area nowhere near houses or transit routes — clearly, an accomplice had driven a second car. But the police did not voice their suspicions to the public.
Then, as suddenly as the murders began, they stopped. Police were baffled.
Apparently, Bianchi admitted to Buono that he had been questioned about the murders. Buono flew into a rage and insisted that Bianchi move to Washington state, which he did. With the deadly duo separated, the murders in LA ceased.
But Bianchi could not control his murderous desires. In January 1979, less than a year after the last Hillside Strangler murder, he lured two young women to an abandoned house with the offer of a job. He separated them, then raped and strangled each in turn.
But without Buono’s guidance, the impulsive Bianchi left too many clues behind — such as the fact that he had been hired to protect the house where the murders took place. His California drivers license and a background check linked him to some of the Hillside Strangler’s victims.
He was arrested, and, under questioning, claimed to have multiple personality disorder. Acting as one of his “personalities,” he confessed to participating in the murders and implicated Buono as well.
No one bought his insane act. So Bianchi agreed to plead guilty and testify against Buono in exchange for leniency.
Despite Buono’s thorough cleaning of the victims and the crime scene, a tiny tuft of fabric stuck to one victim’s eyelid, and some fibers stuck to another victim’s hands, were traced to fabrics at his shop.
They were both found guilty in separate trials — the most expensive in the history of California — and sentenced to life in prison. Buono died of heart failure in 2002; Bianchi still resides in the Washington State Penitentiary and, thanks to his plea deal, will be up for parole in 2025.
Only a few years later, in 1983, Leonard Lake and Charles Ng embarked on their own serial-killing spree.
Like Bianchi, Ng was an unwanted child. Born in Hong Kong, he wasn’t given up for adoption, but was instead subjected to mental and physical abuse throughout his childhood. He, too, had a record of petty theft — though his compulsive stealing was much deeper than Bianchi’s. In fact, he was dishonorably discharged from the Marines (where he had lied about his citizenship) for stealing weapons to sell on the black market. He was court-martialed and sentenced to 14 years for the theft. But he immediately escaped custody and fled to California. There, he found an ad in a survivalist magazine placed by Lake.
Like Buono, Lake was the older, more mature, more methodical of the pair. Lake’s deviancy and cruelty was apparent from an early age; he is reported to have extorted sexual favors from neighborhood girls, including his own sisters, and he enjoyed killing mice by dissolving them in acid. He was a Vietnam veteran, but was given a medical discharge for “impending schizophrenia.” At one point, he starred in BDSM porno films, but his primary hobby/identity seems to have been “survivalism,” or what in more honest terms might be called a gun fetish sprinkled with the usual anti-government conspiracies and racist ideologies (I write in more depth about the 1980s gun culture here).
Also like Buono, Lake did not regard women as human beings. But Buono’s misogyny was nothing compared to Lake’s. In one of his many diaries, he wrote that “God meant women for cooking, cleaning house and sex. And when they are not in use, they should be locked up.” Inspired by the novel The Collector, Lake decided he would capture women, hold them prisoner, and force them into sexual servitude. He wrote detailed plans and talked about it on home videos. He called the plan “Operation Miranda” after the victim in the novel.
Perhaps the two bonded by their shared Marine experience, or their mutual hatred of the government. Lake invited Ng to stay with him in a trailer house in Ukiah, California, to hide out from the police. However, the two were soon arrested when a federal raid of their property found large stashes of illegal weapons and explosives.
Lake made bail, then promptly went into hiding on some rural property in Wilseyville, California, owned by his ex-wife, Claralyn Balazs. Ng was sentenced to three years. After he served his time, he went to live with Lake on the property, which had been turned into a survivalist compound — and a stage for his sadistic fantasies. Inside a toolshed, he built a tiny holding cell he called “the dungeon,” complete with video surveillance and a two-way mirror.
Their first victims (though perhaps not Lake’s first) were the Dubs family. Lake and Ng went to their home ostensibly to rent some video equipment from them. Instead, they stole the video equipment and abducted the family, killing Harvey Dubs and their 18-month-old son, Sean. Deborah Dubs, they kept prisoner, raping and torturing her repeatedly while one or the other filmed it using the video camera they had stolen.
This pattern was repeated several times. Men, they would kill in order to steal something of value — a car or an identity. Women, they kept as prisoners and filmed as they tortured, raped, and eventually murdered them. If there were infants or children, such as with the Dubs and Bond families, they killed them too. This was one significant difference from the Hillside Stranglers, who targeted women exclusively.
Where the Hillside Stranglers carefully cleaned their victims’ bodies and then dumped them out in the open, Lake and Ng disposed of their victims in various ways — some were wrapped up and buried, some dissolved in acid, and many others were burnt and their bones scattered. But all the remains were kept on the property. This is probably why they were able to get away with their crimes longer, since there were no homicide investigations into any of their victims.
As with the Hillside Stranglers, it was the younger man’s carelessness that got the police involved. This time, it was Ng’s kleptomania. A clerk at a hardware store caught him stealing an expensive set of vice grips and placing them in the trunk of a car. He called the police. When they arrived, Lake had shown up claiming this was all a big misunderstanding; he said they each thought the other had paid for the vice grips. But police weren’t so easily thrown off. First off, they spotted a .22 with an illegal suppressor in the trunk, along with what appeared to be bullet holes and blood stains. In addition, Lake was attempting to use an ID that clearly wasn’t his — it belonged to Robin Stapley, a man who had been reported as missing. The car itself was registered to another missing man, Paul Cosner.
There were too many red flags to let Lake walk. So they arrested him. Inside the stolen car, they found a utility bill with the Wilseyville address on it — so they went there and got permission from Balazs to search the property. Their first search turned up the video equipment stolen from the missing Dubs family. A subsequent search revealed the torture chamber Lake had built, along with Lake’s written and filmed diaries describing his hatred of women and “Operation Miranda.” They also found the videos the pair had filmed while torturing their victims.
In various places on the property, they found human remains. In one particular area, searchers uncovered 40 pounds of burned and crushed bone fragments. Because most of the remains were so fragmentary, investigators could only say there were at least 11 victims buried on the property — the total number can’t be known, but it might be as high as 25.
At the station, Lake asked for a pad and pencil and some water. When he was left alone in the interrogation room, he wrote a short letter of apology, then took a cyanide pill he had hidden in his clothing. He fell into a fatal coma.
Before he took his life, he told the officers his accomplice was Charles Ng. But Ng had slipped away from the authorities before. This time, he headed for Canada, where he was able to evade capture for a month. But once again, his kleptomania was his downfall. He was caught shoplifting and arrested.
Ng’s long legal ordeal after his arrest is also somewhat reminiscent of the Hillside Stranglers and their long, overly expensive trial. Ng used Canadian law to avoid extradition to the US for six years. Then once he was finally extradited, he did everything he could to delay his trial for seven more years. But in the end, he was found guilty of 11 of the 12 murders he was charged with. Ng is currently on death row at San Quentin.
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