The Grim Sleeper: He Punished Black Women for Being Drug Addicts

Lonnie Franklin killed dozens in the name of “cleaning up the streets”.

It is hard enough to be a part of a minority that is discriminated against and has been left behind in matters of economic and social development. If you add to this some rampant crime targeted at your kind, and constant neglect from the police because your lives apparently don’t matter enough to be taken seriously, what can you then do to be noticed and get the justice you deserve?

This is exactly the situation black women found themselves in living in the unsafe neighborhoods of South Los Angeles. Los Angeles has always been known for its high crime rates, which have come down steadily over the years but still remains a high number.

But in the years spanning the crimes referred to in this story, between 1985 to 2007, the crime rates, especially the homicide rates in the South Los Angeles neighborhoods in question, were rather high.

The 1980s and the Strawberry Murders

In the mid-1980s the Los Angeles Police Department saw an increasing number of cases of murders of black women who were chronic drug users and street sex workers. These murders mostly involved killing by stabbing or strangling the victims and there were at least a dozen such cases reported between 1983–85.

These murders were colloquially referred to as “strawberry murders” as they involved women who exchanged sex for drugs. Initially these cases, despite obvious signs of a potential serial killer, weren’t given enough attention by the police department. This was probably because a lot of people in the police authorities believed the victims of these crimes to be of not enough significance to care about. Black, homeless women who consumed drugs and sold their bodies for money, were their least priority.

The authorities were so heartless and discriminative in their handling of these cases that these cases were often even referred to as “NHI” cases or the abbreviation for “No Humans Involved” — an indication of how worthless these victims’ lives were considered to be.

While there were a dozen or more known victims, there were hundreds of other black women who were missing, but no one paid enough attention to look for them.

The rumored serial killer responsible for these killings was given the name “Southside Slayer” because of the location of most of these murders being South Los Angeles. The police force in charge was named the “Southside Slayer Task Force.”

A group of activists called the Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders in March 1986 pressured the Los Angeles City Council to increase the reward money they were offering for information on the killings from $10,000 to $25,000.

Investigation and Linked Arrests

Over the following years, multiple serial killers admitted to having committed at least one of the many Southside murders.

There were also three murders committed with a 9mm caliber pistol that were investigated by the Southside Slayer Task Force, which remained unsolved.

However, another group of seven killings committed between 1985 and 1987 with a .25 caliber firearm would later be associated with the killer who the world came to know as the Grim Sleeper, but this wasn’t going to be discovered until a couple of decades later in 2007.

DNA Analysis and the 2000s Investigation

It was May 2007 when a breakthrough occurred in the cases of many unsolved murders. The murder of 25-year old Janecia Peters led to some DNA analysis that revealed results linked to at least eleven other unsolved murders in Los Angeles. The earliest of these murders dated back to 1985.

A new task force was also formed that year called the “800 Task Force” and after months of investigation, Lonnie Franklin became the prime suspect. In addition to the familial DNA analysis, believed to have been done using his son Christopher’s DNA, there was also a description from a murder back in the 1980s that matched Franklin’s description and that of his vehicle’s.

In September 2008, the prize money to arrest the serial killer was announced at a whopping $500,000. It was in February 2009 after a press address by the investigating officials, that the LA Weekly gave the serial killer the name “Grim Sleeper” owing to the 20-year hiatus he had taken between his killings in the 1980s and the 2000s.

Lonnie’s Arrest, Further Investigation and Documentary

On July 7, 2010, Lonnie was arrested. The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office charged him with ten counts of murder, one count of attempted murder, and special circumstance allegations of multiple murders in the case.

Lonnie was a former army officer, who had been dishonorably discharged from his duties after he had been involved in gang-raping a 17-year old German teen. He had for the longest part been a car mechanic in his South Los Angeles neighborhood who mostly dealt in stolen cars and was just another regular “friendly” guy everyone in the hood recognized and knew.

Yet, on further questioning and investigation, it was revealed that Lonnie had earlier been convicted for at least 14 counts of a variety of crimes ranging from grand theft auto, aggravated assault, and many others. Yet, for none of these crimes, his DNA had ever been collected — a huge missed opportunity on the part of law authorities.

How they had gotten to Lonnie was a mere coincidence. None of the DNAs found on the victims in the 2000s murders matched the LAPD database, but there was a “similar” DNA match with Christopher Franklin, Lonnie’s son, who was arrested for a felony weapons charge in 2008. Chris was too young to have been the killer behind the 1980s murders, but it was the familial DNA match that led them to his father Lonnie.

Hundreds of Possible Victims

On December 16, 2010, the LAPD released 180 photos of women, found in Franklin’s home after unsuccessful attempts to identify the individuals, possibly additional victims.

In a documentary made on the Grim Sleeper, it is shown how there were hundreds of these photos and more found in Lonnie’s house. Many of these were mugshots, and others were pictures of women naked, and in sexual poses. Some of these women were not missing, or victims, as they’re shown to be Lonnie’s former Nanny, his son’s ex-girlfriend, and others who in some way knew Lonnie.

Most of these women, at first, described Lonnie as a friendly, good-natured guy. His friends also believed him to be innocent and didn’t see how he could be a serial killer. Yet, on further investigation and questioning, in the documentary, his friends reveal incidents that were clearly signs of deviant behavior.

One of his friends told the reporter, how Lonnie always carried a .25 caliber weapon, which was used for most of the murders. He also, once, saw a handcuff fall from Lonnie’s vehicles. He and his friend would often also exchange pictures of naked women and have a laugh about it in Lonnie’s garage.

The ex-girlfriend of Lonnie’s son Christopher mentioned how she would think of Lonnie as a “horny old man” because he would surely seem weird in his behavior on occasion, but would show no signs of being a murderer. She, once, when using Lonnie’s vehicle, along with Chris, found a bunch of polaroids of naked women, and some underwear in his vehicle.

Christopher’s nanny admitted in an interview that Lonnie would make her do sexual favors in return for drugs and money, and these favors increasingly got weird and twisted, which is when she quit the job.

The Origins of The Hatred and Crimes

While Lonnie’s current wife was a nice woman, she was also not always with Lonnie. According to Chris’ ex-girlfriend, Lonnie’s wife would be at home some times but away for days at other times. This made her believe that their marriage probably wasn’t the healthiest.

However, it was Lonnie’s first wife, which was probably the root cause for his psychopathic behavior and murders. His friends claim that his first wife was a crack-smoking drug addict who would spend all the money Lonnie made on drugs and was the reason why Lonnie hated anything to do with drugs, alcohol, or anything related to substance abuse.

It was this hatred that made him turn towards black women who were involved in drug abuse. He would use the lure for drugs and money to pick them off the streets of South Los Angeles, sexually and physically torture them in his van or his home, and eventually in many cases murder them by shooting them with his .25 caliber weapon.

The fact that he chose a certain profile of victims meant that his crimes went unnoticed by the police, who in fact, in many cases believed the serial killer behind these murders was doing the world a favor by “cleaning up the streets of crackwhores.” In the documentary, Chris, also mentions that a lot of people would come up to him and claim to be fans of his father for having done a favor to society, a fact that made him feel sick.

Lonnie’s Trial and Eventual Fate

Lonnie was charged with ten murders and one attempted murder and held without bail. After lengthy pretrial discovery and several delays, the trial opened on February 16, 2016. On May 5, 2016, after nearly three months of trial and a day and a half of jury deliberation, Lonnie was convicted of all counts.

On June 6, 2016, a Los Angeles County jury sentenced him to death. On August 10, the Superior Court sentenced Franklin on each count, naming the individual victims.

However, before his death sentence could be executed, on March 28, 2020, Lonnie was found unresponsive in his cell at San Quentin State Prison and pronounced dead.

A Case That Screams — Black Lives (didn’t) Matter

Could a criminal have gotten away with such atrocious crimes had the victims belonged to the more privileged parts of the society or had the victims been white? Do we truly live in a world where certain lives matter less than others owing to their skin color, economic strata, means of livelihood, and other such superficial considerations?

It took decades of slow-moving investigations, and potentially dozens and dozens of murders, that might well have been avoided, for the authorities to arrest and prosecute Lonnie Franklin. We can only hope that we’ve since moved on to a world that has a more just and fair judicial system, that doesn’t try cases based on the profile of its victims.

References Tales of the Grim Sleeper (2014 documentary) https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/grim-sleeper-franklin-trial-south-los-angeles-serial-killer-neighbors-react/123131/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/grim-sleeper-serial-killer-everything-you-need-to-know-252246/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grim_Sleeper