1977: Fake Detectives, Real Killers: the Hillside Strangler Murder That Broke the Pattern
Elissa Kastin was driving home from her waitressing shift when two men flashing police badges pulled her over, the same ruse the Hillside Stranglers used to lure women into their car. Her body was later round on an embankment near a Glendale country club on this day in 1977, strangled like the others before her.
But Kastin broke the pattern investigators thought they understood. Every previous victim had been a sex worker or runaway, a detail police had quietly used to narrow their search. Kastin was a professional dancer with no such history, and her murder forced detectives to confront a harder truth: the killers were not hunting a type, they were simply hunting whoever stopped for the badge.
