The killing scree began at the height of a cocaine drug wave in South LA, and Franklin used the vunverability of his victims to strike.
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Lonnie David Franklin, 63, had been convicted of 10 counts of first-degree murder for the killings of nine women and a 15-year-old girl between 1985 and 2007. Franklin faces the death penalty when he is sentenced for the murders of nine women and a teenage girl.
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One the “Grim Sleeper’s” victims did not perish and testified against him.
Several of the women Franklin targeted worked as prostitutes or had drug habits.
Lonnie Franklin Jr. was sentenced in Los Angeles County Superior Court after emotional family members of his victims spoke about the pain they had endured for decades.
The moment of reckoning for Lonnie Franklin Jr. came after those whose lives were altered by his violence questioned how he could have been so cruel and shown so little remorse.
That woman, Enietra Washington, said Franklin shot, sexually assaulted and took a photo of her before he pushed her out of an orange Ford Pinto in 1988.
Most wore disheveled clothing suggesting they had been re-dressed and moved, Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman said in her closing argument.
“You’ve done some frightful things”, she said.
According to the Times, Franklin whispered something inaudible in response.
The prosecutor also reminded jurors of a videotaped police interrogation of Franklin, played during the trial, in which she said the accused killer did not appear surprised about the allegations against him.
Evidence in the case spanned three decades of policing in Southern California, from the murderous, crack-fueled 1980s, during which at least two serial killers were operating in South Los Angeles, to the creation of an LAPD cold-case unit and the modern era of advanced DNA testing.
Although the Grim Sleeper did indeed do a good job of covering his tracks, there was one fatal flaw in his plan to stay under the radar and continue to kill young, vulnerable women. Although he was arrested in July 2010 after his DNA was connected to some of the victims, appeals and judicial wrangling repeatedly delayed efforts to bring him to trial.
In rejecting a defense motion to set the death penalty aside, the judge noted they had presented nearly no evidence in favor of sparing his life, such as testimony about good deeds or a troubled upbringing. The officer posed as busboy at a pizza parlor, where Franklin was attending a birthday party, and snagged items that led to his arrest.
“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 Franklin, who sat stone-faced before her at the defendant’s table. “It was a long time coming, but all I asked for was the good lord to give me strength enough to make it every day”.
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“Your loved one, your daughter, your sister, your mother, your friend is still gone”, she said.
