REAL CRIMINAL Name Veronica Lynn Compton Alias Karen Gender Female Birth Date 1956 (age 62-63) Occupation ActressPlaywright Pathology Copycat (attempted)Attempted Murderer Modus Operandi Strangulation (attempted) No. of Victims 1 attempted Status Alive (released)

Veronica Lynn Compton is a woman who attempted to copycat the Hillside Strangler at the request of Kenneth Bianchi, one of the killers, whom she had fallen in love with.

Compton was an aspiring actress and playwright who suffered from a drug-induced psychosis and was fascinated by serial killers. She wrote a screenplay titled The Mutilated Cutter, which was about a female serial killer, and sent Kenneth Bianchi, one of the two killers collectively referred to as The Hillside Strangler, a copy of the script, hoping to gain his opinion about it. The two began to talk and eventually discuss their murderous fantasies, similar to one another's in nature, and Compton fell in love with Bianchi. Bianchi took advantage of the relationship, hoping that he could convince authorities that the real Hillside Strangler was still on the loose. He invited Compton to visit him in prison, and he smuggled to her a plastic glove with a sample of his semen in it, instructing her to copycat a Hillside Strangler murder and plant the semen in the victim. Compton obeyed and went to Bellingham, Washington, with the semen in hand.

Using the alias "Karen", Compton selected her victim, 26-year-old Kim Breed, in a Bellingham tavern at around 10:00 p.m. The two stayed together for a prolonged time, during which Compton accompanied Breed as she did some grocery shopping and she went home to feed her children. Afterward, they drank, did cocaine, and danced with some of Breed's friends. Compton then invited Breed to take a final drink in her room at the Shangri-La Motel, where she was staying; Breed accepted the offer. Compton then bound and attempted to kill Breed, but after a struggle, her would-be victim escaped and alerted a friend. Compton fled, taking a flight to San Francisco, California. However, upon arriving, she became hysterical and caused a scene in the airport. Compton also sent a letter and a tape to Bellingham authorities, claiming that Bianchi was innocent and pointing to the strangling attempt as proof that the real Hillside Strangler was still on the loose.

Police were soon able to connect the police report of the attempted copycat murder to the scene Compton brought up at the airport. She was arrested, convicted in Washington, and sentenced to prison with no chance of parole until 1994. Though Bianchi continued to write to her, Compton lost interest in him and fell in love with another serial killer, Doug Clark, who, along with his wife and partner Carol M. Bundy[1], killed and decapitated seven women, mostly prostitutes, in Los Angeles, California; he was sentenced to death row. Clark sent her a Valentine's Day-style letter with the photo of a headless female corpse, and the two began to write to each other until sometime in 1988. In 2003, Compton was released from prison after completing her sentence and hasn't been heard of since.

In the attempt to copycat a Hillside Strangler murder, Compton tied Breed's hands behind her and tried to strangle her with a cord twice. She intended to plant some of Bianchi's semen into the victim after killing her, but she had no chance to do it.