Franklin also was found guilty of attacking an 11th victim, who survived being shot, raped, pushed out of a vehicle and left for dead in 1988.
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Almost three decades after the attack, the survivor, Enietra Washington, pointed out her assailant in court, saying, “That’s the person who shot me”.
Los Angeles Superior Judge Kathleen Kennedy sentenced the “Grim Sleeper” to death during the hearing on August 10, 2016.
Prosecutors said Franklin took advantage of some of his victims’ addiction to crack, luring them to his backyard camper with money and drugs before killing them.
He committed crimes dating back to the 1974 kidnapping and gang rape of a 17-year-old girl in Germany while he was in the USA military, the court heard.
She told the jury that in 1988 as she walked to a friend’s house, she accepted a ride from Franklin after he drove by and approached her.
Franklin, who has close cropped hair and wears glasses, stared straight ahead and remained silent as more than a dozen relatives and friends of the victims spoke Wednesday inside a hushed courtroom.
At one point Franklin’s reign of terror stopped but in 2002 he resumed his killings earning him the nickname of The Grim Sleeper.
In addition to the murders, jurors also found Franklin guilty of the attempted murder of Enietra Washington, who survived being shot in the chest and pushed out of a moving vehicle in November 1988.
While when the vehicle, he then allegedly shot and sexually assaulted her.
To each of Alexander’s inquiries, Franklin, who has denied involvement since his arrest and during trial, reportedly said softly, “I didn’t do it”. Police failed to connect the slayings at the time, in part because at least three serial killers were active in South Los Angeles during the same period.
The killings occurred over more than two decades during the crack epidemic, and community members complained that police didn’t seriously investigate because the victims were black and poor and many were drug users and prostitutes. The then-unknown killer apparently fell dormant for years.
Franklin was connected to the crimes after a task force that re-examined the old cases discovered that DNA from Franklin’s son, which was in a database because of an arrest, showed similarities to genetic evidence found on some of the “Grim Sleeper” victims.
Detectives placed Franklin under 24-hour surveillance and came up with a plan to obtain a sample of his DNA. Police obtained a sample of his saliva by sending an undercover officer to steal a pizza crust. It took years for investigators to identify him as the suspect, a process aided by DNA analysis. Police have since accounted for the identities and whereabouts of some of the women, but others remain unknown.
“I can’t think of anyone I’ve encountered in all my years in the criminal justice system that has committed the monstrous crimes that you have”, Judge Kathleen Kennedy said.
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She said she’ll rest easier knowing he can’t harm anyone. No one has been executed in the state since 2006. “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”.
