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.
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He was convicted of killing seven women between 1985 and 1988 and a 15-year-old girl and two women between 2002 and 2007. He was dubbed the “Grim Sleeper” because of a gap between killings attributed to him. Franklin’s sentencing caps a lengthy investigation and prosecution of one of the most prolific and notorious serial murderer cases in California history, along with “Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez and “Freeway Killer” William Bonin.
“You shall suffer the death penalty”, Kennedy told Franklin after reading the names of the 10 victims. “That was a finding that the death penalty was the proper sentence”, the attorneys said in their filing.
“He routinely manipulated others to achieve his goal: Doing evil”, they said in a written submission.
He said the defense did not call any of Franklin’s family members during the trial’s penalty phase in an effort to try to focus on the issue of whether jurors had any lingering doubt about Franklin’s culpability for the crimes.
Police have said he may have had as many as 25 victims. His trial began in February of this year, more than three decades after the death of the first victim.
Silverman said they were unsubstantiated allegations and accused Amster of bullying tactics, name-calling and dishonesty. They carried no identification. “They are all premeditated”. Franklin faces the death penalty when he is sentenced for the murders of nine women and a teenage girl.
The jury also heard from a woman from Germany whom Franklin kidnapped and raped in 1974 while he was in the U.S. Army.
An 11th victim survived after being shot, raped, pushed out of a auto and left for dead in 1988. Enietra Washington said she remembered Franklin climbing on top of her and a camera flashing as she lost consciousness.
While when the vehicle, he then allegedly shot and sexually assaulted her.
“You need to take me to the hospital”, she testified that she told him that night.
Los Angeles Police Department’s special task force then followed the elder Franklin to a restaurant and watched as he threw out his rubbish which contained a discarded slice of pizza.
Franklin was linked at trial to 14 slayings, including four women he wasn’t charged with killing.
Detectives placed Franklin under 24-hour surveillance and came up with a plan to obtain a sample of his DNA. DNA taken from the crust matched DNA left by the suspect in multiple murders, according to Detetive Dennis Kilcoyne. And, in their search of Franklin’s home in 2010, investigators found 1,000 photographs and videos of women, some appearing to be unconscious. Police have since accounted for the identities and whereabouts of some of the women, but others remain unknown.
The serial killer sat emotionless when the sentence to die was handed down. So the case just kept on going.
Franklin will head to the San Quentin State prison, north of San Francisco.
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“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.
