In 1980, Veronica Compton wrote a letter to Kenneth Bianchi, the man convicted in the “Hillside Strangler” killings. Bianchi was serving multiple life sentences for rape and murder, and she ostensibly wanted to interview him as research for her script about a female serial killer. But within a few months, she had instead developed a plan with Bianchi to murder a random woman to make it look as though Bianchi was innocent, and the real killer was still at large.

Why exactly did she do this? A little later, Compton told police she’d fallen in love with Bianchi. Many years later, she claimed that Bianchi had manipulated her while she was in a vulnerable state. As cited in Jennifer Furio’s book Letters from Prison: Voices of Women Murderers, Compton said she was dealing with drug use and damage from sexual abuse as a child. Whatever the true nature of their relationship, Compton was found guilty of trying to strangle a woman in Bellingham, Washington in September 1980. That woman survived, and Compton went to prison for over two decades.