Lonnie Franklin : The Grim Sleeper (Finally Found?)

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/10/grim-sleeper-suspect-had-4-decade-arrest-record/print/

In searching the web for articles relating to recent serial murders, I came across a man named Lonnie Franklin Jr. Franklin is a 57-year old man charged with 10 murders in the “Grime Sleeper” case and also a more current murder that took place in July of 2003. He is considered to be the Grime Sleeper who murdered several young women in South Los Angeles in the mid-1980s. The article states that the killings stopped for a while (due to Frankilin being spooked by the police in 1988), but resumed 14 years later.  Frankin is perceived to be the murderer of a victim in July 2003. At this time, he was suppose to be in county jail for stealing property, but was released from jail early because the jail was overcrowded.

 Before being arrested on Wednesday, July 7^th, he had already been arrested at least 15 times over four decades. The article stated he had been charged previously with crimes such as burglary, car theft, and assault, but were never considered serious enough to send him to state prison or to warrant his entry in the state’s DNA database.

In the article, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck states that investigators are also trying to tie Franklin to 30 other murders that have went unsolved dating to 1984.  He also mentions that since they know who he is, where he lives, the cars he drove, and have people to interview, they’ll be going over all the old cases and look for connections.

The article also made a big point out DNA profiling. The law enforcement said despite more than two decades of old-fashioned police work, they were finally able to crack the case using a new and disputed technique of “familial DNA.” In June of 2010, Franklin’s DNA was sent through a database of 1.5 million samples. In doing so, they found no identical matches, but found a familial match to Franklin that had to be his brother or son. It was a coincidence that his son was added to the database in recent months due to a felony weapons conviction.  The investigators then alerted the LAPD of Franklin’s identity on June 30, which led to Lonnie Franklin being arrested. All they needed was a sample of Frankiln’s DNA to match those on the victims, so they got an undercover officer to pretend to be a waiter. The officer collected things like tableware, glasses and leftover pizza crust to obtain the need DNA from. With a match of DNA to that of the victims, they were able to arrest Franklin on several murder counts.

The article then goes on to say that he had his first court appearance on several crime that could lead to the death penalty or life in prison with possibility of parole.

In observing the article, I saw that it focused more on the serial killer. It gave background information about his past criminal history and also how he was sent to county jail but was then released because of overcrowding. I can’t say that the article focused a lot on the serial killer, but it definitely didn’t focus at all on the cases. The article reported that he is the perceived “Grim Sleeper” of whom they have been looking for since the 1980’s. The key thing of this article was “familial DNA” testing. One investigator made it clear to me that forensics in being more advanced than two decades ago. Now that that they had familial DNA testing, they were able to connect Franklin to victims, which led to his arrest. There were no nationwide statistics mentioned in the article. The article did mention that the LAPD was involved. The investigators alerted the LAPD of Franklin’s identity, in which they verifying it with birth certificated and other documentation. Unforunately, this article doesn’t state it the FBI was involved or not (even though I suppose the investigators mentioned in this article were from the FBI). There were no information given about the victims if Franklin. The article also didn’t mention much about the community besides given a description of Lonnie Franklin’s house and how he was three doors down from a house that had been searched extensively by police 22 years ago.

The most interesting thing about this article is that I learned about a serial killer that is also known as “Grim Sleeper” and that this person has killed 10 people and has been on the loose since the 1980’s. Being that I was very interested in the case, I decided to do more research and found other sites that give more information on the “Grime Sleeper” cases and more details about the people he victimized (of which the first victim was a female named Deborah Jackson that was murdered in August 10, 1985 and police say she was killed by a small caliber pistol).The sites are as follow:

 http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2009/news/grim.sleeper/index.html

http://thegrimsleeper.com/