Summary of Rewind with Karen & Georgia - 114: Civic Order

Overview of Rewind with Karen & Georgia — Episode 114: “Civic Order”

This rewind episode revisits My Favorite Murder Episode 114, originally released on March 29, 2018. Karen and Georgia rewatch the episode with updated commentary, including case developments, corrections, and a lot of their usual off-topic banter. The main crime stories are the Hillside Stranglers case in Los Angeles and the murder of Dana Bradley in Newfoundland, with the hosts reflecting on the failures of law enforcement, the dehumanization of victims, and how both cases still resonate years later.

What Was Covered

Rewind setup and listener-safety correction

• The hosts open with a correction from a previous mini episode: if you ever see something as alarming as a man hiding under movie theater seats, call the police immediately.
• They emphasize that “weird behavior” alone is enough reason to contact police, without waiting for permission from employees or others.
• This leads into a broader discussion of how the podcast’s older episodes were revisited with new perspective.

Pop culture and personal banter

• They talk about:
  • Wild Wild Country, which one host loves and the other finds boring.
  • The Alienist, which one host adores and the other hasn’t fully bought into.
  • Their ongoing jokes about live shows, fan interaction, and bizarre technology ideas like forehead cams, mustache cams, and “fan cult” content.
• Karen shares a significant personal update about dental panic:
  • She realized her fear of the dentist may have been tied to a sensitivity to lidocaine/Novocaine, not just phobia.
  • She says this discovery changed how she approached dental care and helps explain years of panic attacks in the chair.

Main Crime Story: The Hillside Stranglers

Who they were

• The case centers on Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi, cousins who murdered multiple women in Los Angeles and surrounding areas in 1977–1978.
• Buono is described as the dominant, sadistic, older cousin:
  • A long history of sexual violence and abuse.
  • Deep misogyny.
  • He was involved in pimping schemes and impersonated a police officer to abduct women.
• Bianchi is portrayed as younger, more easily influenced, and troubled:
  • Abandoned by his mother.
  • History of bedwetting, lying, violent moods, and a head injury.
  • He was obsessed with becoming a cop, but failed psych tests.

How the crimes unfolded

• The cousins initially tried to force runaway girls into prostitution.
• When that failed, they escalated to kidnapping, rape, torture, and murder.
• The victims were mostly young women and girls, many of them marginalized or sex workers, and their bodies were dumped publicly in neighborhoods and hillsides.
• The hosts stress how the police and media repeatedly treated victims as disposable because of their perceived social status.

Notable investigative details

• Detective Frank Salerno is highlighted as a key investigator who later used lessons from this case in the Night Stalker investigation.
• Salerno found critical evidence early on, including a bit of fluff on one victim’s eyelid.
• One victim, Kathleen Robinson, was almost spared because the suspects were fans of her father, actor Peter Lorre.
• The pair used a fake-cop routine to abduct women, which made the crimes especially terrifying and plausible.

The arrest and defense attempt

• After Bianchi moved to Washington, he murdered two more women there and was quickly arrested.
• He tried to claim multiple personality disorder / dissociative identity disorder, with “Steve” as the killer personality.
• Psychologists concluded he was faking it.
• He ultimately agreed to plead guilty and testify against Buono, though it didn’t reduce his sentence much.

Legal outcome and later updates

• The trial was massive:
  • About 450 witnesses
  • Roughly two years of testimony
  • One of the longest in U.S. history
• Buono received multiple life sentences and died in 2002.
• Bianchi remains imprisoned.
• Updated case notes in the rewind:
  • In 2023, Bianchi changed his name to Anthony D’Amato.
  • His parole was denied in July 2025.
  • In January 2026, MGM released a docuseries, The Hillside Strangler, featuring new interviews in which he still claimed innocence.

Main Crime Story: The Murder of Dana Bradley

The disappearance

• Dana Bradley was a 14-year-old girl from St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada.
• On December 14, 1981, she left a friend’s house to go home for her mother’s birthday party.
• Two brothers, who were selling Christmas trees, saw her hitchhiking and watched a car pick her up.
• The description of the vehicle became central to the case: an older Dodge Dart / Plymouth Valiant.

The discovery of her body

• Four days later, Dana’s body was found in a wooded area outside St. John’s.
• She had been sexually assaulted and killed by blunt force trauma.
• Her body was laid out carefully, with her schoolbooks tucked under her arm, which made the scene especially haunting.

The investigation

• The murder became one of the biggest investigations in Newfoundland history.
• Years later, an anonymous tip led police to David Somerton, who confessed and described details that matched the crime.
• But he later recanted, claiming coercion and heavy medication during interrogation.
• He was charged with public mischief rather than the murder itself.
• Police also found evidence that he was a predator in other ways, including later convictions for sexually assaulting a minor.

A later, controversial memory claim

• In 2014, a man using the pseudonym Robert told police he had witnessed the murder as a child.
• He said that after years of alcoholism and recovery, memories resurfaced of a trusted family friend sexually abusing him and killing Dana.
• His account matched several details:
  • The specific car model and broken passenger door.
  • Dana’s attempted escape.
  • The use of a tire iron.
  • The body being carefully repositioned.
  • Her books being returned to her arm.
• Despite the strong emotional and circumstantial fit, police dismissed the account as likely false memory syndrome.
• A public group raised money to excavate a car believed to be connected to the crime, but that effort was overtaken by new DNA evidence pointing to an unknown male suspect.
• As of the episode’s update, Dana’s case remains unsolved.

Themes and Takeaways

Common threads across both cases

• Both stories highlight:
  • The failure of police to act quickly or take victims seriously.
  • The way sex workers, runaways, and teens were treated as less worthy of protection.
  • How predators exploit fear, authority, and social assumptions.
• The hosts repeatedly return to the idea that women and girls were not valued enough by the systems meant to protect them.

Broader commentary

• Karen and Georgia talk about:
  • Parenting anxieties and the long-term impact of neglect.
  • The dangers of cult-like authority and charismatic abusers.
  • How easy it is for people to rationalize terrible behavior when victims are marginalized.
• They also emphasize how shared trauma and memory can shape entire communities for decades.

“Fucking Hooray” / Listener Good Things

• The episode ends with the show’s recurring “good things” segment, which this episode helped name as “Fucking Hooray.”
• One host recommends:
  • Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed
  • The podcast Half Size Me
  • The book The Diet Fix by Yoni Freedhoff
• A major takeaway here is the idea of radical self-acceptance and replacing punishment-based habits with sustainable, compassionate change.

Notable Quote / Running Joke

• The crowd favorite title suggestion becomes “Fucking Hooray”, which the hosts declare the winner.
• Other rejected segment names include:
  • Rejuvenation Station
  • My Favorite Party Vibes
  • Positivity Pocket
• The episode closes with the now-classic mix of sincerity, self-deprecation, and chaos that defines the show.