A great old true crime magazine I was happy to find the other day for a couple of dollars. Put out in April of 1978 by exploitation publisher Myron Fass, it covers the notorious Hillside Strangler case which had been terrorising women in the Los Angeles area throughout the previous six months. At the time of its publication, it was still assumed that a lone killer was responsible, but when the case was finally cracked in early 1979 it was revealed that it was a pair of cousins, Angelo Buono and Kenneth BIanchi, who had been abducting and murdering the women while presenting themselves as undercover cops. This magazine is fairly typical of the lurid true crime tabloid magazines that were popular on the newsstands for decades.
The Hillside Stranglers case was the subject of several movies, one of which, the 1989 telemovie The Case of the Hillside Stranglers (starring Dennis Farina, Billy Zane and Richard Crenna) I have reviewed as one of my contributions to the upcoming Headpress book on American TV movies of the 1970's - 90's, which should hopefully appear later this year.
