American serial killer (1952–2020)
Lonnie David Franklin Jr. (August 30, 1952 – March 28, 2020), better known by the nickname Grim Sleeper, was an American serial killer who was responsible for at least ten murders and one attempted murder in Los Angeles, California from 1984 to 2007. He was also convicted for rape and sexual violence. Franklin earned his nickname when he appeared to have taken a 14-year break from his crimes, from 1988 to 2002.
In July 2010, Franklin was arrested as a suspect, and, after many delays, his trial began in February 2016. On May 5, 2016, the jury convicted him of killing nine women and one teenage girl. On June 6, 2016, the jury recommended the death penalty, and on August 10, 2016, the Los Angeles Superior Court sentenced him to death for each of the ten victims named in the verdict. On March 28, 2020, Franklin was found dead in his cell at San Quentin State Prison.
Early life.
Lonnie David Franklin Jr. was born on August 30, 1952, and grew up in South Central Los Angeles. He married and had two children. He was given a dishonorable discharge from the United States Army in July 1975, after being released from prison for his conviction of gang-raping a 17-year-old girl in Stuttgart, West Germany, in April 1974. Franklin and two other servicemen stationed in Stuttgart stopped to ask directions from the teen and offered her a ride home. When she accepted, they put a knife to her throat, drove to a field, and repeatedly raped her. She was able to feign interest in Franklin and asked for his phone number, by which police identified him. During the gang rape, photographs were taken by the as Franklin would also later do with the women he raped and murdered. In 1989, Franklin was convicted of two charges of theft, one charge of misdemeanor assault, and one charge of battery. He only served time for one of the theft charges.
Investigation.
Original 1980s investigation.
In the mid-1980s, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) became aware of an apparent serial killer targeting Black women who were chronic drug users and street sex workers. The killer, dubbed the "Southside Slayer," was believed to be responsible for stabbing and strangling at least 13 sex workers between 1983 and late-1985. At one point, the murders were colloquially known as the "Strawberry Murders" ("strawberry" being slang for a woman who exchanges sex for drugs).
In September 1985, the LAPD described the case at a press conference and asked for tips from the public. Following the press conference, the LAPD was heavily criticized for their failure to alert the South Central community to the possibility of a serial killer earlier. Activist Margaret Prescod and other community activists held weekly protests outside of the LAPD's headquarters in an effort to pressure the department into forming a task force to investigate the murders. Prescod contrasted the apparent lack of police interest in the South Central murders with the significant attention given to the investigation of Richard Ramirez, the serial killer dubbed the Night Stalker who targeted women in upscale areas of Los Angeles and San Francisco between June 1984 and August 1985. Prescod accused the LAPD of indifference to the deaths of women who were poor, Black, drug users, and sex workers, which the LAPD denied.
By January 1986, 15 murders had been linked to the case. More detectives were added to the joint LAPD-LASD investigation, which had become known as the Southside Slayer Task Force, but by 1986 the case was still under investigation. Prescod formalized her group of activists as a community group called the Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders and in March 1986 pressured the Los Angeles City Council to increase the reward money they were offering for information on the killings from $10,000 to $25,000.
By late-1986, conflicting "modus operandi" and suspect descriptions caused the investigators to doubt their original theory of a single killer being responsible for all of the murders. Evidence suggested that several serial killers – possibly four or more – were murdering women in South Los Angeles. The Southside Slayer Task Force began downsizing in 1987 due to the lack of results relative to the expense and manpower being used. Task-force commander Lt. John Zorn told the "Los Angeles Times" in December 1987 that "the flow of clues is almost non-existent at this point."
Multiple serial killers.
Over the following years, it was found that serial killer Louis Craine committed at least two of the so-called "Southside Slayer" murders, and serial killers Michael Hughes, Daniel Lee Siebert, Chester Turner, and Ivan Hill committed at least one each. In addition, some of the murders may have been committed individually by the women's pimps or clients, unrelated to any serial killer.
The murders of Judith Simpson, Cynthia Walker, and Latanya Johnson, all committed with a 9mm pistol in late 1988, were also investigated by the Southside Slayer Task Force. Sheriff's Detective Rickey Ross was arrested for the murders after being found with drugs and a sex worker in a vehicle that had a rusted 9mm Beretta semi-automatic pistol in the trunk. Ross was charged with the murders after his gun was forensically linked by the LAPD to the bullets from the murders. He was released after independent forensic analysis found it unlikely that Ross' gun was the murder weapon. All three of those murders remain unsolved.
One particular group of killings, which were linked by common elements including the use of a .25 caliber firearm, remained unsolved and unaccounted for by any other known serial killer. The first known murder in this series was the murder of Debra Jackson in August 1985, which was linked to the August 1986 murder of Henrietta Wright by forensic firearm examination. By 1987, there were seven victims linked to the same gun, all of whom had been shot in the chest at close range. Two decades later, the perpetrator of these crimes was dubbed the "Grim Sleeper" due to the long period of apparent inactivity between murders.
2000s investigation.
In May 2007, the slaying of Janecia Peters, 25, was linked through DNA analysis to at least 11 unsolved murders in Los Angeles, the first of which occurred in 1985. That same year, in secrecy, the LAPD formed the "800 Task Force," composed of six detectives and overseen by the Robbery-Homicide Unit. After a four-month investigation, "LA Weekly" investigative reporter Christine Pelisek broke the news of the task force's existence, the link between Peters' killing and the earlier murders, and the silence of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Police Chief William Joseph Bratton regarding the killer's existence. Villaraigosa and Bratton neither issued a press release nor warned the community. In some cases, "LA Weekly" was the first to inform the families that their daughters had long been confirmed as victims of a serial killer.
In early-September 2008, Los Angeles officials announced that they were offering a $500,000 reward to help catch the killer. On November 1, the case was featured on the Fox program "America's Most Wanted". On February 25, 2009, Bratton addressed the press for the first time regarding the case, at which time the police formally gave the killer the "Grim Sleeper" nickname chosen by "LA Weekly". Bratton also released a 9-1-1 call from the 1980s in which a man reported seeing a body being dumped by Franklin, giving a detailed description and license plate number of a van connected with the now-closed Cosmopolitan Church. In March 2009, Pelisek conducted an extensive interview with Enietra Washington, the sole survivor of Franklin's attacks. Washington described him as "a black man in his early 30s [⁠ ⁠.⁠ ⁠.⁠ ⁠.⁠ ⁠] He looked neat. Tidy. Kind of geeky. He wore a black polo shirt tucked into khaki trousers." She also described the interior and exterior of his vehicle.
Arrest and further investigation.
Law enforcement missed an opportunity to catch Franklin because his DNA was not previously collected. In 2003, Franklin was convicted of a felony and was serving three years of supervised probation. In 2004, voters passed Proposition 69, which requires that DNA must be collected from all felons and everyone arrested on certain specified charges. It also requires the expansion of the DNA database. Authorities collected and sorted through thousands of DNA samples. While he was on probation, Franklin's DNA was supposed to have been entered into the database. It wasn't entered because between November 2004 and August 2005 probation officers did not collect samples from people who were on unsupervised probation. The probation department did not have the resources to collect samples until August 2005.
Franklin was identified at least in part on familial DNA analysis. Police had found no exact match between DNA found at the crime scenes and any of the profiles in California's DNA profile database, so they searched the database for stored profiles that demonstrated sufficient similarity to allow police to infer a familial relationship. They found similar DNA belonging to Franklin's son, Christopher, who had been convicted of a felony weapons charge in 2008. Christopher was too young to have committed the murders, but the familial DNA match led investigators to look at his father, Lonnie, as the likely perpetrator.
One undercover police officer pretended to be a waiter at a restaurant where Franklin ate, collecting dishes, silverware, glasses, and pizza crusts to obtain DNA. According to Cooley, detectives then used a piece of discarded pizza, along with saliva found on the victims, to establish a DNA match. On July 7, 2010, Franklin was arrested. The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office charged him with 10 counts of murder, one count of attempted murder, and special circumstance allegation of multiple murders.
On December 16, 2010, the LAPD released 180 photos of women found in Franklin's home after unsuccessful attempts to identify the individuals, who were possibly additional victims. "These people are not suspects, we don't even know if they are victims, but we do know this: Lonnie Franklin's reign of terror in the city of Los Angeles, which spanned well over two decades, culminating with almost a dozen murder victims, certainly needs to be investigated further," said Police Chief Charlie Beck.
In all, investigators found over 1,000 photos and several hundred hours of video in his home. The images show mainly Black women of a wide age range, from teenagers to middle-aged and older, often nude. Police believe Franklin took many of the pictures, which show both conscious and unconscious individuals, dating back thirty years. The photos were released to the public in an effort to identify the women.
On November 3, 2011, Reuters reported that the police were considering Franklin as a suspect in six more slayings. The police were investigating two of the six as potential victims killed during a 14-year lapse between an initial spate of Grim Sleeper murders that ended in 1988 and several more that began in 2002. Of the remaining four victims, two bodies were discovered in the 1980s and two were reported missing in 2005 but the remains of the other two were never found, police said. Detectives said they linked Franklin to the six additional killings after reviewing hundreds of old case files and seeking the public's help in identifying a collection of 180 photographs of women and girls that were found in his possession.
Trial and death.
Franklin was charged with ten murders and one attempted murder and held without bail. He was never charged in the death of a suspected eleventh victim, a black man, a crime for which DNA evidence was not found. After a lengthy pretrial discovery and several delays, the trial opened on February 16, 2016. Closing arguments began May 2, 2016 and the jury began deliberating May 4, 2016. On May 5, 2016, after nearly three months of trial and a day and a half of jury deliberation, Franklin was convicted of all counts. His sentencing hearing began a week later, on May 12, 2016.
At the hearing, prosecutors presented evidence relating to four other victims they believed had been killed by Franklin. The four victims were not among the original set identified by DNA and ballistic evidence as Grim Sleeper victims, and had only been identified as such after his arrest. Three victims, Sharon Alicia Dismuke, Inez Warren, and Georgia Mae Thompson, were identified as likely Grim Sleeper victims by task force officers investigating unsolved missing persons and homicide reports dating back to 1976.