Franklin will be back in court on August 10 for sentencing before L.A. County Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy. Washington appeared and testified against Franklin Jr. during the trial. Prosecutors built their case on that DNA evidence, including Franklin’s saliva on many of his victims’ bodies, along with ballistic evidence and the testimony of a surviving victim. “It’s a long time coming”.
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63, was also found guilty in the attempted murder of Enietra Washington, who survived being shot in the chest and pushed out of a moving auto in November 1988.
Samara Herard, 45, the foster sister of the youngest victim, 15-year-old Princess Berthomieux, said the verdict was bittersweet.
Due to the gap between killing sprees, he was given the nickname “Grim Sleeper”.
Lonnie Franklin Jr. stared straight ahead and showed no emotion as a court clerk read 10 death penalty verdicts. Victims, all between the ages of 15 and 35, were either shot in the chest, choked – or both – and their partly clad or naked bodies were dumped in alleys and trash bins near where Franklin lived.
The court heard Franklin had committed crimes dating back to the 1974 kidnapping and gang rape of a 17-year-old girl in Germany while he was in the U.S. military.
Franklin was connected to his victims through ballistics or DNA evidence, ABC 7 reported prosecutors said.
Franklin Jr., known as the “Grim Sleeper”, was convicted on May 5 of shooting seven women to death from August 1985 to September 1988, and killing three more in a second wave of killings from March 2002 to January 2007.
Police didn’t connect the crimes to a serial killer for years.
A detective posing as a worker in a pizza parlour later collected utensils and crusts from Franklin while he was attending a birthday party.
Most wore disheveled clothing suggesting they had been re-dressed and moved, Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman said in her closing argument.
Prosecutors said the victims were raped before being shot or strangled.
It has been a decade since the last execution in California.
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As she was losing consciousness, he sexually assaulted her and she remembered seeing the flash from a Polaroid camera. Photos of other victims were also found in the home.
