Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES — A 63-year-old man was convicted Thursday in the "Grim Sleeper" serial killings in which 10 young black women were found dead on the streets of Los Angeles over the course of two decades.
Lonnie Franklin, whose victims were killed between1985 and 2007, sat silently in a gray dress shirt as the guilty verdicts were read for all 10 counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder. Family members silently wiped away tears.
Now the same jury will decide whether Franklin should die for his crimes when the sentencing phase starts May 12. For the sentencing phase, family members of the slain women will describe their loss. And prosecutors have said they plan to call additional witnesses who claim to have experienced violence at the hands of Franklin.
Damian Dovarganes / AP
For years, police had linked the deaths through DNA and firearms evidence. The series of murders in the 1980s stopped after one woman survived being shot and sexually assaulted by Franklin. But he picked up his pattern of killing in the 2000s, killing two more women and the 15-year-old girl.
Franklin wasn’t identified as the killer until 2010, when a new program to test the DNA of California prisoners turned up his relative as a partial match. Authorities then determined Franklin to fully match the killer’s DNA profile after a detective posing as a busboy picked up a partially eaten pizza crust and napkin from Franklin’s lunch.
Further testing confirmed Franklin’s saliva and DNA were present on a number of the victims, a search of his home turned up the gun that had killed one of them, and the woman who survived his brutal attack positively identified him.
It was a staggering amount of evidence, Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman had told the jury during her closing argument.
“These girls can’t speak, but the mountain of evidence can,” she said. “That science in 2010 finally caught up with the defendant.”
Defense attorney Seymour Amster had instead suggested the murders could have been the work of a “mystery man” — perhaps a younger nephew of Franklin’s.
But that interpretation of the evidence had no basis in fact, Silverman said. Franklin’s DNA appeared over and over again on the victims, and he was the only person who could be tied to each of the crimes, she said.
Franklin prowled the streets of East L.A., convincing his victims to get in his car before surprising them with a gunshot to the chest or strangulation, then sexual assault before dumping their bodies like trash, Silverman said.
“Why?” she asked. “Because he enjoys it. That’s what a serial killer does.”
LINK: “Grim Sleeper” Serial Killer Dumped Bodies “Like Trash,” Prosecutors Say
LINK: Sole Survivor Of Alleged “Grim Sleeper” Serial Killer Recounts Horror
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