Lonnie David Franklin Jr., dubbed the ‘Grim Sleeper’ for a 14-year break between his strings of 10 murders, is pictured during his arraignment in Los Angeles Criminal Courts on July 8, 2010. Photographs of about 180 women seized from the Franklin’s home were posted online December 17, 2010 by the Los Angeles Police Department to determine whether any of them may have been victims. The photographs were found at Franklin’s home after he was arrested July 8 on suspicion of killing at least 10 young women and one man in South Los Angeles between 1985 and 2007.
AL SEIB/AFP/Getty Images
The Los Angeles serial killer dubbed the “Grim Sleeper” whose killing spree lasted over 20 years was found guilty Thursday of murdering 10 young African American women, The Associated Press reports.
Lonnie Franklin Jr. will be sentenced on May 12 for the killings that police believe started in 1985.
Franklin, 63, was arrest in July 2010 and waited almost six years for his trial that began in February. After court proceedings, which lasted about three months, the jury returned with a guilty verdict.
“The day of reckoning is here,” Porter Alexander, the father of one of the victims, told the Daily News when the trial began.
Alexander, is now 75, was 48 when his 18-year-old daughter was killed.
“You can’t help but be excited that you lived to see an end to this madness. It’s been a long road and I’m glad I’ll physically be able to be there.”
The killings from 1985 to 2007 earned Franklin the name the “Grim Sleeper” by police after a 14-year gap that followed an attempted killing.
Community members complained after news of the killings that police had not investigated thoroughly because of the victims’ race. All of the victims were African American with the youngest being 15-years-old. They were found shot or strangled and their bodies left in alleys or garbage bins, AP reports. Police revisited the case Franklin and linked six girls using DNA evidence found at the scene. The break happened after Franklin’s son was arrested for a felony and his DNA showed similarities to evidence found on the victims.
Knowing that Franklin would be attending a birthday party, an officer posed as a busboy and retrieved pizza crusts and napkins with Franklin’s DNA, AP reports.
Franklin’s DNA matched material found on the breasts and clothing of many of the women.
The Grim Sleeper’s sole known survivor, Enietra Washington, proved to be a powerful witness in the case. Washington was shot in the chest about two months after Franklin’s last victim was killed.
The bullet removed from Washington came from the same gun used to shoot Alexander and six others, AP reports.
Washington told detectives that her victim took a Polaroid photo of her as she was losing consciousness.
Over twenty years later, police found the photo of Washington hidden behind a wall in Franklin’s garage.
Alexander told AP that he wants Franklin to face the same fate that his daughter faced.
“He took a limb from me and every time I look she’s missing and can never be replaced,” he said. “I don’t care how many pictures I have on the wall, or all the things I see around me, doesn’t bring her back.”
Read more at The Associated Press.
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