By Chris Snellgrove | Published
While X files is famous for stories about aliens, monsters, and far-reaching government conspiracies, sometimes focusing on very low-level threats. This includes serial killers such as Luther Lee Boggs, Gerry Schnauz, John Lee Roche, and others. Sometimes, the show had it both ways by featuring characters like Eugene Tooms and Robert Patrick Modell, who used their superpowers to take murder to a whole new level.
Obviously, X files is a show full of fictional serial killers guaranteed to make your skin crawl. But one forgotten episode from the show’s early history created a fictional story that took a lot of inspiration from one of the most notorious serial killers in American history. That episode is “Aubrey,” which featured a powerful nod to the Hillside Strangler!
A Cut Above Other Killers
“Aubrey” is an episode of Season 2 in which Mulder and Scully investigate the unusual case of a woman who may have inherited violent tendencies from her murderous grandfather. At first, this appears as a hallucination where he is able to mysteriously find the hidden body of an FBI agent killed in 1942; later, it is revealed that he kills people the way his grandfather did, including engraving names (such as “Sister” or “My Brother”) on the victims’ chests. Eventually, he is imprisoned for his copycat crimes, and after killing his grandfather (who was a serial killer), he commits himself to a mental institution.
What is this strange X-Files Is the story related to a real serial killer? The female character in “Aubrey,” BJ, bears more than a passing resemblance to Veronica Compton. If that name doesn’t ring a bell, he’s the man who tried to kill a woman in 1979 in a copycat murder that was meant to prove the innocence of one of America’s most notorious serial killers: the Hillside Strangler!
The Ghost of Murder is Yet to Come
The original Hillside Strangler (later, his cousin was convicted of similar crimes) was Kenneth Bianchi, a man who tortured his victims before strangling them to death using a ligature. He then dumped the bodies in the wooded hills of Los Angeles, giving the police a sinister image. In 1979, police arrested Bianchi and his murderous cousin, Angelo Buono Jr. After his arrest, he began a relationship with Veronica Compton, the woman who ended up testifying for the attorney in his case. Finally, he tried to strangle another woman to death in an attempt to make the authorities think that the Strangler was still at large.
Many X-Files fans noticed that in “Aubrey,” there are several parallels to Compton and the Strangler: for example, there is a woman who commits a crime that cheats the MO of someone who would not commit it (Bianchi was in prison, and BJ’s real grandfather was extremely old). And, while BJ wasn’t trying to clear Cokely’s name, his copycat methods brought more attention to his crimes, just as Compton’s copycat attempted murder revived the legacy of the original killer. Ultimately, both women ended up incarcerated: BJ was committed to a mental institution, and Compton was imprisoned for her crimes before being released in 2003.
At the end of the day, “Aubrey” is pretty forgettable X-Files episode, and the plot’s reliance on inherited memory seems weirder and more surprising now than ever. However, knowing this plot was a fictional delight for the Hillside Strangler and the woman who loved him makes it all the more interesting. However, unlike the magician himself, this extraordinary episode can’t quite take our breath away.
