Los Angeles jury found Lonnie Franklin Jr, the serial killer dubbed the “Grim Sleeper”, guilty of killing nine women and one teenage girl over the course of more than 20 years (1980-2000). The sentencing hearing for Franklin is scheduled to begin May 12.
It took over two months for prosecutors to lay out the case against Franklin. According to NPR member station KPCC, Deputy District Attorney, Beth Silverman, told the jury that the case against Franklin is “not a close call.”
The station added that prosecutors pointed to a pattern in which Franklin allegedly picked up women who were on the street using drugs or prostitution, then he “sexually assaulted them, shot them at an angle from the driver’s seat, and dumped them in an alley and covered them up with mattresses, debris, or trash cans.”
Grim Sleeper’s verdict, which had been years in the making since Los Angeles police arrested him in 2010, is about to give a closure to a long episode that featured a killer who mostly targeted poor and black women, including prostitutes. However, prosecutors found clues that suggest that Franklin might have killed hundreds of other women.
Detectives released 150 photos of women, they had found on Franklin possession, according to a KPCC report.
Because of mostly of the target ones were poor, black women, the police didn’t put too much effort into catching the serial killer and warn the community of his patterns, the family of some victims said.
Franklin remained silently while the clerk was reading several guilty verdicts, according to NPR’s Kirk Siegler. In a tweet, Siegler described the family and friends victims as “quietly wept” while being in the courtroom.
“The nickname “Grim Sleeper” first came about because of an apparent gap in the murders. There were the unsolved slayings in the 1980s, and in the early 2000s, bodies of women again started turning up in alleys and dumpsters in South LA.”But it’s now thought that the killer may have never “slept.” Police uncovered nearly 100 pictures of unidentified women from Franklin’s home,” Kirk reported.
Detectives released 150 photos of women that they had found on Franklin possession, according to a KPCC report. They asked public’s help to confirm the women on the photos were fine. Thirty-five women in those images remain unaccounted for
Source: NPR