Chapter Five: “Unwinnable”

Host Joseph Rodota discusses the making of the podcast “HILLSIDE” and the NBC Studios Documentary “THE HILLSIDE STRANGLER: DEVIL IN DISGUISE." With KCRA Anchor Edie Lambert and special guest, former KFWB and CBS Los Angeles reporter Jim Mitchell. Recorded at The Sofia, Home of B Street Theatre, in Sacramento, California.

The jury returns its verdicts. Meika Mercado reflects on her journey to learn more about her late mother, Yolanda Washington.

Prosecutors develop a strategy for presenting their case, despite problems with a key witness. Angelo Buono’s lawyer makes a strategic choice of co-counsel.

Prosecutors grapple with a defense motion to bar the testimony of three witnesses. 

Kenneth Bianchi confesses to 10 murders in Los Angeles and agrees to testify against his cousin. A woman sees Bianchi on the evening news and reaches out to him. 

Police discover the bodies of two women in Bellingham, Washington. An investigator calls the LA County Sheriff’s Department on a Saturday, triggering a search of Hillside Strangler Task Force files.

The operator of an escort service becomes concerned when a sex worker fails to check in. A woman is startled by two cars driving up the Angeles Crest Highway late one night.

As the bodies of more women are discovered, Los Angeles is engulfed in fear. Citizens flood the Hillside Strangler Task Force with clues.

When the bodies of three young women are discovered in Los Angeles over a period of three weeks, detectives wonder whether their deaths are connected.

Over five months in the fall of 1977 and the winter of 1978, Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi committed a series of crimes known as the Hillside Strangler murders.In the new podcast HILLSIDE, author Joseph Rodota revisits the investigation into these slayings, followed by the longest murder trial in U.S. history. Rodota interviewed more than 40 people connected to the case – detectives, friends and families of the victims, defense attorneys and prosecutors, journalists, and the presiding judge – and unearthed new documents about the case from archives and private hands.HILLSIDE answers a number of lingering questions about this case:Why were these crimes so difficult to solve? Why did the Los Angeles District Attorney attempt to drop all murder charges against one of the killers? And why, decades later, did the case continue to haunt someone very close to one of the victims? HILLSIDE is a riveting story of crime, politics and personal redemption.