The Los Angeles serial killer Lonnie Franklin known as 'The Grim Sleeper', was on Thursday convicted for the murders of 10 women between 1985 and 2007. Police, however believe he may have murdered as many as 25 women in total
The Los Angeles serial killer Lonnie Franklin known as 'The Grim Sleeper', was on Thursday convicted for the murders of 10 women between 1985 and 2007. Police, however believe he may have murdered as many as 25 women in total.
Representational picture
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A former rubbish collector who at one point was mechanic for the Los Angeles Police Department, Franklin targeted addicts and prostitutes in his killing spree, claiming victims who ranged in age from 15 to 35. He killed women sporadically but all were either shot or strangled, and their bodies dumped in alleyways close to Franklin's home in South LA.
When Judge Kathleen Kennedy read out the death sentence, some of the victims' family members wept while others repeated 'Amen' . Franklin, however sat silent and impassive.
Laverne Peters, whose 25-year-old daughter was killed in 2007 and her body left in a rubbish bin, said Franklin had treated her "like she was trash," adding, "My hope is that he spends the rest of his glory days in his jail cell, which will become his trash bag."
Franklin claimed his early victims amid the violent crack cocaine epidemic that overtook Los Angeles and other US cities in the 1980s and 1990s. Police failed to connect the slayings at the time, in part because at least three serial killers were active in South Los Angeles during the same period. Franklin proved to be particularly elusive, earning his sinister nickname because his murders appeared to cease between 1988 and 2002.
One of dozens of witnesses at the three-month trial was Enietra Washington, 57, who testified that he had sexually assaulted and shot her, snapping her picture with a Polaroid camera before he dumped her from his vehicle during the attack in 1988. Franklin was also found guilty of Washington’s attempted murder.
During the sentencing phase of the trial, prosecutors also linked Franklin to five further killings.
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