At Buono’s home, both were raped and murdered. Their bodies were dumped in a landfill and debris. By then police were certain that whoever had left the bodies there must have known the area very well.
The two dead girls had been found by a nine-year-old boy who had been treasure hunting in a trash heap on the hillside. It was a pretty horrible sight, made all the more grotesque by the decay and army of insects that had taken over the flesh.
Again, there was no idication that the murders had occurred where the bodies were found, nor was their any evidence that the bodies had been dragged there. Small as the young girls were, there was the probability that more than one killer was involved in dumping their bodies on the hillside.
It did not take long to identify the girls as Dolores Cepeda, 12, and Sonja Johnson, 14, both of whom had been missing for about a week from St. Ignatius School. The girls had been last seen getting off a bus and going over to a large two-tone sedan to talk to someone on the passenger side. Information that there was a person on a passenger side corroborated the theory that there were two killers, probably both men.