Free Republic

Lonnie David Franklin Jr., who killed at least 10 people between 1985 and 2007 -- mainly in the South Los Angeles area -- has died at the age of 67, officials at San Quentin State Prison said Sunday. Franklin, who was sentenced to death in Los Angeles in 2016, was found unresponsive in his cell at about 7:20 p.m. Saturday. “Medical assistance was rendered and an ambulance was summoned. Franklin was pronounced deceased at 7:43 p.m. His cause of death is pending the results of an autopsy; however, there were no signs of trauma,” prison officials said. Local Local news...

The serial killer known as the "Grim Sleeper" was sentenced to death Wednesday for the murders of nine women and a teenage girl that went unsolved for years as the body count grew in a poor section of Los Angeles haunted by the scourge of crack cocaine. The moment of reckoning for Lonnie Franklin Jr. came after those whose lives were altered by his violence questioned how he could have been so cruel and shown so little remorse. "You are truly a piece of evil," said Enietra Washington, who managed to survive after being shot and testified against him at...

Why the near media-silence over the absurdly long-delayed trial of alleged serial killer Lonnie Franklin Jr.? Franklin would seem to represent ideal grist for the voracious 24/7 national media. There is, of course, murder. He is charged with killing 10 and suspected of killing more. The crimes took place in a big, media-centric city, Los Angeles, as opposed to some obscure small town or rural community in a fly-over state ignored by national media. There is an unsolved mystery that took place over a long time. Franklin was a former city trash collector who lived quietly in South Central Los...

The "Grim Sleeper" cold case heats up. The Los Angeles Police Department’s phones are ringing off the hook. Its website has received approximately eleven million hits. People are fascinated with serial killers, and the Grim Sleeper is no exception. The LAPD has released approximately 180 photos to solicit the public’s help in identifying more of this serial killer’s possible victims.The photos were discovered in the house of Lonnie David Franklin Jr. — the Grim Sleeper himself. Franklin was arrested in July and arraigned on ten counts of murder plus one count of attempted murder. Among those he photographed, twenty-nine have...

The 57-year-old man charged with 10 murders in the Los Angeles "Grim Sleeper" case was arrested at least 15 times over four decades but was never sent to state prison despite the recommendation of probation officers, court and jail records show. Lonnie Franklin Jr. was arrested for burglary, car theft, firearms possession and assaults. But his crimes never were considered serious enough to send him to state prison or to warrant his entry in the state's DNA database, authorities said. "He's danced to the raindrops for a long time without getting wet," Detective Dennis Kilcoyne, head of the task force...

The "Grim Sleeper" serial killer who has eluded Los Angeles police for more than two decades may have finally been nabbed. L.A. police release 911 call from witness who said he saw victim dumped. Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley told the Los Angeles Times that the suspect was 51-year-old Lonnie David Franklin Jr. The high-profile case had languished unsolved and haunted the files of the LAPD cold-case unit. The killings of 10 young black women and one man, beginning in 1985, have all been blamed on the "Grim Sleeper." The cluster of killings stopped in 1988, but then,...

Detective Diane Webb was determined. The Grim Sleeper, an anonymous killer who’d stopped murdering for 13 years, had resurfaced, and she had a plan for tripping him up. It was the fall of 2008, and she happened to show Detective Lauren Rauch, one of 33 officers who work for Webb monitoring the city’s vast population of registered sex offenders, a recent L.A. Weekly news story headlined, “The Grim Sleeper: The most elusive serial killer west of the Mississippi took a 13-year break. Now he’s back, murdering Angelenos, as cops hunt his DNA.” Webb, a hardcore number-cruncher and sex-crimes expert, floated...

After doing his time, John Floyd Thomas Jr. held various jobs. He was a social worker during this time and a hospital employee, as well as a personal electronics salesman. During this time, the Westside Rapist was attacking white senior women.