It would be two more years before the killer dubbed the “Grim Sleeper” was arrested and six more before he was convicted in May of murdering nine women and a teenage girl and attempting to kill another woman. FILE – In this February 6, 2015, file photo, Lonnie Franklin Jr., who has been dubbed the “Grim Sleeper” serial killer, sits during a court hearing in Los Angeles.
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Judge Kathleen Kennedy said Wednesday before the sentencing of Lonnie Franklin Jr. that she didn’t buy the argument that the death penalty in California is unconstitutional.
Several of the women Franklin targeted worked as prostitutes or had drug habits. The man convicted of those crimes, Lonnie David Franklin Jr, . has been convicted of killing at least 10 young women, but police theorize that he is responsible for as many as 25 killings in that time period.
Franklin showed little emotion during the sentencing, staring straight ahead as victims’ relatives made statements to the court.
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.
“I’d like for Mr. Franklin to turn around and face me”, she said, according to the Times.
Alexander said she was struggling to forgive him.
Franklin again muttered something inaudible.
“But at the end of the day, your loved one, your daughter, your sister, your mother, your friend, is still gone”.
A police detective later told a reporter that, at this point in the back-and-forth, Franklin had muttered that he “didn’t do it”.
In the end, she concluded that “it doesn’t matter why”, adding, “There could never be a justification for what you have done”.
Franklin, 63, a former trash collector and onetime garage attendant for the Los Angeles police, denied any role in the killings to police but didn’t utter a word in his defense during the lengthy trial.
Outside court after jurors recommended that Franklin be sentenced to death, the father of one of the victims said, “We got what we came to get”.
In their court filing, Deputy District Attorneys Beth Silverman and Marguerite Rizzo countered that “a death sentence is clearly warranted based on the evidence and the law”.
“He is a psychopathic, sadistic serial killer who takes joy in inflicting pain on women and killing them”, she wrote in her sentencing brief.
She read the names of his 10 victims, and for each one said “you shall suffer the death penalty”.
In the trial, prosecutors produced DNA, ballistics, photos and testimony of the sole known survivor, Enietra Washington, who escaped after being shot. Seven women were killed between 1985 and 1988, and three more were killed between 2002 and 2007. A subsequent and more detailed DNA comparison conclusively linked him to the crimes.
In 2010, a search of state offender records turned up DNA evidence that indicated Franklin may have been the killer.
As a shackled Franklin was led from courtroom, family members started clapping.
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An undercover officer posed as a waiter at a local restaurant and collected a pizza crust left behind by the suspect.
