Filed under: News, Race and Civil Rights
Investigators in Los Angeles are seeking the public's help to unravel another mystery in the "Grim Sleeper" serial murder case: who are the women in his photos (pictured above)?
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Images of about 180 women - some sexual in nature, others on home video - were taken from the home of "Grim Sleeper" suspect Lonnie Franklin Jr. (pictured below), who has pleaded not guilty to charges that he murdered 10 women from 1985 to 1988 and from 2002 to 2007.
The 14-year delay between the killing sprees has led authorities to call him the "Grim Sleeper." The pictures and videos of the 180 women were found during a search of his home in July and appear to stretch from the 1970s to the present day - if the hairstyles, makeup and clothing on the women are any clue.
Most of the women, who appear to range in age from their late teens to their 50s, are smiling and look like they are having fun when the pictures were taken; the vast majority are black.
Franklin, a backyard mechanic, was captured last summer using a controversial police technique, called "familial DNA search," that found Franklin through a DNA sample from his son who was picked up in an unrelated crime. The son's DNA came back as similar to that taken from the serial killings and police later gathered evidence from the elder Franklin to charge him with those crimes.
Just because a woman's picture might be located in Franklin's photo album doesn't mean she may have met a tragic end by his hands.
But anyone who lost a young female relative or friend to the gritty streets of Los Angeles in the past few decades might be wise to look at the photos, which police will have displayed on large outdoor billboards.
A young lady might have had the misfortune of meeting a backyard mechanic named Lonnie Franklin Jr.