Los Angeles police say they have linked two more slayings to alleged serial killer Lonnie Franklin Jr., persuading detectives that he never stopped killing during the supposed dormant period that led to his nickname of the Grim Sleeper.

The Grim Sleeper allegedly killed seven women between 1985 and 1988 and three between 2002 and 2007. Police have been openly skeptical that the slayings stopped during the 13-year gap. On Thursday, they announced the strongest evidence yet that the killings had not ceased: two homicides during the interim involving women slain in the South L.A. area where the other killings occurred.

Franklin, who has pleaded not guilty to murdering 10 people, has not been charged in the new cases.

“I don’t think there is a gap,” said LAPD Det. Dennis Kilcoyne, who has been leading the Grim Sleeper investigation. “We are continuing to examine many, many old cases now we know Mr. Franklin’s identity. We are trying to put together other cases.”

Prosecutors accuse Franklin of being one of L.A.’s most prolific serial killers, targeting women on the margins of society — including some prostitutes and drug addicts — over nearly a quarter century. Many of the victims were sexually assaulted just before they were killed and dumped in alleys and trash bins.

After Franklin was charged in July, the LAPD said it was reviewing about 30 unsolved killings to see if any of them could be connected to the Grim Sleeper. Detectives also released scores of still photos found at Franklin’s home in hopes that they could yield more clues. Investigators have identified 72 women who contacted authorities after their photographs were released. But 62 of the women remain unidentified.

Kilcoyne said that he expects the search for additional Grim Sleeper victims to continue for several more years and that he would not be surprised if the gap in killings completely closes.

“It’s obvious we are far from knowing the true depths of the criminality of Mr. Franklin,” LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said. “When this case unravels, people will be even more horrified about what’s occurred. We have been putting the pieces of the puzzle together, but the picture is not anywhere near complete. It’s just too early to tell.”

Franklin’s attorney, Louisa B. Pensanti, denounced the LAPD for releasing information about the new cases before prosecutors have decided whether to file charges.

“Once again the Los Angeles Police Department has gone to the ‘Court of Public Opinion’ instead of the Court of Law with speculation and sensational remarks intended to taint the citizens of Los Angeles County who make up the jury pool,” she said in a statement. “If the police would do their work investigating and providing their information to the District Attorney’s Office for trial instead of spending time on their enormous public relations campaign to look good, we would all be better off.”

Since 2007, a group of detectives has worked exclusively on identifying the killer. The big break in the case occurred last spring, when LAPD officials learned that a “familial search” of the DNA database by the California Department of Justice had come up with a convicted felon whose genetic blueprint indicated that he was a close relative of the suspect. A suspect soon became clear: the felon’s father, Franklin, a 57-year-old mechanic.

It’s unclear whether DNA evidence was a factor in linking Franklin to the two new cases.

The L.A. Weekly dubbed the killer the Grim Sleeper because of the lengthy, unexplained gap in the slayings.

Detectives revealed the additional victims during a previously scheduled community meeting with about 100 residents at Bethel AME Church in the Manchester Square neighborhood of South Los Angeles. An audience member, who might be a relative of one of the victims, asked about the new cases.

An LAPD source said the detectives had been working on the cases for months, well before they released images found in Franklin’s possession in December. One of the victims was killed in the late 1980s, the other in the early 1990s.

Police have not linked any new homicides to Franklin based on the photos, but they have opened four missing-persons cases based on the released images.

Detectives have long been perplexed by the gap in the killings. For a while, they assumed the killer was in prison during this time. But that theory changed after Franklin was arrested. He was not behind bars during that period, and detectives said they now believe there were additional killings they don’t know about. One reason for the gap might be that the LAPD had a task force looking into the earlier set of killings that disbanded in 1988. A new team picked up the case after the killings began again. That left 13 years in which the LAPD did not have a special team on the Grim Sleeper.

Franklin was 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 is also charged with one count of attempted murder, apparently stemming from the assault on the only victim known to have survived.

andrew.blankstein@latimes.com

richard.winton@latimes.com

Laverne Peters holds a photograph of daughter Janecia, a Grim Sleeper victim, at a news conference last week. Learning in 2008 that a serial killer was responsible gave her hope the case would get new attention. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times / July 8, 2010)

By Hector Becerra, Los Angeles Times
July 14, 2010

Two Los Angeles police detectives arrived one day in 1987 to inform Bill and Diana Ware that their daughter Barbara had been found fatally shot, her body dumped in a back alley in South Los Angeles.

The detectives carried hard presumptions about why she died, Diana Ware said, and so did her husband.

It was 1987, during the height of the crack epidemic. Barbara, 23, had battled drugs for years. Bill Ware assumed she was killed in some type of dispute over drugs.

It would be more than 20 years before the truth came out. Barbara Ware had been the third known victim of a serial killer now called the Grim Sleeper. By then her father was dead, and he never learned the true circumstances of her killing.

“Maybe it’s a good thing he never found out the truth,” Diana Ware said. “But I think that, in a way, maybe it would have been better.”

Last week, Lonnie David Franklin Jr., 57, was arrested by LAPD investigators and charged with 10 counts of murder involving women killed over more than two decades. Detectives are examining at least 30 other unsolved slayings in South L.A. to see if they can link them to the Grim Sleeper.

The arrest was viewed as a triumph not only of detective work but also of the emerging DNA technology that had allegedly tied Franklin to the killings through a son who was incarcerated. But it was also a tribute to the victims’ families, who exerted pressure on investigators and often collaborated to get the word out about the killer and his victims.

They took to the streets, passing out fliers, and showed up at City Hall to support rewards for the killer’s capture. They pushed, successfully, for a composite sketch of the suspect to be released. They peppered detectives with questions, fretting about whether a task force set up to catch the killer would be disbanded before that happened.

And they reminded each other, in the calm of a church, or in phone conversations, that whatever problems their children and sisters and mothers had in life, their deaths had left a void — and mattered.

“It was a bond that we had,” Diana Ware said. “There were things we did to keep this in front of the media. We’d meet and pass out fliers on Western Avenue. There were a lot of people in the neighborhood that never even heard of this serial killer.”

When the Grim Sleeper first struck, he operated in a different city during a different era. In the late 1980s and early ’90s, the number of homicides committed each year in Los Angeles was more than double what it is today. (There were 813 killings in L.A. in 1987, compared with 315 in 2009.)

Many of the cases involved drugs, gangs or sex. Overwhelmed by the number of killings, police detectives struggled to keep up. Difficult-to-solve cases were quickly moved to the back burner.

While the Grim Sleeper case eventually produced a flurry of police activity and media attention, none of the individual killings generated big headlines when they occurred, and many families came to believe police interest waned.

The families learned in 2008 that police thought a serial killer was at work. For Laverne Peters, 55, discovering that her daughter Janecia had been slain by a serial killer actually gave her hope that the case could get extra attention.

“I felt families have had their kids killed, and nothing came out of it,” Peters said. “And that’s how I felt about ‘Necia. If it was just her, dumped in an alley, nothing would come of it. But now it was a lot of other girls killed by this one guy. I felt like something had to be done. They had to get this guy. It gave me hope.”

The killings seem to stop

Most of the known killings — seven — happened between 1985 and 1988. Then the deaths tied through DNA to one killer seemed to stop.

Barbara Ware’s body, with one gunshot to the chest, was found in an alley near 56th and Main streets Jan. 10, 1987. Someone had called 911 to say he had seen someone in a van drop off the body.

About a year after her killing, the Wares moved from South L.A. to West Covina, though Bill Ware kept his business in the old neighborhood. Detectives came by periodically to ask questions.

“I had a feeling they were making a lot of suppositions and assumptions. That this was just another young black lady involved in drugs,” Diana Ware recalled.

The visits of the detectives stopped after two years. She said she would not hear from the LAPD again for 20 years.

Fifteen years after Ware’s death, in March 2002, the nude body of Princess Berthomieux, 15, was found in an Inglewood alley. She had been beaten and strangled.

Princess had been raised by a retired nurse, Dolores Smart, and interior designer, David Smart, in a well-to-do Claremont neighborhood, said Samara Herard, 39, her foster sister. Her family had taken the girl in when she was only 3 years old, a victim of brutal physical and sexual abuse who still could not walk or talk, Herard said.

In 1997, her foster mother died of heart problems, and David Smart was increasingly unable to care for his foster daughter because of his own heart trouble. Herard said that by then she had three small children of her own, so she urged her aging foster father to make a decision that would haunt her for years. At age 14, Princess ended up with a foster family in Inglewood. She was killed the next year, but Herard said her father tried to shield her from the news.

“He told me she overdosed,” Herard said. “But I knew she didn’t OD. I knew someone hurt her. I just had a feeling.”

Nearly five years after Princess’ killing, the last of the Grim Sleeper’s known victims, Janecia Peters, 25, was found in an alley along Western Avenue, shot in the back and covered with a garbage bag.

Laverne Peters said her daughter had struggled with drugs but had also taken college classes on and off, showing an interest in working with computers.

She said that she last spoke to her daughter New Year’s Eve and that she sounded happy, talking about finding a permanent place to stay. Janecia’s body was found the next day, and a day or two later, investigators broke the news.

After a while, Peters said, she heard little from the detectives.

About a year later, she found out that the detectives from the local LAPD station had been replaced by investigators from the department’s Robbery-Homicide Division.

“It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize something was going on,” Peters said.

But police didn’t tell her exactly why there was sudden interest in her daughter’s slaying, she said.

The truth comes out

She got the answer about a year later when Christine Pelisek, a writer for the L.A. Weekly called. Peters said that’s when she found out that her daughter had been the victim of a serial killer. Pelisek broke the story of the LAPD’s top-secret Grim Sleeper investigation not long after.

Diana Ware said that’s how she learned that Barbara had not died the way her husband thought she had.

“It was a different feeling, that a crazy person was out there doing this,” she said. “Before, we thought maybe it was a heat-of-passion thing, but no. You had to have a really bad person to do this, a really bad person.”

Ware said she called investigators and became angry when she realized that there was so much she and her husband never knew about the case, including the 911 call. She asked to meet with families of other victims. The LAPD task force that was created to solve the killings arranged the meeting.

Margaret Prescod, founder of the Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders, got involved, and she helped agitate to get more information out to the public, including a composite sketch created with the help of the only known survivor of a Grim Sleeper attack.

“Everyone admits it doesn’t really look like the guy,” Peters said. “But we felt we had to get something out there.”

The relationship between detectives and the families, which had been fraught with some anger in the beginning, eventually gave way to one of collaboration.

The detectives told the families their best shot at finding the killer was making a DNA match. But months passed without any word. The families said they now believed the police were throwing everything they had at the case, but they realized the detectives also needed luck.

Ware said she was home in West Covina last Wednesday when Det. Dennis Kilcoyne called her, asking if she was sitting down. Then he told her the man believed to be her daughter’s killer was caught. She screamed and jumped up and down.

Peters learned about the arrest the same day. When Kilcoyne broke the news to her, she cried, “Hallelujah!”

But the experience was bittersweet. She recalled going to town hall meetings. Many of the people there turned against the victims, saying they were “just street women.”

For Samara Herard, the arrest finally set the record straight about what had happened to Princess. She didn’t die of a drug overdose as her father claimed but was the victim of a serial killer.

“I just lost it. I don’t know if my dad was trying to protect me in some way. Maybe he thought it would be too hard on me, that I would feel I could have stopped this, that I would blame myself,” she said, “which of course I did.”

hector.becerra@latimes.com

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

Grim Sleeper unearthed after nearly 25 years

Images of the suspected Grim Sleeper, Lonnie David Franklin Jr., were on display at a press conference held July 8 outside LAPD headquarters in downtown Los Angeles. (Photo by Leiloni De Gruy)

By LEILONI DE GRUY, Staff Writer

“In a not widely reported incident, at the press conference called by police and elected officials to announce the arrest of the “Grim Sleeper” suspect, a reporter asked to hear from Margaret Prescod, who founded the Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders in 1985, as well as to hear from some other family members. LAPD Chief Beck responded and was ready to go to the next question when Prescod took the mike and introduced herself to the crowd, much to the surprise of all officials present and to the delight of family and community members who quite liked what she had to say. This is the footage that was NOT shown on network TV, also the LAT left out mention of Prescod’s intervention in their coverage of the incident.”

CALIFORNIA
Suspect in killings has many arrests
The 57-year-old man charged with murder in 10 slayings in the Los Angeles “Grim Sleeper” case was arrested at least 15 times over four decades on other charges and was in police custody many times after the killings began, probation and jail records show.

The arrests of Lonnie Franklin Jr. in crimes including burglary, car theft and assault were never considered serious enough to send him to state prison or to warrant his entry in the state’s DNA database, according to a report in Saturday’s Los Angeles Times.

A string of slayings of young black women had south Los Angeles on edge in the mid-1980s. The killings suddenly stopped but resumed 14 years later. Investigators now say they have possibly uncovered the reason for the long respite: The suspect might have been spooked by a near miss by police in 1988.

Franklin was arrested Wednesday at his lime-green house, just three doors down from a home that was searched extensively by police 22 years ago after the only known survivor led police there. His public defender, Regina Laughney, declined to comment.

– Associated Press

——
LA Grim Sleeper Suspect had 4-decade arrest record
By Christopher Weber
Associated Press Writer

The suspect in the “Grim Sleeper” killings was arrested at least 15 times for burglary,
assaults and other crimes, but avoided prison even though a probation officer urged that
he be given the maximum allowed, court and jail records show.

The crimes of 57-year-old Lonnie Franklin Jr. never were considered serious enough to
send him to state prison or to warrant his entry in the state’s DNA database, authorities
said.

“He’s danced to the raindrops for a long time without getting wet,” Detective Dennis
Kilcoyne, head of the task force investigating the killings, told the Los Angeles Times.

At a Saturday community forum on the murders, city councilman and former police chief
Bernard Parks said law enforcement and police should not be faulted for their past
handling of Franklin.

“That’s not unusual,” Parks said of Franklin’s short sentences and frequent quick
releases. He said jails are “constantly evaluating who can be let go to make room.”

But Parks, who as police chief from 1997-2002 ordered new examination of cold case files
and as city councilman in the area of the killings raised a reward of $500,000 before the
arrest, said he understands frustration from victim’s relatives and community.

“If people are dead, there is no consolation, there is no excuse,” he said.

Parks said California was slower than many big states in adding property crimes to those
where DNA is automatically collected from convicts, and that may have prevented an
earlier arrest.

One of the victims was killed in July 2003, when records show Franklin should have been
in county jail but was released early because of overcrowding.

Franklin pleaded no contest to receiving stolen property in that case.

A probation officer said it was unusual and disturbing that Franklin was still involved
in such crimes at age 50, when most criminals have slowed down.

“If at this age the defendant is still engaging in criminal activities,” the officer
wrote, “the community can best be served by imposing the maximum time possible in state
prison.”

But Franklin received just a fraction of the maximum sentence 270 days in jail ? and was
still released four months early, according to jail data obtained by the Times.

He also narrowly dodged the state DNA database. The following year, all felony convicts
were put in the database after California voters passed a measure requiring it.

And despite his long and varied record, Kilcoyne said Franklin did not commit the kind of
violent crimes against women that might have drawn the attention of detectives in the
Grim Sleeper case.

Franklin was arrested Wednesday on 10 counts of murder and other charges in the deaths of
young black women that started in the 1980s, then appear to have stopped, only to resume
again 14 years later ? sparking the nickname Grim Sleeper.

Franklin’s public defender, Regina Laughney, said she’s still reviewing materials in the
case and it was too early for her to comment.

A key question for investigators will be why the killings apparently stopped for so long.

“These are things that will come out only if the suspect chooses to share them,” Parks
said.

But investigators are still considering the possibility that there may have been more
victims during the 14-year gap.

They are seeing if they can tie Franklin to more than 30 cold case files dating to 1984
by uploading Franklin’s DNA profile into a national database.

Associated Press writers Andrew Dalton, Gillian Flaccus and Thomas Watkins contributed to
this report.

By Cathleen Decker, Los Angeles Times
July 11, 2010

The news conference called last week by the mayor, the police chief and other officials at the new Los Angeles Police Department headquarters was meant to celebrate the capture of a suspect in a decades-long series of murders in South Los Angeles.

But in a far more subtle way, the proceedings also served as a slap-down to the notion of the moment — that government is bloated and unresponsive, unworthy of support and unable to produce success in the quick time frames expected by its citizenry.

Here government, by way of its foot soldiers the detectives and crime lab workers, had worked. Not necessarily quickly and not always impeccably. Still, elected officials had taken risky stances. Employees being mocked by candidates as overpaid and sumptuously pensioned had worked together to break the case open. A police department and a community that regarded each other with animosity a generation ago stood side by side, exchanging praise.

Reminders came from the elected officials who gathered around the microphones in front of the television cameras and from perhaps the most politic figure of them all Thursday, the unelected LAPD Chief Charlie Beck.

“When government succeeds, there is no reason to be shy about it,” said Raphael Sonenshein, a Cal State Fullerton political scientist who has written extensively about Los Angeles.

For two officials present, the result — the charging of Lonnie David Franklin Jr. on 10 counts of murder and another of attempted murder — rewarded moves that had alienated some of their most vocal supporters.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa stubbornly has stuck to his campaign vow of a 10,000-officer LAPD, in the face of severe cutbacks in other areas of city government and among the unions that formed his earliest support. Listeners on Thursday were reminded of that over and over, though not by Villaraigosa.

“I want to thank the mayor for keeping the staffing of the Los Angeles Police Department large enough that we can concentrate the resources on this job,” said Beck.

“The mayor is a man who I have to commend today,” said Sheriff Lee Baca, there because one of the victims died in county territory. “Because he never wavered since the beginning of his office, two terms ago, as to what his commitment would be to law enforcement…. These cases will go on for years and decades. So, Mayor, thank you very much for standing up for the public safety needs for the great city of Los Angeles.”

State Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown had pushed aside concerns about the invasive nature of DNA testing to approve rarely used “familial” searching that, ultimately, fingered Franklin.

Villaraigosa lauded Brown for clearing the way for such testing, calling it “instrumental in this arrest.” Former LAPD chief and current Councilman Bernard Parks credited Brown’s staff for being “just overwhelmingly cooperative” with police requests.

For both Brown and Villaraigosa, the day was a reminder that even in a starkly anti-incumbent environment, there are some benefits to being in office. That was particularly true for Brown. Locked in a tight race for governor with Republican Meg Whitman, Brown had his picture splashed on newspapers, websites and over the television airwaves in triumph — without paying a penny for it.

In Brown’s case, the circumstances also allowed him to be visibly tough on crime, countering a lingering stereotype for any Democrat. He noted in his brief remarks that his office would be in court this week to defend California’s right to use DNA in pursuit of criminals, a practice he considers constitutional.

But the breakout politician of the day was Beck. He handled the news conference with the smoothness that had been one of his strong suits in the contest to succeed William Bratton last year.

He opened his remarks by praising his officers then, quickly, Villaraigosa and the victim’s families, arrayed behind the officials on the podium.

When the questions began, he called on Charlene Muhammad, a representative of the Final Call, the news organization founded by Louis Farrakhan. She asked about the families’ role in keeping the case alive, and Beck responded with emotion.

For detectives, he said, “these are long, drawn-out, tedious investigations, in which you can lose hope. And that hope is renewed by the families.” They made “sure that people saw the victims as people, with faces and lives….”

Beck spoke of the case with familiarity for a reason: Before his ascension to chief, he had been in charge of it, as chief of detectives.

But as much as the case successfully closed that chapter for him, it also served as a metaphor for the department’s relationship with the community where the victims lived and died. In the 1980s, when the first of the killings took place, the LAPD was both the institution that protected South Los Angeles and the one that alienated large swaths of the area with paramilitary tactics that swept up guilty and innocent alike.

Beck worked there then, during what he once called the department’s “dark days.” Last week marked another public assertion that, for all the imperfections, things are brighter now. A heartfelt comparison of past and present came from the father of one of the victims.

“I felt that the department had given up,” Porter Alexander said of the investigation in the years after his daughter, Alicia, was found dead in 1988. Now, he said, he was “elated.” He turned to the detectives.

“I give them 100% behind what they did. Thank you very much.”

cathleen.decker@latimes.com.

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

The ethical limits of DNA ­profiling are being tested in California, ­following an arrest in a ­notorious serial-killer case.

The ­suspect, Lonnie David Franklin, came to the attention of police when his son ­Christopher’s genetic profile – taken when Christopher was convicted on gun charges – partially matched saliva found on the bodies of dead prostitutes.

Detectives kept Franklin under surveillance for a week, eventually collecting a sample of his DNA from a discarded pizza crust. When the ­laboratory results came back, he was picked up and charged with 10 counts of murder.

Police believe Franklin is the “Grim Sleeper”, a serial killer given the name because of the decade-long gap between his two killing sprees, the first of which began in the late 1980s.

Los Angeles police chief Charlie Beck described it as “a landmark case … that will change the way policing is done in the United States”. However, the computer software that can detect possible father-son and sibling matches is currently used only in California and Colorado, and a court case ­challenging its application is due to be heard

He was a nice guy, but he was a freaky old man. He said he’d get women to do strange things in strange places with him

Franklin’s neighbour Francis Williams

next week.

Jerry Brown, California’s Attorney General, attributed the arrest to the DNA-search programme he introduced two years ago. While he ­recognises that it remains a ­controversial technique, he believes it is an important one. “We’re in the midst of very powerful new ­technology and legal battles to make sure we can use it,” he said. “We’re protecting people’s privacy and we’re going to fight to protect this technology.”

Civil-liberties groups are concerned that the extensive use of family DNA testing will lead to even greater racial disparities in the criminal justice system, which imprisons vastly more African-American men than any other group.

In Scotland, the DNA of anyone convicted of even a minor offence can be kept on file for life. In England and Wales, the database is even more extensive, as police have the right to take swabs from everyone they arrest. Under the 2010 Crime And Security Act, the DNA records and fingerprints of innocent people can be retained for six years.

On top of the DNA-testing ­controversy, the Los Angeles police department faces questions about how the killer was able to remain active for so long. The Grim ­Sleeper’s victims were mostly women living on the margins of society, working as prostitutes or addicted to drugs. Their bodies were all found in alleys and rubbish tips along the same stretch of Western Avenue in South Los Angeles. Ballistics tests showed they were shot with the same .25 calibre pistol – but police never informed the ­community that a serial killer was at large.

Inner-city Los Angeles was a brutal place in the late 1980s, plagued by widespread crack cocaine use. Violent confrontations between police officers and gangs were commonplace, and so many bodies were being dumped by the roadside that police speculated several serial killers were at work simultaneously.

A group called the Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders protested that the killing of African-American women scarcely received any attention or police resources. “The low-profile media coverage and problems with the investigation are all examples of women’s lives not counting, and black prostitute women counting least of all,” said founder Margaret Prescod.

Detectives in the Grim Sleeper case had one survivor’s testimony to go on. The woman described a well-groomed black man driving an orange Ford Pinto with a racing stripe on the bonnet. After offering her a lift, he shot her in the chest, sexually assaulted her, took her picture and left her for dead.

By this point – November 1988 – the serial killer was believed to have murdered at least seven women, but something apparently persuaded him to stop for more than a decade.

In 2001, Los Angeles detectives began to apply new forensic-science ­techniques to unsolved murders. They were surprised to find DNA linking the killer of a teenage runaway, Princess Berthomieux, to the old crime scenes on Western Avenue. However, they kept this knowledge to themselves, even when another corpse, that of Valerie McCorvey, was discovered a year later. A dedicated task force to catch the Grim Sleeper was set up only in 2007.

Following his arrest, Franklin was described by neighbours as a ­courteous man who looked out for the poorest people in his neighbourhood. He occasionally sold stolen ­electrical goods, and would mend cars using spare parts of uncertain provenance. His marriage was an on-off relationship but he was said to be a devoted father to his two children.

His house on West 81st Street was less than 200 metres from Western Avenue, and for years he drove an orange Ford Pinto with a racing stripe. He was known to regularly visit prostitutes.

“He was a nice guy, but he was a freaky old man,” his neighbour ­Francis Williams told the LA Times. “He said he’d get women to do strange things in strange places with him.”

A search of Franklin’s home turned up several firearms.

The Grim Sleeper may yet turn out to be an inaccurate nickname, if more crimes are attributed to the same killer during the years he was presumed dormant. Police are investigating 30 unsolved murders in which no usable DNA samples were collected, and are looking for similarities.

“I believe we will find additional victims,” said Chief Beck.

July 7, 2010—

The “Grim Sleeper” serial killer who has eluded Los Angeles police for more than two decades may have finally been nabbed.

Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office announced that the suspect was 57-year-old Lonnie David Franklin Jr.

Franklin will be charged with 10 counts of murder and one count of attempted murder, making him eligible for the death penalty or life in prison without possibility of parole.

The high-profile case had languished unsolved and haunted the files of the LAPD cold-case unit.

“This was accomplished by the LAPD’s hard work with great assistance from the California Department of Justice Division of Law Enforcement personnel,” said District Attorney Steve Cooley in a statement.

The killings of 10 young black women and one man, beginning in 1985, have all been blamed on the “Grim Sleeper.”

The cluster of killings stopped in 1988, but then, 14 years later, police say they linked new murders to the same man, nicknamed the “Grim Sleeper” for the long lull between slayings. The most recent murder happened in January 2007.

Police closed off the block on 81st Street in South Los Angeles where Franklin lived and the arrest was made. Residents were shocked.

Neighbor Donna Harris, who’s known Franklin for nearly 20 years ago, said the retired mechanic was supposed to fix her car this morning.

“Everybody on the block, we all knew if anything was happening with anybody’s cars, he was always there for us. Especially the ladies,” Harris said. “Even if we weren’t at home, instead of calling Triple AAA, he would help.”

Though she counted Franklin as a friend, Harris said the news was frightening.

“It frightens me to know that somebody like that was that close,” Harris said. “I don’t want to believe it’s true, [but] if he did what he’s been accused of, God judged him for that.”

A handful of detectives, headed by Detective Dennis Kilcoyne, have been working full time on the case for years, determined to find the “Grim Sleeper.”

Eleven people have died so far, and there was one confirmed attempt and near killing, in the same South Los Angeles neighborhood.

“We have 12 individuals, starting in 1985. Our third victim, Thomas Steele, was the only male involved in this,” said Kilcoyne.

All the slayings have been connected to the same 25-caliber handgun, and matched to the same DNA, usually saliva taken from the victims’ breasts.

“The commonality is that they’re all from the same general area of the city in south Los Angeles,” Kilcoyne said. “I don’t think I would label them all as prostitutes per se, but they certainly have troubled lifestyles. They’re broken people and easy targets.”

Searching for a Los Angeles Serial Killer

In February, LAPD offered a $500,000 reward — the city’s biggest ever — advertised on billboards near where the victims were found. Investigators also released a 20-year-old 911 call in which a witness says he saw a van pull up in a dark alley and dump a body, which was identified as Barbara Ware.

Listen to the 911 call here.

The caller tells the dispatcher several details, everything from the license plate number of the van — which was a dead-end lead — to the way the body was discarded. But he refused to tell the 911 operator his name, saying he didn’t see the killer.

It is not known if the 911 call led to the police’s reported arrest.

Reporter Discovers Serial Killer, Alerts Community

Police say they wouldn’t have known there was a serial killer on the loose if he hadn’t starting killing again. “We became aware of it right around April of 2007,” LAPD Detective Bill Fallon told “Nightline” in March 2009. “And we realized there was a serial killer because of DNA hits we started getting. So when we get those hits, we’re like, ‘whoa.’ That’s when we started digging it.”

But the police didn’t notify the community until Christine Pelisek, a reporter from LA Weekly, began investigating.

“I was the one who told some of the family members that their daughters were victims of a serial killer,” Pelisek said. “I mean, they didn’t even know. The public safety committee, they had no idea. I mean, the police commission, I spoke to the police commission [to whom the police chief reports]. They didn’t even know. So there were a lot of people very upset that the police didn’t let the community know.”

Fallon says investigators didn’t want to alert the killer that they were searching for him.

“We wanted to get a a step ahead of the killer himself,” he said. “I don’t want you to know I’m coming for you until I find out who you are, where you are and what you are doing.”

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The search for the Grim Sleeper.

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