Original subtitles

♪ Tu-bi Tubi ♪

[Male Narrator] In the City of Angels,

a violent criminal is hunting down young Black women

at a time when Southern California is plagued

by a tidal wave of serial killers.

You had the Hillside Slayer.

You had Richard Ramirez.

You had the Freeway Killer.

[Victoria] Bodies were piling up in the morgue,

labeled "Jane Doe."

And it was overwhelming for law enforcement.

[Clifford] I'd go back to talk to the detectives

and ask them, "What are you looking for?"

They said, "We don't know."

[Narrator] But after more than a decade of terror,

the killings suddenly stop.

He went quiet, it seems, for 14 years.

[Narrator] Until a scientific breakthrough

and the bravery of two survivors

brings the case roaring back to life.

To have the courage to take the stand

and face the man who tried to kill her and raped her,

she's a true hero.

The pain that man did to me!

[Narrator] To his neighbors,

he seemed like one of the good guys.

He was like that neighbor that everybody went to.

[Pamela B] Everybody loved him.

He was a caring man. He was a giving man.

[Narrator] In reality, he was the killer

who'd come to be known as the Grim Sleeper.

[Pamela T] We find out he was a killer.

It was a really, really gnarly feeling.

[LaWana] He killed women, really.

Women that's already defeated by drugs and alcohol.

[Female Reporter] Police say these pictures suggest

there may be more victims.

[Clifford] I just think it's absurd to think

that he just stopped one day

and then started up another day,

14, 13 years later.

There's no way of really knowing how many women he murdered.

[sinister music]

[gentle music]

[Narrator] August 10, 1985.

It's a warm Saturday morning in South Central Los Angeles.

And while the sun is shining,

a dark cloud is forming over the community,

one that will hang over South Central

for the next two decades.

In the rear alley of 1017 West Gage Avenue,

a man walking his dog stumbles upon the body of

29-year-old Debra Jackson.

Debra Jackson was found with three .25-caliber gunshot wounds

to her chest

in an alleyway, dumped like trash.

[Marguerite] She was laying underneath this piece of carpet.

There was a purse, ah, by her head.

Her clothing was still on, ah, intact.

However, uh, there was significant decomposition

that we saw with her body.

[Narrator] Detectives are summoned to the scene.

[Nisha] Well, they were able to identify Debra

by a phone number in her purse.

They reached out to her recent ex-girlfriend,

who actually had been expecting for her to come by

and get some belongings, but she had never showed up.

It appeared as though she had been in that alley,

covered up, for several days.

[Narrator] For these overworked investigators,

Debra's apparent murder is just another

in the city's body count--

which, by the end of the year,

will total more than 1300 homicides.

[Terry] South Central LA,

particularly when these murders were happening,

was a pretty depressed area.

A lot of drug dealing at the time.

This is the crack epidemic in the 1980s.

And I think that there was a lot of collateral crime

going on in the area at the time.

[Paul] It was the wild, wild west.

I mean, there would be times you'd be at a crime scene,

you could hear gunshots,

and you'd listen to the radio

and just tell your partner, "You finish this one.

I'll go start the next one."

[Narrator] As CSIs transport the body

to the county medical examiner's office,

detectives interview Debra's friends and family.

They learn that Debra was a hardworking mother of three

who was seeking to regain custody of their children

after battling addiction and poverty.

[Dana] She was staying with a lovely couple

that had taken her in.

And then one evening, she mentioned

she needed to step out and to repay a debt.

Debra was walked to the door

and never seen again.

[Narrator] The couple whom Debra was living with

have no idea who she was going to meet

or the nature of the debt.

But the subsequent autopsy reveals

that in addition to the three .25-caliber bullets

in her body,

cocaine was present in Debra's system.

[Nisha] And investigators was trying to find out

what this means.

Is it possible that she had used drugs recreationally,

like, the night before?

That maybe this killing was a drug deal gone bad?

Could somebody have possibly drugged her?

The only evidence that they really had

was the bullets that was found in Debra's body.

And during this time, you know,

law enforcement were understaffed.

And so Debra's case went cold

and her file just got shoved somewhere.

[Narrator] What detectives don't realize at the time

is that Debra Jackson will be the first of many victims...

and the monster who took her life

is sitting in his house just two miles away,

wearing the mask of a family man and beloved neighbor.

And while he will one day be known as the Grim Sleeper,

at the time of Debra's murder,

he was simply known as Lonnie Franklin, Jr.

Lonnie David Franklin, Jr was born on August 30, 1952,

to parents Ruby and Lonnie, Sr.

Lonnie was raised alongside his younger sister, Patricia,

in South Central Los Angeles,

where he would live for most of his life.

Lonnie Franklin had a very good upbringing,

strict upbringing, and a loving upbringing.

[Narrator] Attracted by the booming blue collar job market,

Lonnie's parents were part of an influx of Black families

to LA in the 1940s.

[Dr. Edwards] They really came for a better life, right?

The work industry was booming here in LA.

[Narrator] Lonnie, Jr showed an interest in cars

at an early age.

His father, a hardworking longshoreman,

cultivated his son's passion,

teaching him about auto maintenance

and putting him behind the wheel of a car

at just seven years old.

While good with his hands, Lonnie, Jr struggled in school,

both academically and socially.

He always felt the reject at school.

He was always picked on for his size, being short,

and his size, being fat.

[Nisha] He did struggle a lot in school,

mainly with reading and writing.

And he just couldn't catch on.

[Narrator] In 1966, at age 14,

Lonnie's dad gave him his first car,

and the teen began cruising around South Central LA.

During that time,

the battle for civil rights was at its peak,

and racial tensions were running high.

Black communities were raising their voice

against police brutality,

often paying a steep price.

[Dana] The Watts Riots had the newspapers and media

talking about what we as Black people knew

the relationship with the police to be.

[Clifford] When the riots broke out,

LAPD during that time didn't have a great reputation

with the community.

They were known to be, you know, very businesslike and rough.

[Kayla] About 34 people died in that riot.

It just skyrocketed the distrust

that the African American community

already had for the police in the LA area.

[Dana] Lonnie grew up in the heart of all this drama.

By the middle of high school,

he actually ends up transferring to

what's considered a really good school in Compton.

So this gave his parents hope.

Like, he's finally gonna get on the right track,

he's finally gonna focus on his academics.

[Narrator] But the wave of civil unrest was being felt in Compton

just as much as South Central.

When coupled with Lonnie's love of cars,

it made for a bad mix.

At the age of 16, Lonnie was arrested twice

for grand theft auto.

The following year, he was arrested on a burglary charge.

[Nisha] Right before graduation,

he actually ended up getting into a fight,

which caused him to be expelled from high school.

[Narrator] After being expelled from school,

Lonnie worked at a grocery store for a couple of years.

But Lonnie's father encouraged him to chart a different course.

[Nisha] Because of everything that was going on

in Lonnie's life,

his dad actually suggested that he joins the Army.

And Lonnie was thinking, hey, I'm gonna see the world.

[Narrator] In 1971, Lonnie enlisted in the US Army

and began basic training.

Six months later, the 19-year-old found himself

stationed in Stuttgart, Germany.

[Nisha] At 21 years old, you know,

Lonnie was thriving in the Army.

He had worked his way up the ranks.

He got a job in the kitchen. He was a kitchen supervisor.

While it seems like everything was going good,

behind the scenes,

he was actually returning back to his deviant ways.

This is really where we begin to see Lonnie's dark side.

[Narrator] One night, in April 1974,

while still stationed in Germany,

Lonnie and two other soldiers committed a brazen

and brutal sexual assault.

[Paul] He and a couple other servicemen

were driving down the road.

They tried to kidnap a gal off of a tram stop.

They gang raped her,

and he took photos of her.

[Narrator] Held at knifepoint and fearing for her life,

the 17-year-old victim,

known in court records as Ingrid W,

feigned interest in Lonnie.

As you can imagine, she was traumatized

from being gang raped.

However, what is so telling about Lonnie Franklin

is the arrogance that he displayed.

He asked their victim, before they dropped her off,

if she wanted his number.

[Nisha] After she reported him,

she actually set up a sting operation with the police.

She called him. She said, "Hey,

do you wanna go out for a date?"

And when he met her, the police arrested him

right then and there.

[Narrator] On December 20, 1974,

Lonnie was sentenced to three years and four months

in prison.

He was sentenced to three years and four months

for the sexual assault.

And he only did part of his time.

Lonnie is dishonorably discharged from the Army

and comes back to the United States

to start another life.

[Nisha] So it's almost like nothing happened.

He had a fresh slate.

[Narrator] Now 23, Lonnie returned to South Central LA

and began working odd jobs.

By now, Lonnie's South Central neighborhood

was feeling a massive economic shift.

Corporations that had enticed so many African Americans

to come from the South

were taking their jobs to other markets

that were less expensive.

[Kayla] A lot of jobs disappeared

and the factories shut down.

A lot of people had to find different ways to make money,

and a lot of people chose to turn to drugs instead.

So that's kind of when the community started going,

you know, in the wrong direction

and a lot of crime started to skyrocket.

[Narrator] As he readjusted to civilian life

and his changing neighborhood,

Lonnie met 21-year-old educator Sylvia Castillo,

a popular community figure originally from

the Central American country of Belize.

Sylvia was a very straight-laced principal in the neighborhood.

She also took care of elderly people,

so she worked a lot.

[Nisha] From the outside looking in,

everything was just great with them.

They seemed like they were happy together.

[Victoria] Lonnie Franklin was very personable.

He would talk to everyone.

He was one of those people where if you need something,

he'd get it for you.

[Pamela B] If you said you need a refrigerator,

he would get a refrigerator for you.

You could go to him and ask him,

could you borrow a couple of dollars?

He would lend you a couple of dollars.

[Narrator] The couple married and had two kids together,

Crystal, born in 1978,

and Christopher, born in 1981.

The same year his son was born,

Lonnie sought out a job with benefits

to support his young family.

He landed a position doing what he did best--

working with cars.

[Victoria] He used to work on LAPD cars.

Didn't work with the LAPD, but worked on their cars.

[Narrator] After a year,

Lonnie traded in his mechanic position

for a higher-paying role as a garbage collector

with the LA Sanitation Department.

On the surface, the Franklins

seemed like a normal working-class family.

[Pamela T] From outside in,

it looked like they were a family unit,

two parents going to work.

On the weekends, they would barbecue,

have people over.

They seemed like they were a normal, happy family.

[Narrator] However, slowly but surely,

Lonnie started living a double life--

a friendly neighbor by day

and a killer by night.

[Narrator] September 1985.

It's been one month since Debra Jackson

was found dead in a South Central Los Angeles alley.

Swamped with a wave of unsolved homicides,

the LAPD is no closer to identifying Debra's killer

than they were the day she was discovered.

[Paul] Back in the '80s,

there were hundreds of young women

that were found murdered.

The reason there were so many active killers

was, again, the crack epidemic.

People would do just about anything

for a little hit of crack cocaine.

And these guys would prey on that.

[Narrator] And on the streets of South Central,

several of the murders have a similar MO,

which leads police to believe

they have a single serial killer on their hands.

There were many women being killed in similar ways

in South Central.

They were women of color.

But they were also women who'd fallen on hard times.

They were being murdered one by one,

they were being left in alleys, often strangled.

[Narrator] Though they have no concrete evidence

tying the murders to a single killer,

they dub the unknown assailant the Southside Slayer.

Initially they release little information

about their theory, fearing too much publicity

could hinder their investigation.

But in September 1985, they decide a press conference

might bring them more answers.

[Pamela T] They were on the look for a serial killer.

They did not narrow it down to what specific area it was in.

They just said there was a serial killer at large.

I know it was a lot of Black women

that were getting killed and found in different places.

But over in Inglewood,

they were getting found in trash cans and stuff.

When this press conference finally came out,

it came out that at least 13 of these Southside Slayer murders

was kept under wraps.

[Victoria] There were many activists at the time

raising hell about who were killing these people

of South Central.

[Narrator] Police struggle to find the connective tissue

tying all these crimes to the alleged Southside Slayer

while also dealing with their self-created PR nightmare.

A local South activist,

South Central resident Margaret Prescod,

forms a coalition whose sole goal

is to ensure that the LAPD is doing everything in its power

to solve these killings.

[Dana] Margaret Prescod and her organization,

the Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders,

were on the ground in the community

handing out flyers, talking to people,

and applying pressure.

[Dr. Edwards] They were really demanding answers,

and we needed that.

We needed an advocate in South Central Los Angeles,

someone to speak up, someone that looked like us.

Her organization really put LAPD on the hot seat.

[Dana] The Los Angeles Police Department

finally puts together a task force

to find the Southside Slayer.

Now they're finally going to start to put

some of the pieces of this puzzle together

and get into the community

and discover who this killer may be.

[Narrator] It isn't long before the so-called Southside Slayer

appears to strike again.

Almost a full year later, on August 12, 1986,

35-year-old Henrietta Wright was found in an alley,

wrapped in a blanket.

[Victoria] A mattress had been placed over her,

and she was left in an alleyway

with two .25-caliber gunshot wounds to the chest.

[Dana] Her shirt was pulled up above her breast.

Her shorts and undergarments were missing.

And there was a piece of a man's shirt stuffed in her throat.

[Marguerite] She had a lot of blood around her mouth.

We assumed that gag was put down her throat

to prevent her from, uh, screaming

while she was being murdered.

We never recovered any casings from at the scenes.

[Marguerite] Based on the totality of the circumstances,

uh, no shell casings from a .25 auto

and, uh, her position in the alley,

to investigators, that was clear evidence

of being murdered elsewhere and then dumped.

After talking to Henrietta's family,

police learn that she had been struggling.

She had been homeless.

She had been living out of hotels.

[Dana] Henrietta was a single mom of five.

She worked in a cafeteria during the day

and sometimes as a cocktail waitress at night.

After a fire destroyed her home,

Henrietta was sent into a spiral.

[Nisha] Like so many others,

Henrietta had turned to crack cocaine

just to deal with the problems in her life.

Crack is basically a derivative of cocaine.

And it's actually more addictive,

so it was hard to kick the habit.

And you saw more and more people using the drug.

Essentially just throwing their lives, in a way, down the drain

because they were so wrapped up in their addiction.

[Narrator] And like the other murders

being lumped under the banner of the Southside Slayer killings,

Henrietta Wright made the perfect target.

But what police don't understand

is that the murders of Henrietta Wright

and Debra Jackson some 13 months earlier

weren't committed by the so-called Southside Slayer.

They were simply the first of many murders

that would be committed by Lonnie Franklin.

Lonnie's MO of shooting his victims

with a .25-caliber handgun

differed in both method and weapon of choice

from the other Southside Slayer homicides.

Which made police wonder if there was a new serial killer

in South Central

giving the Southside Slayer a run for his money.

The bullets that was taken out from her body

actually matched the bullets in Debra Jackson's body.

So a lot of these women that had been murdered

had previously been strangled.

But now you have two that have been shot,

which was very confusing for law enforcement

because typically when we have a serial killer,

they stick to their same MO.

[Clifford] After the second murder,

they knew that somebody was using this .25-caliber gun.

I notified all the divisions.

We're looking for somebody murdering women

with a .25 auto.

[Narrator] But even with the evidence

tying Debra Jackson and Henrietta Wright's murders

to one another,

police are no closer to identifying Lonnie Franklin

as their killer.

We just had so many victims

with no witnesses, no good leads.

It's frustrating to us.

Many of the women murdered were Jane Does.

They may or may not have been reported missing,

they may have been transient,

they may not have been from the area.

Without having an identity or a place to start from,

it makes for a very difficult investigation.

You don't know if it's a single incident,

if it's tied and associated to other murders,

if it's tied and associated to a particular killer.

[Narrator] And it's amid this chaos and confusion

that Lonnie Franklin claims his next victim--

and seemingly decides to taunt the police.

[Narrator] January 10, 1987.

Police had no idea who this man was,

but they started to wonder

is this actually the killer.

[Paul] We always thought, is that the suspect calling?

Is he playing games?

I mean, it'd be like an arsonist sitting down the street,

just watching the fire and stuff

and all the chaos that he's created.

[Nisha] Officers are dispatched to the address

that this man gave.

Sure enough, they find the body of another Black woman.

[Marguerite] She was found with this gas tank

that somebody had removed from a car,

so it was quite large,

covering three-quarters of her body.

The top half of her body was in a garbage bag.

When coroner investigators removed the bag,

they could determine that she was shot.

[Narrator] It's a scene like so many others

LA police have encountered,

only this time there's a credible lead.

[Narrator] Hours later, detectives locate

the blue-and-white van in a church parking lot

about five miles from where the body was found.

The engine is still warm,

but there is no sign of the driver.

[Nisha] They find out that it belongs to the church.

So then they start investigating everybody

belonging to this church.

There's nothing found in this van.

And all the interviews with church officials

led to a dead end as well.

This brings police back to their original theory,

you know, was this 911 call,

was it made by the killer,

and was this just kind of a ploy to throw them off the scene?

[Narrator] With no credible leads,

detectives turn their attention to identifying the victim.

Fingerprint analysis identifies the woman

as 23-year-old Barbara Ware.

Police track down Barbara Ware's family

and deliver the news.

My husband told me the police had come by his business

to tell him, uh, that they had found Barbara dead.

They couldn't tell us too much at that time,

just that they had found her. She had been shot.

For the first few days after we got the news,

it was devastating, and actually,

we didn't know what to do, which way to turn.

Barbara was a very charismatic person.

She never met a stranger.

She was very outgoing.

But she didn't back down from anybody.

I don't know what happened. She just--

She got in with the wrong people or into drugs at that time.

[Narrator] During the autopsy, the medical examiner determines

that Barbara's fatal gunshot wounds

were caused by a .25-caliber bullet.

And the markings that they noticed on these bullets

were compared to, ah, the bullets recovered

from Henrietta Wright and Debra Jackson.

The examiners concluded that

the bullets from each of those victims

were all fired from the same firearm.

[gunshot]

[Narrator] Increasingly convinced

that these three murders were committed by someone

other than the Southside Slayer,

police form a separate, smaller task force

dedicated to solving them.

Police once again decide not to inform the public,

and they again keep that under wraps as well.

You would think that they learned their lesson

from the first time,

when they kept this information from the public

and everyone distrusted them.

[Narrator] The silence seems to give

Lonnie Franklin carte blanche to ramp up his killing spree.

And between April 1987 and September 1988,

he takes the lives of four more women.

[Kayla] On April 15, 1987,

26-year-old Bernita Sparks was found

shot, beaten, and strangled.

October 31, 1987,

26-year-old Mary Lowe was found shot in an alley,

and she was also deceased.

She had left her home to go to a party,

but she never returned.

On January 30, 1988,

22-year-old Lachrica Jefferson was found deceased as well

and shot.

On September 11, 1988,

18-year-old Alicia Alexander--

and this is the youngest victim to date--

she left her home to casually go to the store,

but she never returned,

and she was later found shot to death in an alley as well.

[Narrator] Lonnie Franklin's body count

has risen to seven.

And in several of the cases,

Lonnie also sexually assaulted his victims.

[Nisha] On a number of these cases,

there was DNA collected from the bodies,

along with the bullet.

[Terry] Each of them are shot from the left by the same gun,

so a .25-caliber pistol.

Shot them from the left side. So in other words,

he's in the driving seat, they're in the passenger seat,

and he's shooting them, bang.

And then he would drive 'em into an alleyway

and dump them in dumpsters.

We're still a few years away from having, uh,

that DNA technology, ah,

as well as any type of DNA database.

So what they were limited to

was looking at those serology results.

So they would look at broad identifying factors

such as blood type.

The issue with serology, it's a good starting point,

but it's not as discriminating as DNA.

They also could look at certain proteins

and develop a protein profile for semen

from a vaginal swab or blood left at a scene.

But again, ah, once you get those results,

the question is, uh, "Who's the killer?"

and "We need to find a suspect."

The establishment of the CODIS database by the FBI

did not begin until the mid '90s,

so there's no computer that

they can enter these results into

to try to find a suspect.

Lonnie Franklin is now killing more frequently

and he's becoming way more daring.

[Narrator] But while Lonnie Franklin's killing spree

has escalated,

by day, he still seems to be living

an average working-class life.

[Pamela T] He was like a pillar of the community,

of the neighborhood.

Everybody be like, "Hi, Mr. Lonnie!"

You know?

And he'd say, "You guys, are you guys being good today?"

He was, ah, always in his front yard,

talking to everybody that walked by.

[Narrator] Only now, Lonnie is out on medical leave

from his 9 to 5 at the sanitation department

after claiming that an on-the-job injury

disabled his right arm.

[Dr. Edwards] When Lonnie Franklin, Jr

went out on disability,

he had to find other ways to make a living.

You know, he was the neighborhood mechanic.

So he was able to keep income coming into the home

and keep it under the radar from his family.

[Paul] He was a auto mechanic

that would get cars at these pick-aparts and all that,

so he was known for taking the cars,

flipping them, putting stolen plates on them,

and then getting rid of the cars.

[Nisha] Lonnie has two small children in elementary school

and his wife, Sylvia, is working nights.

After the kids go to bed,

this gives him ample opportunity to go out and find the victims.

[Terry] From the neighbors that I spoke to,

I don't think the people really ever thought

that there was a really darker side to him.

I don't think there was any real thought

that this was the monster he'd later turn out to be.

[Narrator] From 1985 to 1988,

Lonnie Franklin raped and murdered

at least seven women,

with less and less downtime between crimes,

all while avoiding suspicion by police.

But then, for reasons unknown,

Lonnie's killing spree suddenly stops.

[tense music]

We see in investigations that this happens

when someone has a huge life change happen.

[Narrator] In the early '90s,

neighbors were noticing some seismic shifts

in Lonnie's marriage.

His wife was rarely around anymore,

and it appeared their relationship was on the rocks.

[Pamela T] He wasn't as friendly.

He was a little bit stricter with Christopher.

He wasn't helping people as much.

He still did some random cars here and there, you know.

But he was just, like, more withdrawn.

[Narrator] Around this time,

Lonnie was also catching more attention than he liked

from the police.

[Nisha] Law enforcement started investigating Lonnie

over his disability claim.

There was some evidence that it may have been a false claim.

He was filing multiple claims.

Lonnie was arrested for burglary,

two non-fatal assaults,

and also carrying a firearm.

At one point, he also did four months in county

for grand theft auto as well.

He really is under a microscope with law enforcement,

so he just decided to lay low

before he got caught with the murders.

It's crazy to think that Lonnie

was right under law enforcement nose.

I mean, he was in and out of the system for decades,

but just not for the murders.

Like, he was right there.

[Narrator] With Lonnie no longer killing innocent women,

the investigation into the .25-caliber killings

goes dormant.

By the early 2000s, the city of Los Angeles

was beginning to gain control

over both the crack epidemic and gang violence.

[Pamela T] The crime was definitely calming down

in the 2000s.

They had more gang task force around, you know,

so it wasn't a whole lot of gangs

running in and out of the neighborhoods.

[Narrator] With crime on the downturn,

the LAPD could finally refocus their effort

on solving cold cases once deemed unsolvable.

We began a cold case unit in November of 2001.

Six people were chosen.

I was one of the six.

[Narrator] DNA analysis technology

also made great strides in the past decade.

And with those advances, the cold case unit

has a chance to reopen almost 9000 unsolved murders

that occurred between 1960 and 1997.

Including the seven murders Lonnie has committed.

[Clifford] California had a database.

It was part of CODIS, the national database.

At first, it was only for sexual predators,

or convicted sexual predators.

And then ultimately with Prop 69,

it expanded to most felons.

And with every day, with arrests made,

we were expanding the database.

A new detective might see and say,

"Hey, this piece of evidence, we can send this for DNA testing

now that we have these advanced procedures."

So we started screening all the cases one by one

and seeing if we had the evidence.

[Narrator] Among the first cold cases

the LAPD ran through the DNA database

were the .25-caliber murders from the 1980s.

We had these women that were murdered by someone

using the same firearm.

I could tell that on three of them,

DNA had been collected from the bodies.

They did sexual assault kits.

With that, I made a submission to our laboratory.

[Narrator] Detective Shepard asks the lab

to run the unknown male's DNA profile

through their database

to see if it can connect the suspect

to DNA collected from more recent homicides.

It doesn't take long to hit pay dirt.

Well, we got another case.

Valerie McCorvey.

[Victoria] July 11, 2003.

Valerie McCorvey was found dead in an alleyway.

She had been sexually assaulted violently.

And she'd been strangled to death.

[Dana] Valerie was a mom.

She had struggled off and on with her sobriety

and drug use, and was trying to get clean.

[Narrator] The cold case detectives

also connect the same DNA profile

to another recent homicide...

...the murder of 15-year-old Princess Berthomieux.

A runaway whose nude body was found in an alley in Inglewood

on March 9, 2002.

[Nisha] The DNA that was found on both Valerie and Princess

matched the DNA evidence from the '80s murders,

the .25-caliber murders.

But the difference with these murders

was these women had been beaten and strangled,

so the killer had changed the MO.

[Narrator] Though the methods may have changed,

it appears Lonnie Franklin is killing once again.

They didn't know who it was,

but they knew it was the same guy, he'd come back.

And there was something really ominous and eerie about that.

He's come back to haunt us and he's killing more people.

[Nisha] Maybe he just thought that

he was outsmarting law enforcement

by changing his MO again.

But why leave DNA behind?

A lot of these killers, they be trying to outsmart the police,

but they don't think of everything,

and that's definitely something that wasn't well thought out.

[Narrator] However, Lonnie's identity

is still unknown to police.

That's because despite multiple arrests

over multiple decades,

Lonnie was never charged with the type of crime

that required police to swab him for DNA.

The DNA databank was only limited to certain crimes--

murders, rapists,

or assault with some serious bodily injury.

It wasn't just like,

oh, you got arrested for grand theft auto?

You're in the databank.

[Nisha] Law enforcement has his DNA,

but they don't have anyone to match it to.

This killer is literally not in the system at all.

[Narrator] Over the next three years,

investigators search in vain for

their unidentified serial killer.

And in 2007...

Janecia Peters, 25 years old,

mom of one young son,

was found January 1, 2007.

Janecia had struggled with drug addiction,

but was working hard to get her life on a better track.

She had recently enrolled in a local school

to study computer science.

Janecia Peters was found dead inside of a garbage bag.

She had been shot once in the back,

but because the bag was actually zip-tied

when she was put it in,

she was still alive and ended up just asphyxiating

inside of the bag.

Investigators were able to test DNA on the actual zip tie

and they were able to get a DNA profile.

[Clifford] We know these murders are connected

because DNA and the ballistics connects him.

Uh, we don't have the gun

and we don't have a name to the DNA.

So who is he? How do we find him?

[Narrator] After creating a map

of where all 10 victims were found,

investigators realize that two of them were discovered

in almost the exact same location,

20 years apart.

[Clifford] Bernita Sparks was found in a dumpster

around 95th and Western.

Years later, we have Janecia Peters,

found in a dumpster around 95th and Western.

Why is he going to this location?

Does he live near here?

I started running license numbers

of people that lived there to get names,

and looking for records--

I'm looking for a sexual predator,

you know, that somebody who's not in custody,

who has a history of arrests for sexual assaults.

And there are some spooky people out there.

We sent surveillance teams out on some of these people,

and then they were following people where,

they're trolling.

[Narrator] But none of them are Lonnie Franklin.

With the police no closer to identifying their suspect

and with Lonnie now actively killing again,

detectives shift their focus from the present day

and revisit the case files from the original 1980s murders.

Almost right away,

they discover a critical piece of evidence

that seems to have been lost in the shuffle.

Going back through all the cases I'd gone through,

I saw there was one survivor,

and that was a woman named Enietra.

[Nisha] In 1988, there was a young woman

named Enietra Washington

who actually survived an attack,

and it was a gunshot.

She was actually shot by a .25-caliber pistol,

which was the same caliber of pistol

that Lonnie Franklin used to shoot his victims.

[Narrator] Though Enietra talked to police

at the time of the crime, nothing ever came of it.

We re-interview her.

And again, you're talking several years later,

and I'm sure Enietra was a little perturbed

about, "You're coming to me now?

"You know, I gave you all this information back in 1988,

and you're coming to me 20 years later?"

[Narrator] Despite her clear frustration

with how the case has been handled,

Enietra recounts once again the day she was attacked.

[Dana] November 20, 1988,

Enietra Washington is walking to a party.

She took notice of a car during her walk.

She thought it was cool.

And then the gentleman in the car noticed her.

He offered to give her a ride. She declined.

And then he started to kind of bait her.

She eventually gets in the car.

Everything seems fine, conversation is light.

[Narrator] Enietra says the man told her

he'd be glad to give her a ride to her friend's house,

but first he needed to stop at her uncle's house

on nearby 81st Street to pick up some money.

When the man returned a few minutes later,

Enietra noticed his demeanor had changed.

And then all of a sudden, she feels a heat

and a great intensity in her chest.

[intensifying music]

[gunshot]

[Dana] She had been shot.

She's now trying to get out of the car

and is going in and out of consciousness.

[tense music]

[Narrator] Enietra tells detectives

that at one point, she regained consciousness.

And realized the man was sexually assaulting her.

She said she lost consciousness again.

And when she came back to,

she noticed a bright light in her face.

Eventually she was able to get out of the car

because when she tried to open the door,

he ended up just pushing her out anyway.

And she struggled all the way to her friend's house,

where she waited until her friend came home,

and called the police.

[siren wailing]

[Narrator] Enietra was rushed to the hospital,

where trauma surgeons discover that thankfully,

the bullet that entered her chest

had ricocheted off her sternum

and failed to damage any vital organs.

She'd lost about a quart of blood,

but they saved her-- saved her life.

And they took the bullet out of her body.

[Narrator] From her hospital bed,

Enietra gave investigators a description of her assailant.

Enietra was able to give the cops a rough description

of what he looked like,

this swarthy African American man with pocked face.

[Kayla] And wasn't really threatening-looking.

She also described his car.

And it's also really important to investigators

because it's the first suspect description

that they had of this guy...

out of all the murders that he's committed.

Enietra says that after she was initially discharged

from the hospital,

she took detectives to the house on 81st Street,

where she believed she'd been attacked.

[Peter] Turns out Lonnie just lived three doors down.

And every time they did a canvass of the area,

Lonnie would be gone from the area.

So he was never actually contacted.

[Narrator] Enietra tells detectives

that she also worked with a sketch artist

to create a composite of her attacker.

[Nisha] She assumes that they're gonna make the sketch public

and that this guy was gonna be apprehended.

And unfortunately, they never make the sketch public.

They don't do anything at all with the sketch.

[Narrator] Enietra's account in 2007

dovetails almost exactly with the statements she gave in 1988.

However, the police now notice a detail about the attack

they hadn't before.

[Paul] The one thing that she did say

was about the suspect taking photos of her

after she'd been shot.

We were thinking, "Who would take photos of somebody

"they just sexually assaulted and shot?

Who would do that?"

[Narrator] Around the same time Enietra is speaking with

the cold case detectives about the attack,

a reporter named Christine Pelisek

has learned of this renewed investigation

into the .25-caliber killings.

[Clifford] She's doing what reporters are supposed to do--

snoop around, and she goes into,

uh, returned search warrants, um, that aren't sealed.

So she reads about all these cases.

We meet, and I talk to her a little bit about the cases,

but I still don't give a lot of information.

Unbeknownst to me, our leak is within

the LA Coroner's Office.

And she was obtaining her information from them.

[Narrator] Christine Pelisek's story

about the unsolved .25-caliber killings

is published in the LA Weekly on August 27, 2008.

It draws tremendous attention.

Christine and her editors, LA Weekly,

they felt like the public deserved to know

that there was a serial killer on the loose.

Christine said when she was writing the article,

her editor said, "Hey, you have to come up with a name

for this killer."

So she decided, after trial and error,

to come up with "The Grim Sleeper."

She said she came up with it

after she realized he was dormant

for about 13 1/2 to 14 years.

[Paul] The shit hit the fan, so to speak.

We were still, you know,

trying to talk to the witnesses from the '80s series

and trying to figure out who's still around,

and all of this stuff,

and, um, we weren't quite ready yet

to go public.

And then we were forced to go public with it.

[Diana] I was home watching TV,

and Barbara's picture came on the news.

And [indistinct], "What just happened?"

And they mentioned something about a serial killer.

I had no information.

I didn't know there was other victims.

I called the 77th Precinct,

and they said to me, "We've been trying

to get in touch with you."

And I'm saying to myself, "I don't think so.

"If you wanted to get in touch with me,

"you knew how.

"So you guys, you know, need to tell us what you know,

what's going on."

[Narrator] Forced to shift gears,

the LAPD begins asking the community for help,

finally sharing information they'd kept private for years.

[Paul] We had a couple different meetings with the community.

We gave them what we had,

which we don't know, we need help.

We had billboards posted in a couple different areas

in South Central

of the composite Enietra had given years earlier

and what age progression--what the guy might look like today.

[Narrator] LAPD also offers an unprecedented reward.

[Paul] We had a $500,000 reward issued.

Back then, if you got a $10,000 reward,

that was a lot.

[Diana] When we found out about the, uh, reward,

we were very encouraged about that.

We figured somebody knows something.

That's a lot of money.

And, uh, I'm sure that if anybody knew,

they would step forward.

[Narrator] Despite receiving over 800 tips,

investigators are unable to find anything substantial.

[Clifford] Every now and then, we'd get,

"Oh, yeah, well the composite looks like a guy on Facebook"

or "The composite looks like my neighbor" and all that stuff.

We'd go out and see if they'd give us a voluntary swab.

But these were not our guys.

[Terry] Bizarrely, they'd put up a billboard

two blocks from his house

with a police sketch of the suspect.

This is what was composed on the information

of Enietra Washington.

[Nisha] So the investigators,

they just kept trying to look for this person,

to no avail.

But you can only look so much

before you get to the end of your rope.

[Paul] There were people getting tired of it.

They wanted to work fresh cases.

They wanted to move on.

So it came down to...

Detective Shepard, myself, and Detective Kilcoyne.

And we're getting close to the ends of our times,

we're getting close to retiring.

[Nisha] You know, meanwhile, Lonnie Franklin,

he's living his best life.

And although it's been four months

since he's killed anybody,

you just never know when he's gonna strike again.

[Narrator] Detectives on the Grim Sleeper task force

have no idea the DNA collected from multiple crime scenes

belongs to Lonnie.

[Dana] He had a rap sheet,

but it wasn't for a violent crime,

thus why he didn't have any DNA in the system.

He pretty much flew under the radar

as just as an average guy in the neighborhood.

[Narrator] But a new advancement in DNA analysis

offers investigators a glimmer of hope.

In April 2008, California allowed law enforcement

to use what's called familial DNA.

[Marguerite] With the familial search,

a DNA profile from crime scene evidence

can be compared to the convicted offender's

and look for a partial match.

And that, depending on the results,

can be a first order relative, parent/child-type relationship.

And then additional investigation, uh, is done

on that name and that potential relative

to ferret out information about the true perpetrator.

[Clifford] I made a phone call to the DNA lab

in Richmond, California.

The director was Jill Spriggs.

And I said, "Jill, hey, look, I've got a problem.

"I've got a serial murderer here in Los Angeles.

"He's been murdering women since, uh, about 1984, '85.

"We don't have a clue who he is.

We have DNA samples."

So she went back to Richmond.

And they started doing some searches.

She called back and said, "So far, there are no relatives

that we discovered."

[Narrator] Eight months later,

Jill Spriggs contacts Detective Shepard again.

They still haven't found a familial DNA match

for the Grim Sleeper,

but the database is growing day by day.

Then, in March 2010,

Detective Shepard bumps into Jill at a homicide conference.

She says, "You know, it's been a couple years.

"The database has probably grown by maybe another million or so.

Why don't we try running your suspect profile again?"

It was July 4th weekend I received a phone call.

It was Paul, my partner.

And he said, "Do you wanna come to work?"

I said, "What's going on?"

He says, "We've got something."

"We've got a familial match."

[Kayla] With them finding a partial match in the system,

they had something to go off of.

And the guy that they found was named Christopher Franklin.

[Nisha] Christopher Franklin is now 20 years old.

And that's Lonnie Franklin's son.

And he seemed to have followed

in his father's criminal footsteps

because he commits a felony.

[Paul] He was arrested for a gun case

and I think a narcotics charge.

He pled guilty to a felony,

had to provide a sample as part of his felony probation.

[Clifford] We did the Y portion of the DNA,

which was just the male version.

It's somebody, a male within that family line.

[Victoria] They were looking at the uncle.

They were looking at the brother.

And then they were looking at the father

of Christopher Franklin,

Lonnie David Franklin, Jr.

At the time, he was about 56, 57.

[Paul] Lo and behold, the first record,

his DMV pops up,

right there on 81st Street.

His physical description is, like, 5'8

and whatever his weight was.

And I'm like, "Holy shit, this is...this is it.

He's right there."

[Dana] Many of the women that were murdered

were found within very close proximity to Lonnie's home.

They were found in alleys, near dumpsters.

And who would know the best alleys and dumpsters

to hide a body?

Someone who used to work with the Department of Sanitation.

[Paul] That was his route.

That was his route.

Some of the bodies were found probably within

a few blocks of his residence.

I mean, everything was falling into place.

[Narrator] But before they can make an arrest,

investigators need to be completely sure

that Lonnie Franklin, Jr matches the DNA profile

recovered from the victims.

[Clifford] My boss, Dennis Kilcoyne,

contacted every surveillance unit we had.

"We need a DNA sample from this guy.

"Follow him until he discards something

where we can get a DNA sample."

So they did.

Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week,

they were watching and waiting.

They were looking for a discarded cigarette butt,

a soda can he'd drank from,

even if he spit on the street,

that's enough they can scrape it up when you're gone.

[Narrator] The surveillance team's chance

arrives one evening,

when they follow Lonnie to a pizza parlor

for a birthday celebration with one of his girlfriends

and her family.

One of the detectives contacts the manager

and says, "Hey, this is what we're doing.

"We've got a bad guy here. Can you help us out?

"Let me dress up as one of your employees.

"When they need their table cleaned off,

let me clean it off, please."

The manager says, "Sure, go ahead."

So they go in."

For, like, three hours, he's there at this

little kid's birthday party, bussing tables.

And he's got his little gloves on, collecting stuff

as Lonnie would discard it.

And he would collect it and put it in a separate tray.

[Clifford] The surveillance team detective

gives them to our people, who take them to our laboratory.

He apparently did bite into a pizza,

so they swabbed the cheese.

Boom, we have a DNA sample.

So less than three days, they came back with the results.

It is a match.

It's a perfect match.

[Narrator] On July 10, 2010,

law enforcement descends upon Lonnie Franklin's house.

[Dana] It wasn't just one cop car

sent down to take him into custody.

There were many individuals outside,

already on the block, and around his home.

Numerous cop cars.

I mean, it was full-on pounce on the situation,

we have to apprehend this man as soon as possible.

[Narrator] Though the scene is one of chaos,

police don't have to look far to find Lonnie Franklin.

[Paul] He's leaning against the car,

and he is just calm as a cucumber.

And, uh, I introduced myself

and, uh, Detective Kilcoyne and, uh, say,

"We have a warrant for your arrest for murder."

And he goes, "Murder? Okay."

And that was it.

[Narrator] With Lonnie now in custody,

police execute a search warrant on his property.

[Clifford] We're looking for firearms.

We're looking for any other evidence

that connects him,

if he kept any trophies from any of the victims.

[Paul] That search of his residence

was a massive undertaking.

I have never, in 35 years with the police department,

been involved in a search of that magnitude.

There were over 600 items of evidence that were collected.

[Narrator] Among the items collected

are several sets of handcuffs

that police believed Lonnie used

to bind many of his victims,

as well as the handgun

presumably used in the commission

of the majority of the murders.

Most shockingly, investigators find

a mountain of Polaroid photographs

hidden in an alcove behind a wall in Lonnie's body shop.

[Dana] There were over a thousand images of women,

predominately Black women, found on these Polaroids,

many of them unconscious,

some of them in provocative sexual positions.

Many of them appear to be completely unaware

that there's a picture being taken of them

at a very vulnerable moment.

When the cops saw all these pictures in his garage,

they were horrified.

They thought initially, "Oh my god,

has he killed, like, 500 women?"

Some of the photos date back 30 years,

and investigators have no way of knowing

how many of the women were additional murder victims.

At least one of them, however, is very much alive.

One of these Polaroid pictures was of Enietra Washington,

looking like she had passed out.

The cops took that Polaroid picture

to Enietra Washington,

and that's when she was able to say,

"I wasn't imagining this. I wasn't dreaming.

"That is a picture of me. I do remember when

"he snapped this shot, when this bright light went off,

and I was going in and out of consciousness."

So she was able to actually identify herself,

her 27-year-old self, from 22 years before,

when she was shot by Lonnie Franklin.

[Narrator] Along with Polaroids,

police also find numerous pieces of jewelry and women's clothing,

as well as several driver's licenses.

Lonnie's neighbors are stunned.

Most of the neighbors told us he was a decent man.

[Dana] My uncle knew Lonnie from the community.

He wasn't someone that created fear

or anything of that nature, or intimidation.

And no one in the community suspected

that Lonnie Franklin could be a murderer,

let alone the Grim Sleeper.

[Narrator] While the search of Lonnie's home continues,

detectives at the station begin questioning him.

We went over the, uh, basic little chit-chat,

you know, verifying stuff.

And then I start bringing out the photos.

It started with Janecia.

[Kayla] He looks very detached,

very, like, cold,

and just, like, he's not in the room.

They show him multiple pictures of them,

and he claims he's never met them.

He even makes some very heartless

and crass jokes about how some of the women look.

[Victoria] He just was--I would say rude.

He was rude, offhand, almost arrogant.

Lonnie Franklin had the audacity

to look at one of these poor victims and say,

"She's ugly."

And that stuck out in my mind as just

what kind of a horrible person he was

to say that about this person that he clearly killed

for absolutely no reason at all.

The absolute clincher was when they came out with the fact

that there was one that survived,

because he believed that none of them survived.

That's when he got very nervous in the interrogation room,

because he knew that he was caught then.

[Narrator] As detectives wrap up their interrogation of Lonnie...

other officers are interviewing Lonnie's wife, Sylvia.

I had a brief exchange with her.

I asked her about, you know, what kind of person she was,

what did he do.

And she said, "Well, it's just a normal relationship.

You know, he does what he wants to do."

I said, "Well, yeah, but--"

And we knew that he would go out of the middle of the night

because the surveillance team was watching him,

and he'd go out up and down Western

trying to talk to girls.

She wasn't aware of that.

And from examining the house,

it kind of looked like he had his own space,

he had his own office.

Um, I'm not sure they were sharing a bedroom or not.

I really felt bad for his wife.

She was very nice

and seemed to understand what we're explaining to her.

Didn't wanna try to embarrass her.

She was already getting enough, you know,

stares from the neighborhood.

[Narrator] On July 7, 2010,

Lonnie Franklin, Jr is charged with 10 counts of murder,

one count of kidnapping,

and one count of attempted murder.

But the mountain of photographs found in his garage

suggests the body count might be higher

than anyone ever imagined.

[Narrator] On December 16, 2010,

the LAPD makes public 180 of the photos seized

during the raid on Lonnie Franklin's residence.

The hope is that someone will recognize

and help identify the many other women

who may have also lost their lives

at the hands of the Grim Sleeper.

[Female Reporter] Police say these pictures suggest

there may be more victims.

I just think it's absurd to think

that he just stopped one day

and then started up another day

14, 13 years later.

[Dana] These women were dubbed the Polaroid Women.

Law enforcement didn't know if they were dead,

if they were alive, if they had moved away.

Cops are hoping that family members would come forward

or even the women themselves to identify them.

[Narrator] One person who sees the photos in the newspaper

is the grandfather of LaWana Wilson.

[LaWana] That morning, my grandfather got the paper.

When he opened it up, he seen my picture.

And he hands my mother the newspaper

and it shows my picture.

My mother started crying. She said,

"Girl, you gotta leave this stuff alone!

"You see this? They got you in the newspaper.

It says you're dead."

I'd never seen that picture a day in my life

until it came out in the newspaper.

I'm like, "Wait a minute, who took a picture of me

when I was asleep?" Like... And then I looked, I said,

"That's that old picture,

"when my cousin gave me that pink dress.

That's when I was 14!"

[Narrator] The photograph triggers

a long repressed memory,

and LaWana realizes it was taken

when she was raped years earlier

by Lonnie Franklin.

That picture of me sitting in a vehicle

is the gray minivan that was parked on a driveway

the day he did his rape.

He took me to his house first, sexually assaulted me,

and then dumped me in that damn U-Haul truck.

[unnerving music]

[Narrator] LaWana never told friends or family

about the rape or who committed it.

[LaWana] It sent me into drug addiction.

And then a drug addiction sends me into mental health.

Then mental health sent me straight into homelessness.

Now, homeless, it turns into sex walking, sex slaves,

because drugs have me a slave to the streets.

Now I'm jumping in and out of cars,

telling myself that I'm just gonna be careful.

I'm not gonna get in the car with the wrong person.

And I didn't--that wasn't always the case.

[Narrator] But that's only half of LaWana's nightmare encounter

with the Grim Sleeper.

Years later, while working the streets,

she's picked up and raped again by Lonnie Franklin.

[LaWana] I just knew he was the same guy,

so I figured he must live in this neighborhood

because I done ran into him.

And I didn't know how to get in touch

with the people who knew him at this time.

[Narrator] That's when LaWana's grandfather

deals her an even more shocking blow...

one that seems to explain why Lonnie Franklin,

aka the Grim Sleeper,

the man who raped her not once, but twice,

decided not to take her life.

It turns out that Lonnie is actually her cousin.

I didn't even know it was him that threw me in the U-Haul!

I didn't even know it was him

that I was sitting in the car with

[indistinct] '74.

And little did I know he was my cousin!

I did nothing about a Lonnie Franklin

or a Grim Sleeper!

[Narrator] Investigators are eventually able

to identify and determine the fate

of most of the so-called Polaroid Women.

They now believe that Lonnie Franklin

murdered six additional women,

two of which were killed during the 14-year period

when the Grim Sleeper was allegedly dormant.

They just didn't have the evidence

to actually charge him with it.

[Paul] We've already got him charged with 10 murders,

so what's four or five more

if he gets life without or death or whatever?

So I think the decision was made

that we wouldn't file.

[Narrator] On February 16, 2016,

the murder trial of Lonnie Franklin,

perhaps the most prolific serial killer

in California history,

gets underway.

The prosecution was under an immense amount of pressure

at this point

because it's been so many years,

and the police honestly dropped the ball a lot

during the investigation,

so they felt like, hey, this is our last chance.

[Narrator] The trial is attended by many family members

of Lonnie's victims.

Diana Ware, the stepmother of Barbara Ware,

believed to be the third woman murdered by Lonnie,

is determined to be there every day.

[Diana] After my husband passed,

my friend says, "Are you gonna be going to court every day?"

"Yes, I am, because I want them to know

"Barbara was loved.

My husband's not here to represent that."

[Victoria] The gallery was filled with press reporters

and victims' family members.

And that was it.

There was no supporters of Lonnie Franklin

in the courtroom.

His wife, uh, never showed up to the trial.

His daughter never showed up to the trial.

And his son never showed up to the trial.

[Dana] Lonnie Franklin brought a romance novel

to the courtroom to read during his trial.

The level of disconnect and disregard

for what is happening,

the people he's impacted for the rest of their lives,

the children whose mothers he took away,

the impact on these families and on this community,

it just shook me to my core.

Part of me wanted to jump over that counter

and [indistinct] myself.

[Dana] He's an extremely dangerous man

and you don't want any flubs

or leave any possible openings

for anyone to say...

he's not guilty.

You want to put forth the strongest evidence

and the strongest cases possible

to remove all doubt in order to get this man off the streets.

They had to get evidence from 1985 to 2007

proving that it was the same .25-caliber gun

and that it was the same killer killing each of the victims

with the same DNA on every one of them.

[Narrator] Prosecutors also have a star witness.

On February 25, 2016,

Enietra Washington takes the stand

to describe the night Lonnie left her for dead.

Enietra Washington had no fear.

So when she said who the person was that shot her,

she would look right in Lonnie's face.

And she said, "He's sitting right there.

That's the man who shot me."

To think that she went through this after he shot her

and then gonna take her picture, you know,

that was kind of hard for me to sit through.

[Dana] To have the courage to take the stand

and face the man who tried to kill her and raped her

in court, she's a true hero.

[Narrator] In his closing argument,

Lonnie's defense attorney claims his client is innocent.

The defense's theory was some other guy did it

or there were multiple other guys

that committed these murders and it wasn't Lonnie Franklin.

There was a mystery nephew that, uh, circled around sometimes,

but there was basically no evidence

of a viable alternate suspect in this nephew.

[Narrator] On May 5, 2016,

the jury delivers their verdict.

They find Lonnie Franklin, Jr guilty

on 10 counts of first degree murder

and one count of attempted murder.

His wife and children maintain their silence.

It's been 30 years, and we needed this.

And it hurted our family to lose her.

It kind of destroyed us. She had five kids.

We share a similar kind of pain--

the pain of losing someone that didn't deserve to be lost.

I wanna remember this sweet little girl

who had her whole life in front of her.

It's just unbelievable for a human being

to be so cold and uncaring.

[Man] Most gracious God, we thank you, Lord,

for the justice which has been served today.

[Narrator] Four weeks later,

Lonnie is back in court for his sentencing hearing.

His wife and children do not appear on his behalf,

but families of the victim are there

to speak up for their lost loved ones.

[Diana] We just told him just how we felt.

You took a loved one from us.

We'll always miss that person.

There's always gonna be a empty chair at that table.

Not only did you take a child, you took a mother, a sister.

I got a lot off my chest by just letting him know

just how I felt.

[Narrator] But perhaps the most powerful impact statement

comes from the first victim Lonnie sexually assaulted

back in the 1970s,

who came all the way from Germany to testify.

Her name was Ingrid.

She was the one who was gang raped.

She explained how she was thrown into this vehicle

with these Army men that raped her.

This rape could've been the catalyst

for what was to come.

Gave him the taste of raping and being violent with women.

So that woman lived.

I don't think he was thinking of being a serial killer

at that time.

But it did certainly set the stage

for what he was to become.

[Narrator] In June 2016,

31 years after he claimed the life

of his first confirmed victim,

Lonnie Franklin, Jr receives his sentence.

[Male Reporter] Alicia Alexander's parents

say death is the right choice.

[Narrator] But not only does Lonnie never admit

to killing any of his victims,

he never meets his date with the executioner, either.

[mournful string music]

[Diana] When I first heard that

Lonnie Franklin had died in prison,

I can't say I was relieved.

I wanted him to suffer a little bit longer.

But then I thought,

"That's not my decision to make."

This is something that God did

because he wants to give him the final verdict.

[Narrator] His body shows no sign of trauma,

and an official cause of death has never been released.

As for the Grim Sleeper's actual body count,

the LAPD may never know.

There's probably other ones that we'll never know about.

He was a trash collector.

I mean, what was to say they're not in some landfill somewhere?

I believe it took a long time for

the Los Angeles Police Department

to identify that there was an issue,

for them to pay attention to the cries of the community

in South Central,

because women of color from low economic communities

are often overlooked and dismissed in our country.

If women were being taken from Beverly Hills,

an Ivy League campus,

I guarantee you that it would not have taken 31 years

to find that murderer.

[Paul] I think there was a belief

in the community down there

that the police department didn't care,

which is far from the truth.

We do care.

I mean, sometimes some cases are harder than others.

If you look at the investigations

that were done in the '80s with these victims,

it's what enabled us the 2000s

to be able to go back and solve these cases,

things that they had done, things that we had learned.

This technology has come so far.

[Diana] Following this case,

my hope is that

the police and the community could come together.

detectives Shepard and Coulter

tried to really communicate with us.

The differences that we had in the beginning,

we overcame them.

They did the best they could and, you know, we appreciate it,

all that they did.

[Narrator] The Grim Sleeper will go down in history

as one of the longest-operating serial killers

to ever prowl the streets of a major American city,

all the while hiding in plain sight.

[Diana] When I first saw Lonnie Franklin,

I was shocked at how, you know,

he didn't look like a serial killer.

[Terry] It's very disconcerting to discover

that somebody that you have seen in the neighborhood for years

and made a certain set of assumptions about

suddenly turns out to be a coldhearted killer.

And I'm sure there are a lot of people in that neighborhood who,

even to this day, are very disconcerted by the fact

that they never saw what this guy really was.

[Pamela T] This was someone

who lived in the neighborhood for years.

And to find out that, at the end of it all,

he was a killer, a serial killer at that,

you know, living right up under everyone's nose...

it was a really, really gnarly feeling.

You don't know who you're sitting next to

walking down the street with.

You just don't know.

[tense, unnerving music]

[tense music]

♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh-ooh

[ding-ding]