Full Coverage: Grim Sleeper killings
The series of killings began in South Los Angeles in the summer of 1985 and continued with some frequency until 1988, when a female survivor was raped and shot. She lived to describe her attacker as black, in his 20s, 5-foot-8 to 5-foot-10, about 160 pounds, soft-spoken and articulate, with neatly trimmed hair and a pockmarked face.
For more than 13 years, the killer had no known slayings until the body of a teenage girl was discovered in Inglewood in March 2002, a lull in attacks that led to his description as “The Grim Sleeper.”
On July 7, 2010, Los Angeles police arrested Lonnie David Franklin Jr. at his home in South L.A. in connection with the killings. After a number of delays, his trial finally began Feb. 16.
On May 5, 2010, after a day and a half of deliberations, jurors found Franklin guilty on 10 counts of murder in the killings of nine women and a 15-year-old girl. Jurors also found Franklin guilty on one count of attempted murder.
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He roamed the streets of Sacramento for six years, raping women as they walked to work or headed home from parties in the dark.
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After listening to an appeal for mercy, jurors tasked with deciding the fate of the so-called Grim Sleeper began deliberating Friday whether one of Los Angeles’ most notorious convicted serial killers should be executed.
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As she displayed a series of gruesome crime scene photos, each showing the bloody or battered corpse of a woman slumped over or spread across an autopsy table, the prosecutor made a simple request of jurors deciding the fate of the so-called Grim Sleeper serial killer.
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The 17-year-old girl was standing alone at a station in Germany awaiting her train ride home when a car pulled up alongside her.
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The detective is frustrated.
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Kennietha Lowe recalled how the girls would don flower-print dresses and primp their hair decades ago.
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Vivian Williams had long given up hope that her sister’s slaying would be solved when she flipped on her television and saw news about a serial killer nicknamed the Grim Sleeper.
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Nearly 30 years after the first victim was found sprawled in a South Los Angeles alley, the man authorities believed was the “Grim Sleeper” serial killer was found guilty Thursday of murdering nine women and a teenage girl in a series of slayings that took decades to connect.
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An attorney for the man accused of murdering 10 people in the so-called Grim Sleeper serial killer trial accused prosecutors Tuesday of building a deceptive case against his client and argued that a relative or close associate could have carried out the slayings.
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The collage of smiling faces was projected onto a screen in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom, 10 young women beaming before the jury.
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Two expert witnesses in the trial of the alleged Grim Sleeper serial killer faced off this week, one attempting to discredit key ballistics evidence in the case as unreliable and the other insisting that the methods used are scientifically sound.
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An attorney for the man accused of being the so-called Grim Sleeper serial killer presented more evidence Tuesday that DNA of unknown men were found on the bodies of some of the victims.
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The sketch artist listened as Enietra Washington described the man she said raped and shot her.
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The trial of the man accused in the so-called Grim Sleeper serial killings shifted to the defense Monday, with an attorney repeatedly challenging DNA and ballistics evidence linking his client to the grisly deaths and suggesting other attackers may have been involved.
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The detective slid the photograph across the table.
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The six slain women had lived similar lives.
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A Los Angeles police criminalist defended his work Thursday in matching bullets used to kill six women in South Los Angeles, saying he carefully examined identical grooves in each of the rounds.
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The gun was tucked inside a dresser drawer in the green house on 81st Street.
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The busboy at John’s Incredible Pizza was not what he appeared to be.
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The blue dumpster was hauled by truck from a South Los Angeles alley to the Los Angeles County coroner’s downtown headquarters.
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She was 15 with a shy smile and brilliant, dark eyes. Hawthorne Police Sgt.
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There was no sense of danger when the flashy orange Ford Pinto pulled up to Enietra Washington as she walked to a friend’s house decades ago.
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A surgeon described on Tuesday the life-saving efforts performed on a woman believed to be the lone survivor of the so-called Grim Sleeper serial killer, telling jurors that he removed a bullet from her chest when she arrived at a Los Angeles County hospital more than 27 years ago.
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Prosecutors continued to press their case Wednesday that DNA evidence linking the deaths of several women to the man accused of being the “Grim Sleeper” killer was overwhelming.
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An attorney for the man accused of being the so-called Grim Sleeper serial killer questioned the reliability of DNA testing conducted by the Los Angeles police crime lab that prosecutors say links his client to some of the victims.
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An attorney for the man accused of murdering 10 young women over a period of decades in South Los Angeles tried Thursday to poke holes in the work conducted by the county’s chief medical examiner, who reviewed autopsy reports of the grisly slayings.
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The attorney for the man accused of murdering 10 young women over a period of decades in South Los Angeles, suggested Thursday that recent reviews of the victims’ autopsy reports could be flawed.
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Los Angeles County’s chief medical examiner detailed gruesome wounds suffered by victims of the so-called Grim Sleeper serial killer, as testimony continued Wednesday in the trial of a former police garage attendant accused of the slayings.
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Los Angeles County’s chief medical examiner detailed gruesome wounds suffered by women believed to be among the first victims of the so-called Grim Sleeper serial killer, as testimony continued Wednesday in the trial of a former police garage attendant accused of the slayings.
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A serial killer known as the Grim Sleeper preyed on women in South Los Angeles for more than two decades, starting in the 1980s.
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Debra Jackson, a 29-year-old waitress, was discovered shot in the chest three decades ago in an alley.
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Pain from a pinched nerve shot through Diana Ware’s right leg as she hobbled to her truck.
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A judge has set a summer trial date in the case of the alleged Grim Sleeper serial killer, charged with murdering 10 women and suspected of killing several others.
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The judge in the case of the so-called Grim Sleeper blocked a defense attorney Monday from using evidence he previously said linked a serial killer already on California’s Death Row to two of Lonnie Franklin Jr.’
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A Los Angeles County judge on Friday again postponed the capital murder trial of the man authorities say is the so-called Grim Sleeper serial killer.
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More than five years after authorities charged the man they claim is the so-called Grim Sleeper serial killer, the court case involving the killings of 10 women in South L.A. has devolved into this: eye rolls, sighs and laughter.
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A Los Angeles County judge on Friday pushed back the start date of a trial for a man accused of being the so-called Grim Sleeper serial killer.
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A defense attorney in the so-called Grim Sleeper serial killer case told a judge Friday that he believes genetic evidence links a man on death row to two women his client is accused of killing.
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Since Los Angeles police first announced that they had made an arrest in the hunt for the so-called Grim Sleeper serial killer, the case involving the slayings of more than 10 women has centered around DNA.
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Veteran documentarian Nick Broomfield’s “Tales of the Grim Sleeper” is a riveting and chilling investigation into the world of Lonnie Franklin Jr., a South Los Angeles resident arrested in 2010 and accused in a string of serial rape-killings spanning 22 years.
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For nearly a quarter-century, police said, Lonnie Franklin Jr. terrified people in South Los Angeles, luring women to his backyard camper with money and drugs and then brutally murdering them.
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As any journalist will tell you, most journalists don’t end up the star of a story—let alone a TV show or movie.
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A judge ruled Tuesday that DNA evidence that led to accused Grim Sleeper serial killer Lonnie Franklin Jr. was lawfully obtained from a pizza slice, cups and napkins seized by a police officer who posed as a restaurant busboy in 2010.
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A judge on Tuesday ruled that DNA evidence that led to alleged Grim Sleeper serial killer Lonnie Franklin Jr. was lawfully obtained via plates and utensils seized by a police officer who posed as a restaurant busboy.
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The state of California has been a leader in the use of familial DNA searches -- investigations that seek out crime suspects by taking unidentified crime scene DNA, looking in a state DNA database for people who are partial matches to that sample, and then track down those close relatives of the suspect to help chase down the ultimate target.
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He has haunted South L.A. for years. Why are police only now alerting the public?
