July 8, 2010 | 3:13 pm

The suspected Grim Sleeper serial killer made his first court appearance Thursday afternoon, but an arraignment was postponed until Aug. 9. He is being held without bail.

Lonnie David Franklin, Jr. was arrested Wednesday after a “familial DNA” search led police to the suspect on charges that he had killed at least 10 women since 1985. Franklin, a retired city trash collector, lived in the heart of the neighborhood where the killings occurred.

The Grim Sleeper slayings occurred over parts of three decades along the major boulevards of South Los Angeles. But it wasn’t until the California Department of Justice matched DNA from the crime scenes to a young man who had been arrested in recent months that authorities were able to identify the man’s father, Franklin, as the suspect.

“For the next 25 years, one man preyed on the innocent,” Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said at a news conference Thursday. “Today I’m proud to announce that this terror has finally come to an end…. We have our suspect.”

Authorities gathered at the news conference -– including Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck, state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown and Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca -– praised the use of familial DNA matching.

The controversial process allowed the Department of Justice to search the state’s criminal database to find relatives of those whose DNA has been collected from murder scenes. The procedure uses software that officials say does not exist anywhere else in the country

“This will change the way policing is done in the United States,” Beck said. “This will bring justice to the victims to which it has been denied.”

“Great work on the part of the scientists,” said Brown, who had approved the use of the relatively new tool. “We’re going to fight to protect this technology.”

Brown said that only data from convicted felons were used in the database search. His office will be defending the controversial practice in court next week, he said, noting that protecting people’s privacy is a top priority

For the victims’ families, Wednesday’s arrest was a long time coming.

Porter Alexander, father of 18-year-old Alicia “Monique” Alexander, who was killed in 1988, said: “God is good. I had doubt in my mind after all the years had passed that I would not live to see this day. But as it shows today, the long arm of the law still prevails.”

When homicide Det. Dennis Kilcoyne called him Wednesday to tell him about the arrest, he said one relative began “whooping and hollering.”

“She just busted loose,” Alexander said at Thursday’s news conference. “I wanted to bust loose…. I just praise God for the fact that he gave me the ability to be here … and come to the conclusion of bringing this man to justice.”

Individually, the slayings didn’t generate much attention.

But then the Los Angeles Police Department concluded that the killings of 10 women were the work of one killer. And this gave relatives of the victims new hope the cases might eventually be solved.

In interviews, some family members expressed joy that closure might finally come — but it was joy mixed with anger because the suspect turned out to be a resident of the neighborhood, described by those who lived near him as kind and generous.

The suspect is Lonnie David Franklin Jr., 57. Police said DNA evidence linked him to the killings.

Franklin is charged with 10 counts of murder in the deaths of Debra Jackson, 29; Henrietta Wright, 35; Barbara Ware, 23; Bernita Sparks, age unknown; Mary Lowe, 26; Lachrica Jefferson, 22; Alicia Alexander, 18; Princess Berthomieux, 15; Valerie McCorvey, 35; and Janecia Peters, 25. He also is charged with one count of attempted murder.

Relatives of the victims said there was a time when they lost faith in the system. But when the killings continued and police concluded they were the work of a serial killer, the families said police redoubled their efforts.

Alexander was one of the Grim Sleeper’s first victims, killed in 1988. Her brothers Donnell Alexander, 47, and Darin Alexander, 45, said they “never gave up hope. We were just hoping with all the new technology out now with DNA testing that they would get him. This brought us closer together. That’s the positive that came out of her death. Now we hug one other not just on special occasions but every day.”

“This won’t bring our sister back, but our heart goes out to all the families that were as affected,” Donnell Alexander said.

Franklin was a garage attendant at the LAPD’s 77th Street Division station in the early 1980s, according to city and police sources. He worked as a garbage collector for the Los Angeles Department of Sanitation during the years that the first eight killings occurred. The first string of slayings began with the death of Jackson on Aug. 10, 1985, and ended with the death of Alexander on Sept. 11, 1988.

Franklin has at least four prior convictions, two for felony possession of stolen property in 1993 and 2003, one for misdemeanor battery in 1997 and one for misdemeanor assault in 1999, according to court records. He was sentenced to a year in jail for the first stolen-property charge and 270 days for the second one.

Three years ago, Janecia LaVette Peters was found dead at Western Avenue near 92nd Street in South Los Angeles. She had been shot in the back and stuffed into a trash bag. She was considered the most recent victim of the Grim Sleeper serial killer.

Her aunt, Diane McQueen, 55, said the slaying shattered her family. “She was 25. It hit my family real hard. I had lost hope this day would come. I feel a lot of joy it did at last.”

– Richard Winton, Joel Rubin, Hector Becerra, Howard Blume and Victoria Kim

Interview with Enietra Washington, survivor