Customer Reviews

The Hillside Strangler: The Three Faces of America's Most Savage Rapist and Murderer and the Shocking Revelations from the Sensational Los Angeles Trial!

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This book was written before the police psychologists realizedthat Ken Bianchi was faking multiple personality disorder. For the real story of the Hillside Stranglers (there were two of them, Bianchi and his cousin Angelo Buono), read Darcy O'Brian's "Two of a Kind: the Hillside Stranglers" instead.

This book is just a pro-Bianchi book. DON'T BOTHER WITH IT!!! It just pissed me off and I didn't believe a word of it!!! Buy the other one.....

Dr. Martin Orne demonstrated to my satisfaction and, more significantly, to the judge and jury's that Ken Bianchi was faking both multiple personality disorder and hypnosis. Dr. Ellison, who initially thought Bianchi a bona fide multiple, came around and saw through Bianchi eventually as well. Dr. Watson was the only one of the three principal pyschologists involved in the case who clung to his original opinion that Bianchi was the genuine article. His criticism of Orne's observations was (and I'm paraphrasing), "all he did was reported that this body Ken Bianchi exhibited such and such behavior on such and such occasions." Well gosh a-mighty, isn't that the stock-in-trade of psychology? Or do we just take at face value the words of a murderer, who has some pretty compelling reasons to lie? The naivete of anyone who swallows the line Bianchi was selling is nothing less than astonishing to me, and can best be summarized thusly: Sure, Bianchi committed murder, multiple times, but lying would have been beyong the pale for him.

Firstly, there is a new paperback version of this book, which I have been very impressed with, good quality and nice cover. (Get that one!) Now to review: This guy HAS done his homework, has NOT been "duped" and was in fact on an E! special all about the Hillside Strangler. This is an excellent book about Ken Bianchi, and regarding the so called "faking" Schwarz explained that Bianchi could indeed have been a multiple when first arrested, but throughout all the interviews, multiple psychological testing, it was likely that these multiple personalities became self-aware.

I am a big serial killer buff and have a fairly large collection of books and videos about mass murderers. This is easily one of the best I've ever read:it places you inside Bianchi's warped mind and discusses possibilities for why Bianchi killed. Ranks up there with The Only Living Witness, Buried Dreams, Confessions of Son of Sam, and Silent Rage.