By the late 1970s, America was in the grip of a new source of anxiety. Along with the cult scare of the time there was also a serial killer scare. Lone wolf killers who mostly preyed on vulnerable women were showing up more and more in the news. The media, always hungry for stories that shock and disturb people for the sake of attention grabbing, latched on to this trend, bringing it further into the public eye and possibly influencing an unprecedented number of copycat homicides. One of the early fascinations for serial killers was for the Hillside Strangler, then written in the singular because no one knew the killings were done by a pair of men. Darcy O’Brien’s Two Of a Kind: The Hillside Stranglers is the definitive account of this pair that came into prominence as the serial killer scare of the time began taking off.
The first thing to note about this true crime book is its lucidity, it polished prose, and its clear writing style. The author was obviously aiming to write another novelization of murder the way Truman Capote did with In Cold Blood. This book includes everything you would find in a formulaic, mainstream novel including character development, a plot arc, subplots, a conflict resolution as a climax, and moral commentary. This is all good for the sake of readability, but in a detrimental sense, reality is messy and fitting it into the template of a novel makes this book a little too slick. There are times when you might doubt the reliability of the narration just because the pieces of the puzzle’s plot fit together a little too securely to be believable.
Then something else strikes a sour note at the beginning. O’Brien apologizes to the readers for his graphic descriptions of the Hillside Strangler’s crimes. This might be a small point of contention, but seriously, are you kidding me? Apologizing? Call me naive if you want, but I’d assume that anyone who picks up this book does so because they want all the gory details. Why else would anybody want to read this? Well, I can think of one or two other reasons having to do with the legal system and the trial, but we’ll return to that later.
The Hillside Stranglers were two cousins from my hometown of Rochester, New York. (I actually attended the same grammar school as them, although they were there a good ten years before I was) Actually, they weren’t cousins by blood since the younger of the two was adopted. Angelo Buono left the great city of Rottenchester for the greener pastures of Hollywood. Never mind that Hollywood is in a desert. You know what I mean. Buono bought a house and opened a car upholstery shop back when they had things like that. His younger cousin Ken Bianchi followed him out there and moved in while trying to get his feet on the ground. Bianchi tried to make money by opening a fake psychotherapy clinic, offering counseling services at discount prices even though he never graduated from college.
Angelo Buono had a rough childhood. Violent from the start, he had a long criminal record and spent most of his youth in trouble with the law and other kids his age. When married he molested his step-daughter and step-son. Ken Bianchi, on the other hand, was less prone to violence, but he had been a compulsive lair from the time he could speak. He was impressed by the older Buono’s ability to pick up women for casual sex, effortlessly and with ease. Bianchi looked up to Buono and thought of him as a mentor. The bad childhood doesn’t serve as a sufficient explanation for what went wrong. Lots of people have bad upbringings and most of them don’t become mass murderers. The author never grapples with why the Hillside Stranglers diverged from the rest of us.
Since Bianchi was failing to make a sufficient income, mostly due to his unwillingness to engage in any real work, the two psychos decided to enter the profession of pimping. They kidnapped two fourteen year old girls from Denver and forced them to work as prostitutes. But as the gangsta rapper MJG says, “pimpin’ ain’t easy.” The two girls escaped and the sad sadists, Buono and Bianchi, were so emotionally distraught that they decided to vent their frustrations by posing as cops, abducting a girl, raping her, torturing her, and then strangling her. They dumped her body in a public place with the intention of it being seen. Serial killing became a hobby for the two and they used a similar routine every time. They began referring to their nights out on the town as “The Scam”. They went about their work as casually as two guys shopping for sports equipment at the mall. Or at least that’s how the author makes it look.
As you might imagine, leaving corpses around the Hollywood hills captured the attention of the police. LAPD detective Bob Grogan sits at the center of the story since he was the only one who agreed to collaborate on this book. Other than being a detective on the case, Bob Grogan is not an especially interesting person. He hangs out in bars, he cheats on his wife, he has a boat, and plays cheesy music on the electric Hammond organ he has at home. He’s also a jerk who thinks he’s superior to everybody else. He spouts off a lot of shallow right wing ideas and laments the fact that the American criminal justice system was simpler 100 years ago without realizing that America probably wasn’t any safer then than it is now. It just seems that way to him because he doesn’t know that forensic science at that time was rudimentary, meaning a lot more crimes went unsolved or undetected and a lot more criminals got away with murder. And that also means that a lot more innocent people were imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit. Back in those days, a knife wound in the hand could be just as deadly as a bullet in the brain because they had no penicillin to stop deadly infections. Blood feuds were common in rural areas. Lynch mobs were certainly never convicted for murder either. So 100 years ago, everything was better? Don’t be so naive, Bob Grogan. If you think life was simpler in the 1880s, you’re just displaying your own ignorance of history and the simplicity if your own mind. The author Darcy O”Brien could have spared us the details of this cop’s private life and thoughts. Grogan deserves any credit he gets for catching the killers, but other than that he’s neither here nor there.
Despite some small annoyances on the author’s part, the first third of this book is good and definitely the best section of it all. Abd, yes, the murders as they are described are nothing short of disgusting.
Ken Bianchi decides Hollywood is heating up too much for him so he runs off to a hick town in Oregon where he gets arrested after strangling two college students. The LAPD sees a connection to the case of the Hillside Stranglers and it doesn’t take long to get a confession out of Bianchi. Being the sociopath he is, Bianchi is a pathological liar. Under hypnosis, he confesses to his crimes, but convinces a team of psychiatrists he has multiple personality disorder. Of course, hypnosis is considered by some to be a pseudo-science and the existence of multiple personality disorder is also in dispute. Deeper scientific inquiries prove that Bianchi is faking and this is a big relief to the detectives of LAPD since a plea of insanity could have kept him out of prison. Bianchi realizes his only way out would be a plea bargain, sparing him the death penalty in exchange for testifying against Angelo Buono. While not as gripping as the accounts of the murders and the police investigations, this second section of the book is still interesting since it gives some insight into the mind of Ken Bianchi, or at least what little is actually in the empty space between his ears. He is a man of superficial charm, but entirely lacking in substance, a textbook case of psychopathy.
In the final stretch, the two year long trial is examined in detail. While the trial itself is interesting, O’Brien’s account of it is marred by his constant quips about how terrible America has become because of Liberal politicians. His portrayal of the team defending the Hillside Stranglers is so negative that it’s hard to take seriously. Predictably, Bob Grogan whines about due process of law and believes the killers should be executed without a trial. Forget about the Constitution. It’s funny how a cop can claim to be upholding the law while expressing disgust over the legality of due process, something which exists for a definite purpose. Without due process, courts would be nothing more than kangaroo courts and arenas for scapegoating. As wrong and faulty as due process sometimes is, it acts as a guardrail against innocent people being thrown in jail or executed. It doesn’t always work, but it is the best we have as of now. Bob Grogan wants to condemn a criminal for murdering a woman, but if the same woman were sent to the electric chair in error because there was no due process, he would be celebrating because someone was found guilty. That is sick minded hypocrisy on a grand scale.
The author’s portrayal of the criminal defense team doesn’t stand up well to scrutiny either. Hating criminal defense lawyers because they represent criminals is a cheap shot and betrays a poor understanding of due process. The point of criminal defense is to point out all the weaknesses in the prosecution’s case. The jury therefore has to weigh the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence provided to evaluate whether the criminal charges are justifiable or not. Without defense attorneys, the prosecutors would have a free ride to convict anybody brought to trial whether there was a justifiable cause for conviction or not. As stated before, the criminal defenders act as a guardrail against innocent people getting convicted. Just because it doesn’t work 100 percent of the time doesn’t mean it isn’t legitimate. If people in law enforcement truly respect the law, then they should respect the fact that everybody who gets brought to trial, no matter how egregious the charges may be, deserves a fair trial. By not respecting that right, law enforcement loses its moral high ground and sinks to the level of the criminals they prosecute.
O’Brien portrays the defense team as conniving, lying, cheating, conspiratorial, and evil with personalities to match all their negative character traits. He makes them resemble characters in a bad TV series that didn’t survive past its first season. This is done on purpose to manipulate the reader’s emotions, making you hate them. He wants the reptilian part of your brain to override your rational faculties as if it isn’t enough that we hate the killers already. But it’s such a transparent literary technique, straight out of the most shallow genre fiction, that it makes the whole portrayal look fake. It’s possible that it might be an accurate portrayal; I don’t know because I wasn’t there. But with all the cheap shots O’Brien and the windbag Bob Grogan take at Liberals throughout the story, it casts doubt over O’Brien’s credibility.
The crux of the matter is that this book is supposed to be about the Hillside Stranglers. No matter how smooth and lucid the writing is, using it as a platform for pushing right wing politics down our throats nearly ruins it. Even worse, O’Brien dishes out insults to Liberals without ever building a systematic argument in favor of his conservative beliefs. He offers nothing more than petty put downs. It’s like being kicked in the shin by a dwarf who then brags about beating you up. He underestimates the intelligence of his audience which is insulting to say the least. I gather Darcy O’Brien thinks Liberal politicians have turned America into a crime ridden hellhole because their compassion has led the country astray and yet he also wants us to believe that Liberals believe in due process because they are vicious, sadistic, criminal sympathizers who want to destroy the world. Compassionate and cruel? You can’t have it both ways, Mr. O’Brien. There is a time and a place for political discourse and I’d say a biography of serial killers is not the right one. If the author wanted to push his politics on people, he should have written a scholarly work on conservative interpretations of legal theory instead.
Two Of a Kind is not as good of a book as it should have been. Darcy O’Brien is obviously skilled at his craft, but he doesn’t know when to keep his opinions to himself. Thankfully, the Hillside Stranglers went to prison for life and Angelo Buono is now dead. Thankfully also, the number of serial killers in America peaked in the 1990s. According to the FBI, there are currently only about 20-30 known serial killers at loose in America. On a much darker note, America also has far more serial killers per capita than any other country on Earth. Most likely, there is something about American culture that is causing this to happen. Liberal politics are an unlikely cause. The majority of serial killers are white heterosexual males, middle class, between the ages of 25-40, and holding conservative political and religious beliefs. You might want to look beyond the weakness of Liberals for causes. It’s more likely a problem with the character and toxic cultural climate of the American people. We are a nation that breeds assholes like no other. And if you ever meet Bob Grogan in real life, shake his hand for catching the Hillside Stranglers, but walk away as soon as he starts to speak.
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