'Grim Sleeper' killer sentenced to death for LA murders

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

A former sanitation worker who became known as the "Grim Sleeper" was sentenced to death on Wednesday for murdering nine women and a teenage girl as he preyed on prostitutes and drug addicts in a Los Angeles crime spree dating back 30 years.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy handed down the death sentence recommended in June for Lonnie David Franklin Jr., 63, by a jury. A month earlier, the panel had convicted him on 10 counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder.

"I can’t think of anyone in all my years that has committed the kind of monstrous and the number of monstrous crimes that you have," Kennedy told the serial killer.

Franklin, who is suspected in other unsolved slayings, showed no emotion as the sentence was imposed and did not formally address the court.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-grimsleeper-idUSKCN10L0Z8

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World | Wed Aug 10, 2016 3:43pm EDT
LOS ANGELES | BY PAULA LEHMAN

[Spitfire of ATJ]

1. "I can’t think of anyone in all my years,.."

Cheney.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

2. I've never heard of this one.

Interesting how they caught him. Through familial DNA.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grim_Sleeper

Police had found no exact match between DNA found at the crime scenes and any of the profiles in California's DNA profile database. So they searched the database for stored profiles that demonstrated sufficient similarity to allow police to infer a familial relationship. They found similar DNA belonging to Franklin's son, Christopher, who had been convicted of a felony weapons charge. According to Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley, detectives then used a piece of discarded pizza with Franklin's DNA to make the link. One Los Angeles undercover police officer pretended to be a waiter at a restaurant where the suspect ate. He collected dishes, silverware, glasses, and pizza crusts to obtain DNA.[20] The identification was used to arrest Franklin after his DNA was obtained and deemed a match.[21] Saliva found on the victims established a DNA match linking Franklin to the deaths.[22]

[rivegauche]

3. Wow that's some good police work. eom

[TexasBushwhacker]

5. SCIENCE!!!

[Owl]

8. Amazing!

[Hassin Bin Sober]

9. Yes. It is.

I had heard of familial DNA before. This is the first time I've heard of it solving a serial killer case.

Your DNA doesn't have to be on file. I guess don't do any crimes if you have a relative in the pokey.

There is a bit of a creepy aspect to it. Law enforcement agencies are taking samples upon arrest and keeping samples regardless of conviction.

[yallerdawg]

4. This is a hell of a story.

I saw this documentary on HBO: http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/tales-of-the-grim-sleeper

At the time:

Though 100 women are believed to have been murdered by the Grim Sleeper, Lonnie Franklin has been charged on just ten counts. Five years after his arrest, with the case tied up in pretrial hearings, he has pleaded not guilty and remains in jail, awaiting trial.

His victims were, in South Central LA, "...police used a slang term, “NHI” (“no human involved”), when a victim was a prostitute, drug addict or gang member."

It is a remarkable cautionary tale of race and injustice that - for all we know - continues to pervade every institution we have in America.

This is a case that makes one question blanket opposition to "the death penalty." Some people are just very, very, very bad. Not "evil" - bad.

[Iggo]

7. "NHI"

Cops, huh?

They're the fucking best.

[TipTok]

10. Reminds me of Dune...

[Blue_Tires]

11. What's more shocking is Franklin was flying below the radar

because there were at least three other big-time notorious serial killers working Los Angeles during the same general timeframe in the 80s

[LW1977]

6. Odds that some fan girl will get engaged to him..

There's always some girl from a right wing family that gets fascinated with these psychopaths and wants to marry them. So of course the conservative "Christian" family is against the gays getting married, but they're ok with their daughter marrying an incarcerated murdering lunatic in death row.