The Cousins Who Terrorized Los Angeles in November 1977
The intriguing story of ten murders and a feigned mental illness
Los Angeles is no stranger to homicides and has the notorious distinction of being the city with one of the highest crime rates in America. The largest increase in the risk of homicide in a single decade occurred in the 1970s when homicide rates increased 84% over the 10-year period from 12.5 to 23.0 per 100,000 population.
It was also in the 1970s that the women in Los Angeles were terrorized by a peculiar spree of killings that shook the city.
The murders all had something in common — the victims were girls or young women, who’d been raped and strangled to death and then dumped on the hillsides of Greater Los Angeles.
Yolanda Washington — where it all started
On October 17, 1977, the dead body of one Yolanda Washington was found on a hillside near Ventura Freeway. The body had been found naked, and had seemingly been cleaned before being dumped, but showed faint strangulation marks as well as rope marks on the wrists and ankles — indicating that she’d been killed elsewhere, cleaned for any forensic traces, and then dumped there.
