Two of a Kind: The Hillside Strangler

I reread this book every couple of years. This is an must read for any true crime junkie. It was so well written and showed all sides of the story. It made me realize random acts of violence against women was the "high" for these two idoits. They killed women they knew as well as someone they just spotted on the street. They were cold blooded murderers ...and ended up where they needed to be... a premanet resident of the state prison. As a female it made me more aware of my surroundings and I never get out of my car without looking around first for weirdo's lurking. :)

I loved this book. I inherited among others from a deceased family member (among other books).The "Hillside Strangler" became an everyday headline that frightened Los Angeles for a year or so in the late 1970's. During that year, bodies of young women started showing up on the hillsides around the city. But the horror waned beside the revelations that came to light in what became the longest criminal trial in American history--BEFORE O. J. Simpson's 1994 trial--and one of the most controversialThe Hillside Strangler was thought to be one person with a real fast pace in killing. With TWO OF A KIND, Darcy O'Brien gives the inside story and is the first book to make the shocking disclosure that "the Hillside Strangler" was not one man, but two, and not only that -- they were were cousins!In Mr. O'Brien's riveting story examines the relationship between the murderers and the drive behind their hideously evil crimes. It tells the entire story of the Hillside Stranglers as it has never been told before. He begins with the stranglers themselves who just decided one night out of bordom that they hated women and wanted to kill them (even as one strangler was living with a pregnant girlfriend and hiding the truth of his killing spree from her).It reveals the torture, the prostitution ring, the killings. But it also shows the other side of the drama--the law. The police were so baffled by the disappearing women and then the subsequent finding them on a hillside dead, that they took drastic measures to ensure justice would prevail in this case.TWO OF A KIND is a true story of crime and punishment here and now. But even more disturbing, it is a tale of primal evil rising from the darkest human depths and our age-old struggle to defend ourselves from it.

Readers of True Crime will find this out-of-print book worth the search. The author not only compellingly writes about the rape, torture and murder of 10 young women in Los Angeles in the late 1970's but also provides insight into the strange relationship between the two cousins who commit these unthinkable crimes. A young, charismatic man, under an almost hypnotic spell of a truly evil older uncle takes center stage in the longest criminal trial in this country. The defense of "multiple personalities" was as much on trial as the guilt or innocence of the defendants. I liked this book very much because the characters--victims, murders, investigators, lawyers and judge--became real people as I read. The trial was especially intriguing as the prosecutor, defense attorney and judge laid the groundwork for a strange and new defense. This book would certainly not be a disappointment.From