A garbage collector convicted of the “Grim Sleeper” killings that terrorised southern Los Angeles for more than two decades was sentenced to death on Wednesday (Aug 10).
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Relatives of victim Mary Lowe from left, Kenneitha Lowe, Cameron Wright and Tracy Williams, speak during victims statements before the sentencing for Lonnie Franklin Jr., a convicted serial killer known as the.
Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman said Franklin’s motive was “doing evil”, and his “degrading, calculated and brutal” crimes had destroyed many lives.
Franklin was convicted of murders spanning more than two decades that went unsolved for years until police realized they were the work of one killer and made a greater effort to catch him.
Defense lawyer Seymour Amster said in court filings that the death verdict should be set aside because prosecutors introduced evidence that Franklin killed four other women, though he was never charged with those crimes.
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. The murders began in 1985 in South Los Angeles, with the recovered body of Debra Jackson, aged 29, who was found death with three bullet wounds in an alley.
Franklin obeyed the request before Alexander asked him a simple question: “I’d like to know: Why?”
The 63-year-old was a “sexual predator” and “career criminal” whom DNA evidence showed had acted alone, Silverman said. Franklin was arrested in 2010.
The jury also convicted Franklin of attempted murder for an attack on an 11th victim, Enierta Washington, who survived being shot in the chest, raped, pushed out of a auto and left for dead in 1988.
“You’ve done some terrible things”, she said.
An 11th victim survived after being shot, raped, pushed out of a auto and left for dead in 1988.
Franklin denied any role in the killings to investigators, but didn’t utter a word in his defense at trial. The Times has previously reported that police had urged the state to look for DNA matches that could be related to the killer, and got approval from Jerry Brown, who was California’s attorney general at the time. It took years for investigators to identify him as the suspect, a process aided by DNA analysis.
However, the fact that nearly all of the victims were drug addicts and prostitutes from impoverished areas might have something to do with the Los Angeles police not investigating the crimes profoundly.
The killing spree was the subject of a 2014 HBO documentary by British filmmaker Nick Broomfield, who claims the Los Angeles police failed to properly investigate because the victims were mainly drug addicts and prostitutes. “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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But in an outburst earlier during the 3 ½-hour proceeding, Franklin said the sister of one of the dead was “lying” as she recounted in a victim-impact statement that she and her slain sibling had both once known the killer.
