First Shock
At
about 1 p.m. on Thursday, June 12, 1980, a Caltrans worker picking
up trash along the Ventura Freeway embankments came across the
nearly nude body of a teenaged girl. The young brunette lay
facedown on a bush-covered embankment on the Forest Lawn Drive
ramp that spilled onto the freeway. According to the Los Angeles
Times, she had been shot in the head with a small caliber weapon.
Not far away, another girl around the same age lay dead. She was
blond and she had been shot as well--in the head and chest--but her
pink jumpsuit had not been removed. Nevertheless, it was slit up
the leg as if whoever had killed her had been interested in some
post-mortem activity. Louise Farr wrote in The Sunset Murders (the
definitive account of these crimes) that there was fresh blood on
this girl's face.
Apparently the girls had been killed elsewhere and then dumped
down the sloping embankment. Possibly they had been hitch-hiking.
They had no ID on them and their bodies were bloated from
spending several hours that day in the sun. Even for Los Angeles, it
had been an unusually hot summer. The police realized that unless
someone reported them missing, it would not be easy to make an
identification.
Kenneth Bianchi & Angelo Buono
The investigators did note that this discovery was near the spot
where murder victim Laura Collins had been dumped in 1977—a
killing that had not yet been solved. Also, Yolanda Washington,
victim of the Hillside Stranglers, had been killed and dumped on the
opposite side of the road, closer to the famous Forest Lawn
Hollywood Hills Cemetery. Her killers, Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo
Buono, had been caught the year before and were in prison
awaiting trial, but such murders often inspire copycats. It was clear
that the two bodies had been placed there only a short time before
and were in plain view, as if the killer did not care if they were
found—a behavior similar to the Hillside Stranglers.
The next day, as the Dow hit 876 on the New York Stock Exchange—
on Friday the 13th--Angelo Marano of Huntington Beach entered the
city morgue to look at the bodies. He was distraught to discover that
his worst fears had happened: the dead girls were his missing
daughter, Gina, and stepdaughter, Cynthia Chandler. Gina was 15,
Cynthia 16. He and his wife had been looking for them for more than
a day, and when he'd seen the news report, he'd gone straight to
the police.
Despite the family's request to be left alone, there were people who
would talk about the girls to reporters, and it turned out that they
were drug abusers, truants and frequent runaways. It was not even
clear when they'd last been seen, although they often hung out on
the Sunset Strip where prostitutes could be picked up. In other
words, the papers made it sound as if they had indulged in risky
behavior.
Kenneth Bianchi & Angelo Buono
The investigators did note that this discovery was near the spot
where murder victim Laura Collins had been dumped in 1977—a
killing that had not yet been solved. Also, Yolanda Washington,
victim of the Hillside Stranglers, had been killed and dumped on the
opposite side of the road, closer to the famous Forest Lawn
Hollywood Hills Cemetery. Her killers, Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo
Buono, had been caught the year before and were in prison
awaiting trial, but such murders often inspire copycats. It was clear
that the two bodies had been placed there only a short time before
and were in plain view, as if the killer did not care if they were
found—a behavior similar to the Hillside Stranglers.
The next day, as the Dow hit 876 on the New York Stock Exchange—
on Friday the 13th--Angelo Marano of Huntington Beach entered the
city morgue to look at the bodies. He was distraught to discover that
his worst fears had happened: the dead girls were his missing
daughter, Gina, and stepdaughter, Cynthia Chandler. Gina was 15,
Cynthia 16. He and his wife had been looking for them for more than
a day, and when he'd seen the news report, he'd gone straight to
the police.
Despite the family's request to be left alone, there were people who
would talk about the girls to reporters, and it turned out that they
were drug abusers, truants and frequent runaways. It was not even
clear when they'd last been seen, although they often hung out on
the Sunset Strip where prostitutes could be picked up. In other
words, the papers made it sound as if they had indulged in risky
behavior.
Map of LA County with Sunset Strip area marked
The autopsies indicated that when she was found, Cynthia had been
dead for more than twelve hours, placing time of death around
midnight. She clearly had been dragged across a rough place after
she was killed. Gina had been shot twice in the head, and there was
no obvious sign on either girl of sexual assault, although semen
was located inside the vagina of one of them. There was some
discussion among the police of possible necrophilic activity.
Soon a call came into the station from a woman who implicated her
boyfriend in the killings but who refused to offer details that could
help to locate him. She could have been just a crank caller—always
an accompaniment to such crimes—but she was correct about how
the murders had been done. She knew details that had not been
released to the media. Her report that she and her boyfriend had
recently washed the car, inside and out, was consistent with the way
a killer would act who wished to remove evidence. But the
switchboard cut her off and she did not call back. If she had, some
lives could have been saved and she might not have taken the path
she did.
It was no crank call
Karen Jones, victim
Eleven days passed and two more females were found shot in a
similar fashion. First, according to some accounts, just before dawn
on June 23, someone discovered the body of prostitute Karen
Jones, 24, on Franklin Avenue. She had been shot in the head with a
small caliber pistol, according to Michael Newton, and dumped
behind a Burbank steakhouse (other accounts say the Burbank
studios).
<----Twofer--->
Twice as Ghoulish
Exxie Wilson, victim
