Mark Boster / AP
LOS ANGELES — The attorney for the man accused of killing 10 young black women in Los Angeles over the course of two decades told jurors Tuesday that DNA evidence in the case was flawed and the real killer was a "mystery man."
Prosecutors say Lonnie Franklin moved beneath the radar within his South L.A. neighborhood, targeting vulnerable young women amid the crack cocaine epidemic in the 1980s. After a woman escaped one attack, prosecutors said Franklin stopped for more than 10 years before killing two additional women and a teenager in the 2000s — a pause that earned him the nickname "Grim Sleeper."
Now a jury must weigh testimony of the surviving woman — along with DNA and firearms evidence that prosecutors say scientifically links the killings together and to Franklin — against the claims of the defense that suggested the killings were actually the work of a "mystery man," perhaps a younger relative of Franklin’s.
Just deliberations will begin at 9 a.m. Wednesday. If Franklin is convicted, the trial will move to a penalty phase to decide if he should be sentenced to death.
"Each and every murder in this case could have been done by a mystery man with a mystery gun with mystery DNA," defense attorney Seymour Amster said.
Nick Ut / AP
For years, police said they knew they were dealing with a serial killer because DNA and firearms evidence linked the deaths together. Billboards around the city advertised a half-million dollar reward for information leading to the killer’s conviction.
Franklin wasn’t known to police as a suspect until 2010, when the killer’s DNA profile turned up as a partial match with Franklin’s son, who was in a state database though his father was not. Testing of Franklin’s DNA would later prove to fully match the victims, prosecutors said.
In his closing argument, Amster told the jury that the evidence didn't rule out that someone else was responsible for the murders — perhaps a nephew of Franklin’s.
Amster expanded his “nephew theory,” hypothesizing that a younger man idolized the sex-obsessed Franklin and “Uncle Lonnie’s girls,” stalked the women, then killed them in anger when he was rejected.
Prosecutors, however, described a pattern of violence aimed at sexual gratification and degrading the victims. Franklin would drive through areas known for prostitution at night, seeking to find a perfect victim, prosecutors said. He’d lure the young women into his car with drugs, alcohol, or manipulation, prosecutors said, then surprise them with either a gunshot to the chest or strangulation.
Enietra Washington, who survived being shot, testified earlier in the trial that she remembered Franklin getting on top of her, sexually assaulting her, and the flash of a camera.
A photo of Washington leaning against the inside of a car door, bloodied, her breast exposed, was found inside Franklin’s home after his arrest.
The 10 others who died were dumped like trash, Silverman said, their bodies concealed in alleys, partially undressed or naked, and left to rot.
Amster pointed to a police sketch based on interviews with Enietra Washington.
Washington had described her attacker as a young man, short, and with pockmarks on his face. Amster pointed out that Washington and Franklin are the same height, Franklin was 36 at the time she was attacked, and he did not have acne scars.
“There’s a nephew or youngster who’s involved that did each and every murder, and there is not evidence to show Lonnie Franklin did that,” he said.
The prosecution’s case, Amster argued, was based on “illusion and deception.” And on Tuesday, he brought up the possibility of a "mystery man" being responsible for the killings.
But in an interview with police after his arrest, Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman said Franklin had no explanation for how his DNA had turned up on several of the victims’ bodies; he claimed he had never seen them before.
“I’m not even tripping on it,” he told detectives, according to Silverman.
“In other words, 'I don’t care,'" she added. "Just pure arrogance.”
DNA evidence from Franklin was found on several of the women, often appearing on their nipples, prosecutors said. A sperm fraction was found in the mouth of victim Barbara Ware, and an analyst testified it was Franklin’s by a factor of 1 in 11 quintillion unrelated individuals.
Amster questioned why statistics were not based on related individuals, again pointing to the possibility a family member of Franklin’s had been involved.
“Why are they basing all their information on a world that doesn’t exist?” Amster said.
He disputed that the DNA could with certainty be said to belong to Franklin.
“Nature cannot be beholden to a definite set of rules,” he added.
LINK: “Grim Sleeper” Serial Killer Dumped Bodies “Like Trash,” Prosecutors Say
LINK: Sole Survivor Of Alleged “Grim Sleeper” Serial Killer Recounts Horror
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/1Tksb55
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