Billie Holiday (Lady Day) essays

Billie Holiday (Lady Day) essays Billie Holiday,also known as Lady Day was born in Baltimore in 1915. She spent hard time in her childhood. Billie Holiday's grandfather was one of 17 children of a black Virginia slave and a white Irish plantation owner. She was born from 15 year-old father and 13 year-old mother. It is shown in the first line of her famous autobiography Lady Sings the Blues, "Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen, and I was three." Her musician father left the family early, and her mother wasn't able to keep her consistently which resulted in Billie often being put in care or relatives who abused her. She was raped at age of 11, became a prostitute when she was 14, and was arrested for prostitution year after. She moved to New York in 1929 and started working as a maid and a prostitute, and made her singing debut in bars and restaurants. In 1935, she recorded for sides that contains What a Little Moonlight Can Do, and Miss Brown to You, and acquired her recording contract. Lady Day was with Count Basies Orchestra in 1937. However, only three songs from radio broadcast are the all exist works because they were signed to different labels. She also worked with Artie Shaws Orchestra for a while next year, but the same kind of problem happened and only one song was recorded. She had her voice at its strongest during the period with Decca between 1944-1949, and she made her biggest hit with Love Man. Unfortunately, she became addicted to heroin and put in jail just after this period. She became famous, and Lady Day got a chance to make one Hollywood movie in 1964. She was not really pleased by playing maid, she came to perform with Louis Armstrong who is her early idol. After 1950, her story slowly starts declining. Due to the heroin abuse and excessive drinking continued, her voice was deteriorating fast, and by 1956 she was completely past her prime. Her final accomplishm...

Angelo Buono, the Hillside Strangler

Angelo Buono, the Hillside Strangler Angelo Anthony Buono, Jr. was one of the two Hillside Stranglers responsible for the 1977 kidnap, rape, torture and murder of nine girls and young women in the hills of Los Angeles, California. His cousin, Kenneth Bianchi, was his crime partner who later testified against Buono in an effort to avoid the death penalty. The Early Years Angelo Buono, Jr. was born in Rochester, New York, on October 5, 1934. After his parents divorced in 1939, Angelo moved to Glendale, California with his mother and sister. At a very early age, Buono began showing a deep disdain for women. He verbally assaulted his mother, a behavior that later intensified towards all women he encountered. Buono was brought up as Catholic, but he showed no interest in attending church. He was also a poor student and would often skip school, knowing that his mother, who had a full-time job, could do little to control his activities. By the age of 14, Buono had been in a reformatory and was bragging about raping and sodomizing young local girls. The Italian Stallion Beginning in his late teens, Buono married and fathered several children. His wives, who were at first attracted to his macho self-proclaimed Italian Stallion style, would quickly discover that he had a deep loathing for women. He had a strong sexual drive and would physically and sexually abuse  the women in his life. Inflicting pain seemed to add to his sexual pleasure and there were times that he was so abusive, many of the women feared for their lives. Buono had a small, semi-successful car upholstery shop attached to the front of his home. This offered him seclusion, which was what he needed to act out his sexual perversions with many of the young girls in the neighborhood. It was also where his cousin, Kenneth Bianchi, came to live in 1976. A Career Jump Into Pimping Buono and Bianchi embarked on a new career as small-time pimps. Bianchi, who was more attractive than his wiry, large-nosed cousin, would lure young runaway girls to the home, then force them into prostitution, keeping them captive with threats of physical punishment. This worked until their two best girls escaped. Needing to build up their pimp business, Buono purchased a list of prostitutes from a local prostitute. When he figured out he had been scammed, Buono and Bianchi set out for revenge, but could only find the prostitutes friend, Yolanda Washington. The pair raped, tortured and murdered Washington on October 16, 1977. According to authorities, this was Buono and Bianchis first known murder. The Hillside Strangler and Bellingrath Link Over the next two months, Bianchi and Buono raped, tortured and killed another nine women ranging in ages from 12 to 28. The press named the unknown killer as the Hillside Strangler, but police were quick to suspect that more than one person was involved. After two years of hanging around his piggish cousin, Bianchi decided to return to Washington and reunite with his old girlfriend. But murder was on his mind and in January 1979, he raped and murdered Karen Mandic and Diane Wilder in Bellingrath, Washington. Almost immediately the police linked the murders to Bianchi and they brought him in for questioning.  The similarities of his crimes to those of the Hillside Strangler was enough for the detectives to join forces with the Los Angeles detectives and together they question Bianchi. Enough evidence was found in Bianchis home to charge him with the Bellingrath murders. Prosecutors decided to offer Bianchi a life sentence, instead of seeking the death penalty, if he gave full details of his crimes and the name of his partner. Bianchi agreed and Angelo Buono was arrested and charged with nine murders. The End for Buono In 1982, after two lengthy trials, Angelo Buono was found guilty of nine of ten Hillside murders and received a life sentence. Four years into serving his sentence, he married Christine Kizuka, a supervisor at the California State Department of Employee Development and a mother of three. In September 2002, Buono died of a suspected heart attack while in Calipatria State Prison. He was 67 years old. Interesting Note: In 2007, Buonos grandson, Christopher Buono, shot his grandmother, Mary Castillo, then killed himself. Castillo was married to Angelo Buono at one time and the two had five children. One of the five children was Chris father.