Couples Who Kill (4 page)

Los Angeles women lived in fear after twenty-six-year-old Kenneth Bianchi moved in with his forty-four-year-old cousin Angelo Buono. Within a five month period – October 1977 to February 1978 – they would torture, sexually assault and kill ten women. Then Bianchi moved a thousand miles away and killed another two girls…

Ken was born in New York on 22nd May 1951 to a teenage mother of limited intelligence and to a twenty-four-
year-old
father. The girl had had a very unhappy life in the juvenile care system and was a very heavy drinker. Whilst pregnant, she married a soldier who was not the father of her unborn child – and when he found out, he wanted nothing to do with the impending birth. She then set her sights on a much older man and tried to ignore her pregnancy.

Ken was a breech birth who came into the world weighing six pounds four ounces. For the first few weeks of his life his mother left him in the care of a neighbour, but the neighbour didn’t want him. She, in turn, began to hand him on to other neighbours for the day. He was fed and changed but rarely held or spoken to – and such early deprivation can affect a growing child’s brain, making it hard for him to bond with genuine carers at a later date.

By now a local childless couple called Frances and Nicholas Bianchi had become aware of the baby’s plight. Frances had had a hysterectomy (consequently at the age
of thirty she went through the menopause) so was unable to have children of her own. This deeply upset her as she came from a large religious family and had been constantly told that children were ‘a gift from God’. She became a hypochondriac and called her GP so often that he refused to visit her. When a doctor suggested that she adopt, she embraced the idea with fervour, seeing this as her mission in life. She now approached Ken Bianchi’s mother, asking to privately adopt the three-month-old. The mother agreed and the papers were legally drawn up by the courts.

Frances, now in her early thirties, was very much in charge of their adopted son, as her husband Nicholas was a subdued man with a speech defect. He worked at a foundry and Frances stayed at home with little Ken.

By the time he was three years old it was clear that Ken Bianchi was deeply unhappy and afraid. He often wet the bed, had sleepless nights and went down with a case of acute laryngitis. The hospital doctors who were treating him noted that his mother was highly strung and
overprotective
, and found that she constantly rejected their medical advice. They suggested that she bring Ken back for allergy testing but she failed to follow through.

Ken went to kindergarten but when he fell in the playground, as small children often do, his mother kept him home for the rest of the year. She would continue to keep him at home with her whenever she could.

By the time he went to Holy Family School, Ken was still wetting his pants. His mother’s response was to spank him before he went to the bathroom in the hope that this would encourage him to expel all of his urine. She also took him from doctor to doctor, but rejected any suggestion that the problem might be psychological. When
Ken was checked in for tests, she insisted on accompanying him to the bathroom even though he was old enough to go by himself. When doctors suggested that she give the child some privacy, she became
semi-hysterical
, declaring that she would take him to the bathroom until she no longer had the energy. Hospital staff noted that Ken was no problem in the ward until his mother came to visit, at which he made numerous health complaints. In turn, his mother would rush around the various doctors, demanding that they cure the disturbed little boy.

Frances Bianchi often brought up the fact that her adopted son dribbled from his penis – and, as a result, it was frequently examined and probed by the medical staff whilst she looked on. Eventually a clinician noted that ‘the relationship between these two must be considered pathological.’

The teachers noticed that Ken found it hard to concentrate at school. He developed various facial tics and his eyes would roll back in his head, signs of mild epilepsy or of tension. He fell from a climbing frame in the gym and cut his lip and as a result his mother sued the school. Sometimes he was bullied by other children – and after a bullying episode his mother would keep him at home for a month. She also kept him off school for fear that he’d get a sore throat.

Frances fostered two other children and whilst they were in the home Ken’s physical and mental health improved. But social services removed the children from her care and Ken’s ailments resurfaced. He was in and out of the hospital for tests after complaining of stomach and leg pains, with Frances Bianchi telling one doctor ‘He’s
been whipped when he lies so he wouldn’t lie to me.’ The staff noted that Kenneth developed facial tics when talking about his mother, but he refused to say anything against her other than admitting that she shouted a lot. He said that she also shouted at his dad, who was a nice, quiet man. Unfortunately Ken hardly ever saw his father as the man had to work so hard – and when he wasn’t working he liked to bet on horses, a hobby which Mrs Bianchi despised.

Frances had never been happy with the part of Rochester where they lived, so when Ken was eight she and her husband bought a much more expensive house in Greece, a more upmarket suburb of Rochester. As a result, Nicholas Bianchi had to work even longer hours to make ends meet. Frances got a part-time job but the family still had money problems, and Ken quickly picked up on this. Soon the Greece School District were noting that ‘Mrs Bianchi is a very nervous person, easily upset. She needs to be calmed down.’ But little calming took place, for Ken’s mother went on to write to the school, telling them that she wanted to be informed of any injury her son suffered, however slight.

Within months it became clear that the family couldn’t afford the payments on the new house so they moved again and Mrs Bianchi took a job with an aircraft company. Ken was now looked after by a neighbour and for a few months he blossomed. Social services noted that his disposition became much less sombre and that his bedwetting had stopped. Unfortunately his mother gave
up her job through ill health and Ken’s
psychologically-induced
medical problems started up again. By now doctors believed that Ken’s illnesses were the only way for him to get his feelings out in the open, to show his adoptive mother that he was hurting. They believed that, robbed of this outlet, he might became a violent boy.

Social services had been monitoring the family for some time and when Ken was eleven the Rochester Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Children reported that Mrs Bianchi was ‘a deeply disturbed person’ with paranoid tendencies. In that same year, the staff at the local DePaul Clinic concluded that ‘Kenneth is a deeply hostile boy who has extremely dependent needs which his mother fulfils. He depends upon his mother for his very survival and expends a great deal of energy keeping his hostility under control and under cover.’ The insightful doctor at the clinic also noted the boy’s loneliness and extreme anxiety. He ascertained that Ken’s mother disapproved of his friends and that he was desperate to have other people in his life.

But Ken’s unhappy home life continued. At twelve, his perfectly normal adolescent curiosity led him to leaf through a pornographic magazine – but his mother’s response was to whip him with a shower hose. Clinicians who were monitoring the case noted that she seemed to spy on him, as she told them she’d seen him pulling down a six-year-old girl’s pants.

Ken had an IQ of 116 which meant that he had a well above average intelligence but wouldn’t be bright enough to eventually go to university. Unfortunately he expected
to get higher grades than he was actually capable of, so he often felt frustrated at school. The one subject he excelled in was creative writing – children from unhappy households are often especially creative as they disappear inside their own heads as often as possible to avoid their external reality.

Ken’s relationship with his father had been time-starved for many years as the man had to work so much overtime. Nevertheless he was grateful for the quiet kindness his father showed him – and when Ken was thirteen they managed to have a fishing trip together. Unfortunately, Nicholas Bianchi died a few days later at his work. Ken cried for hours when he heard the news, as did his mother, but after the funeral he rarely cried again. Social services noted that Mrs Bianchi seemed to behave provocatively in front of her teenage son, pulling down her already low-cut tops and crossing her legs suggestively. A report noted that ‘this family has been known for many years to social services in many areas of the country.’ Unfortunately no one stepped in to help the increasingly disturbed child.

Then the teenage Kenneth Bianchi fell in love and married shortly after he graduated from high school. Friends would later suggest that he married young to get away from home.

Sadly, the marriage was not a success. His young wife wanted to party but Ken wanted her at home with him every night. Rather than talk the situation through, he withdrew emotionally and she turned to her mother for
comfort. She also started to date other men. Everyone could see that divorce was inevitable – everyone except the daydreaming Ken.

One night he came home from work to find that she’d left him, stripping the apartment of its furniture and all of her possessions. The teenage boy went into shock. When he recovered he was extremely angry and hurt: he’d tried to be a loving husband and potential family man but now had to reinvent himself.

For a while Ken tried academia, enrolling in college and taking courses in politics and in police work. But he failed to get the high grades he expected and soon dropped out. He now settled for casual work, becoming everything from a bar man to an ambulance driver. Feeling increasingly frustrated at the difference between his dreams and his reality, he flitted from job to job.

Sensing that he was desperate for a change of scene, but possibly wanting to keep him attached to the family, his mother made arrangements for him to move to Glendale, California to stay with his older cousin, Angelo Buono. He’d met Angelo occasionally when he was a young boy, but the two branches of the family had since drifted apart. In January 1976 Ken arrived in Glendale and moved into his cousin’s neat little home.

Angelo was born on 5th October 1934 to Jenny and Angelo Buono senior in Rochester, New York. (Jenny was Frances Bianchi’s sister, so they had both grown up in the same impoverished family. Jenny had had to cope with an increasing number of brothers and sisters as their parents’ religion forbade birth control. Eventually the Sciolino
family comprised eight children and her exhausted parents found it hard to cope.) Jenny and Angelo already had a five-year-old daughter Cecelia by the time that Angelo junior came along, but the marriage was an increasingly unhappy one, with Angelo senior – a security guard – given to long, sullen silences and Jenny finding fault with everything and everyone.

When Cecelia and little Angelo were ten and five respectively, the Buonos separated and Jenny Buono took the children to Glendale. There she found poorly paid piece-work in a shoe factory. She had lots of boyfriends and would take Angelo along with her to their houses and make him wait outside whilst she had sex with them. He soon figured out what was going on and hated her for it.

It was difficult for Jenny to support all three of them on a small wage and (Angelo would later allege) she often offered sexual favours in exchange for goods and services. By his early teens he was calling his mother ‘a whore and a cunt.’ His early experiences ensured that he had no respect for women and by the age of fourteen he was being sadistic towards his girlfriends and made it clear that he wanted anal rather than vaginal sex.

Young Angelo couldn’t control their financial problems or his mother’s behaviour – but he could control how neat his surroundings were. As such, he became compulsively clean and tidy, using external order to help counter the chaos of his inner world.

By sixteen Angelo – who could barely read or write – had dropped out of high school and stolen a car. He was sent to the California Youth Authority but soon escaped.
Rearrested in December 1951, he was sent to the tougher Paso Robles School For Boys. There, he heard the other boys talk avidly about gangsters, seeing them as heroes who beat the system rather than as the bullies they actually were.

When Angelo was twenty he got his seventeen-year-old girlfriend Geraldine pregnant and reluctantly married her. But he walked out after a week and never returned. By the time of the birth he was back in prison on a further car theft charge. His son, Michael, was born on 10th January 1956, after which his young wife filed for divorce.

In April 1957 he married for the second time. This wife, Mary (more commonly known as Candy), had already borne him an illegitimate son and over the next five years she gave him another five children – a total of five sons and one daughter – the last being born in 1962.

Angelo proved to be a cruel father and a brutal husband. He knew that his wife hated anal sex yet he regularly sodomised her. He beat and humiliated her and even raped her anally in front of the children when she tried to refuse him sex. Eventually she divorced him for cruelty after which she had to go on welfare for Angelo refused to financially support any of his brood.

Shortly after separating from his second spouse, Angelo found himself a live-in lover, Nanette, who already had two children. He beat and humiliated her but she remained
with him and bore him a son and a daughter. Like many insecure men, he threatened to kill her if she ever tried to leave.