NARRATOR: In July 2010, detectives in Los Angeles,
California had finally identified
a sexual predator who had been murdering innocent women
over a 25 year period.
The serial killer had claimed at least 10
victims before discarding their bodies
in alleyways and dumpsters.
To him, they are no more than garbage.
They're utterly disposable.
They're absolutely irrelevant.
NARRATOR: An LAPD detective posing
as a busboy at a pizzeria was about to collect the evidence
that would finally lead to the capture of Lonnie Franklin Jr,
the man the press had titled, "The Grim Sleeper."
Media likes to report they got DNA from the pizza slice.
And yes, they did get DNA from the pizza slice.
But the main part of the DNA was obtained from the napkins
he used to wipe his mouth.
NARRATOR: Franklin murdered seven women in the 1980s.
But when one of his victims survived, he suddenly stopped.
It wasn't until 14 years later in 2002
that Franklin began to kill again.
He's back from the sleeping period
and he's just as ruthless as he was before.
And he's learned during that time,
he's become more sadistic.
We've got a serial murderer in Los Angeles.
He's still active and we need to find him and stop him.
NARRATOR: Lonnie Franklin Jr., the grim sleeper
had awoken as one of the world's most evil killers.
[music playing]
When Lonnie Franklin Jr. was arrested and charged
with the murder of 10 women in July 2010,
it brought his three decade long murderous career to an end.
The media had dubbed the sexual predator,
"The Grim Sleeper" in relation to the 14
years in which he lay dormant.
Had he not begun killing again, Franklin
may never have been caught.
LAPD homicide detective, Cliff Shepard
was part of the investigative team who finally bought
Lonnie Franklin to justice.
CLIFF SHEPARD: In November of 2001,
Los Angeles Police Department started a cold case
unit for unsolved murders.
We had somewhere between 6,000 to 9,000 unsolved murders
between 1960 and the present.
NARRATOR: Using DNA analysis, the task force
managed to link a small number of the murders
to the same unknown perpetrator.
Detective Paul Coulter joined the task force in 2007.
PAUL COULTER: When you work old cases like that
and you pull out one old murder to see what the detectives
did back then is hard enough.
We had 10 cases that we were trying to learn about.
CLIFF SHEPARD: With that many unsolved murders,
he thought we could use the technology from today
and apply it to those unsolved murders,
and solve some of them.
And that's what we did.
NARRATOR: DNA would be the downfall of Franklin who
experts believe is responsible for many more murders
than he was convicted of.
CLIFF SHEPARD: Lonnie Franklin and evil?
Can you go out and murder 15, 20 people and not be?
It's obvious to me that he doesn't
care about anybody else.
NARRATOR: This killer's story begins
in South Central Los Angeles.
Lonnie Franklin Jr., was born on the 30th of August 1952.
As a child, he often suffered with migraines
and struggled academically.
GEOFFREY WANSEL: He wasn't the brightest boy.
For a long time, he could barely read or write.
But he did have certain skills one of which
developed about the age of seven when his doting father
taught him to drive.
It gave Franklin an absolute obsession with cars.
He discovered he was good at fixing cars,
he was good with his hands.
And this was a skill that gave him an occupation, an identity,
but it also brought along a kind of social skill
and a kudos that had value.
NARRATOR: As well as an accomplished mechanic,
young Lonnie found he was popular with the opposite sex.
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: One thing that
came out for me was his charm.
He really knew how to work at that.
He knew how to make women feel special, he flirted with them.
He really endeared himself to them,
and that was a skill that would come in very useful to him.
NARRATOR: But Franklin's charm couldn't
keep him out of trouble.
Aged just 16, he was taken into custody twice
for grand theft auto, and the following year
arrested for burglary.
Now both these events must have greatly distressed
his father, Lonnie senior.
And so in an attempt to get his son back
on the straight and narrow, he suggest he enlist in the army.
NARRATOR: By spring 1974, 21-year-old Franklin
was stationed in Stuttgart, Germany.
The US army recruit worked as a cook
but his appetite for women and crime
would prove to be a recipe for disaster.
GEOFFREY WANSEL: Late at night on April 16th 1974,
he and two army buddies decide to commit rape.
In the first attempt, they try and drag a young woman
into their car but they fail.
But an hour later, they do capture a 17-year-old
and hold her at knife-point.
Not surprisingly given Lonnie Franklin's obsession with cars,
he's the driver.
NARRATOR: The victim builds up a rapport with Franklin
in an attempt to bring her attackers to justice.
In the wake of all that horror,
persuades them to drive her home.
And what's more, she gives Franklin
her telephone number in the hope that he contacts her.
NARRATOR: Incredibly, the very next day
Franklin called the woman.
And when they arranged to meet, it was the police
who were waiting for him.
And indeed he was convicted of the kidnap, the rape,
and the attempted kidnap, and sentenced to three years
and four months in prison.
But he didn't serve all that time in Germany.
He was shipped back to the United States.
NARRATOR: After being discharged from the army in May 1976,
the 23-year-old headed back to Los Angeles.
It was a chance for Franklin to start anew.
And he soon built up the persona of a friendly neighborhood
family man.
So you had if you like, a conventional family, a father,
mother, daughter, son.
In many ways, extremely conventional even ordinary,
except Franklin was most unordinary.
He couldn't settle.
He got all sorts of different jobs
until eventually because of his love of cars,
he became a garage attendant for the LAPD.
NARRATOR: But Franklin didn't last long working
on the right side of the law.
In 1982, age 30, he began a new job, one which would eventually
help in his life of crime.
CLIFF SHEPARD: He left the police department
still working for the city and went
to the sanitation department.
GEOFFREY WANSEL: He was a garbage man.
He collected trash from his local area.
It was pretty rundown.
But it gave him an extraordinary knowledge
of the Los Angeles alleyways and the area he lived.
He was intimately familiar with every inch of it.
NARRATOR: By 1992, the 40-year-old
had stopped work because of an injury to his arm
and was claiming disability benefits.
Living on West 81st Street with his wife and two children,
Lonnie Franklin was leading a seemingly normal existence.
His life appeared far removed from the deadly streets
of 1980s Los Angeles.
PAUL COULTER: The crime rate in the city of LA
at that time was high.
We would run 800 to 1,100 murders in the city of LA
a year.
CLIFF SHEPARD: We didn't have that many detectives.
Citywide we have maybe 135 homicide detectives,
so we're overwhelmed.
NARRATOR: The city was rife with drugs and gangs.
It was a dangerous place to live if you were vulnerable.
CLIFF SHEPARD: The major problem was cocaine.
Rock cocaine was rampant.
Kids learned that they could make money standing
on the streets selling cocaine, and didn't have
to go to school and work hard.
With that, that also brought the violence.
A lot of people became drug addicts.
Many women became drug addicts, and they were susceptible then
to being murdered.
NARRATOR: One of the hundreds of killings recorded in 1985
was that of 29-year-old cocktail waitress,
Debra Jackson who'd been visiting a friend
on an early August evening.
CLIFF SHEPARD: Debra Jackson was last
seen walking away from the house,
entering a bus on Imperial highway
and to unknown location.
Her body is found a few days later around Gage in Vermont
in an alley underneath some debris.
NARRATOR: Evidence collected at the scene
suggested there was a sexual motive in Debra's death.
It was also clear that the 29-year-old had been murdered.
An autopsy confirmed she'd been shot in the chest 3 times.
Looking at the trajectory of the bullets,
they were shot downwards.
So the killer is above the victim.
He sees himself as superior and she is subservience.
There was no ID on the victim either.
So he's depersonalized this victim.
The only identity he wants her to have is as his victim.
So that's quite chilling about this case.
NARRATOR: In January 1987, police
were alerted to the discovery of yet another body on the streets
of South Central LA.
Just like Debra Jackson, 23-year-old Barbara Ware had
been shot through the chest.
By November 1988, detectives had found a total
of seven women who'd been the victim
of a sexually motivated murder.
All of them discarded in a similar way.
CLIFF SHEPARD: When they started coming up with bullets
of the same caliber and type, and typing them,
they started comparing them and finding out
that bullets from this murder also
were fired from the same gun in this murder.
And by the second or third murder,
they were aware that we had somebody out there,
apparently a serial murderer was killing these girls.
NARRATOR: Somewhere on the streets of Los Angeles
was a sexual predator who'd already taken
the lives of seven young women.
On the 19th of November 1988, the killer
went hunting for a potential eighth victim,
a 30-year-old mother of two named Enietra Washington.
CLIFF SHEPARD: From her recollection,
she was near I believe it was Normandie
when a man approached her and drove
up in a Pinto, an orange Pinto.
She remembers the car.
She said it was very nice, very clean,
and the guy started talking to her
and asking her if she needed a ride.
At first she said no, don't bother me,
and the guy continued.
He persisted, finally got her to return
and she was, OK, he seems to be safe enough.
She gets in the vehicle.
PAUL COULTER: And as she's riding,
he pulls down 81st Street and pulls over to the curb,
and tells her, hey, I have to go get you some money.
NARRATOR: The mysterious driver disappeared into a house.
When he returned, the journey continued.
But the stranger wasn't planning on letting Enietra Washington
reach her final destination.
CLIFF SHEPARD: He pulls up his hand and she hears a gunshot,
and then feels pain to her chest.
She never saw the gun, she saw the flash, and she realizes,
he shot me.
She's in and out of consciousness.
She request him to take her to a hospital.
He drives around, he parks.
She believes he had a camera with him like a Polaroid,
and took a picture of her.
And probably sexually assaulted her.
NARRATOR: Unlike his other victims,
the killer didn't take Enietra to a dumpster or a back alley.
He actually shoves her out of the car as if she's now
she's dead.
It's another exercise of garbage disposal,
throw her out of the car.
You just dump her.
NARRATOR: But Enietra wasn't dead.
Clinging to life, she managed to clamber to the home
of a friend who lived nearby.
She was rushed to the Harbor UCLA Medical Center
in Torrance.
PAUL COULTER: Her description of what
happened was like the framework of what happened
to all these other victims.
All of these other victims are all shot
in the left side of the chest.
The trajectories are all left to right,
they're all front to back.
They are all slightly downward just like Enietra
gave you the blueprint of what happened
to these other young ladies.
NARRATOR: Remarkably, surgeons manage to save Enietra's life.
She'd lost 20% of the blood in her body.
The bullet that was removed from Enietra
was the same caliber as the other seven victims
of the killer.
CLIFF SHEPARD: Enietra should have died.
How she survived, I don't know.
God was looking out for her.
She actually gave the police a remarkably accurate
description of the man.
But it was generic, a black man in his 30s, average height.
It could have fitted lots and lots of people
in South Central Los Angeles.
NARRATOR: News of Enietra survival
stop the killer in his tracks.
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: I think it would have
been quite a shock when he realized
that she'd survived the attack.
He has a victim who is alive, who has spent time with him.
She would have notice things about his demeanor,
his personality, his vehicle.
She could potentially identify him.
So this I think has shaken him up quite a lot,
and that is when he decides he's going to lay low for a while.
GEOFFREY WANSEL: He stops killing.
He fades back into the community.
Back to being a good neighbor, back to being a father,
back to being a husband.
He's hiding in plain sight.
He's gone.
NARRATOR: The police hadn't found the perpetrator.
He'd seemingly got away with seven
murders, and the attempted killing of Enietra Washington.
13 years later in late 2001, a 15-year-old girl
named Princess Berthomieux went missing
in South Central Los Angeles.
After a horrific start to life, Princess
had grown up in foster care with Samara Herard.
I am Princess' sister.
I don't like to say foster sister, I like to say sister.
Princess became a part of our family
when she was entered into the foster system.
In fact, she was one of LA's worst cases
of child abuse at that time.
She had been horribly, horribly just brutalized
in the worst ways possible.
She had spent months in the hospital recuperating.
She was about 2 and 1/2 when she came into our home,
and she had just--
she had to learn how to talk and walk and everything.
She was just so badly neglected, and so badly mistreated.
NARRATOR: After the death of Samara's mother,
10-year-old Princess had to move on from an affluent foster home
in Claremont, California.
She was separated from her sister,
and re homed in South Central LA.
SAMARA HERARD: There was nothing we could do about it.
So we tried to make it a good situation.
We told her we're here for you, and she went to--
they put her in LA, I guess the only home that was available
or whatever the case was.
NARRATOR: Despite their separation,
the two girls kept in touch.
Princess had a troubled time and tried unsuccessfully
to run away from her new home.
Samara feared for her younger sister's well being.
I told her, I said listen, just
keep your head on straight.
Do what you need to do.
Be focused.
Just be a smart girl.
When you turn 18, you can do whatever you want.
You'll always have a place with me.
Just keep your head on straight, please.
Don't start doing anything crazy.
She's like, OK, OK.
It was probably around late October or November
when I spoke to her last.
She ran away again in December.
And they found her body in March.
NARRATOR: The life of 15-year-old Princess
Berthomieux had been cut tragically short.
Sometimes runaways get lucky and find a life.
But at this point in Los Angeles,
they are more than likely to run into men who do not have
their best interests at heart.
And this is certainly the case with Princess.
SAMARA HERARD: (CRYING) This is a little girl who
used to give my sons piggyback rides
and ride them on the floor.
They'd be like again and again.
OK, OK.
And she was-- she was a good girl.
Oh, I'm so sorry.
And she didn't deserve that.
She didn't deserve it.
She deserved so much more.
NARRATOR: Over a year after the discovery of the 15 year old's
body, DNA found on another murder victim in July 2003
would be linked to the death of Princess.
Valerie McCorvey was found in the roadway
adjacent to an alley near a school.
She was found by a crossing guard early in the morning.
Again, she is found fully clothed
with her breasts exposed.
And her cause of death was ligature strangulation,
and it appeared she was just dumped there in the roadway.
NARRATOR: Unlike their 1980s counterparts,
investigators were able to utilize
modern technology when examining evidence from the past.
And the murder of 35-year-old, Valerie McCorvey
led to a shocking revelation for detectives
on the LAPD's cold case team.
CLIFF SHEPARD: DNA had tied Valerie
McCorvey's murder with the other murders from the mid '80s.
That made us aware that the murderer was still out there,
and we had no clue who he was, or where
to find him or anything else.
NARRATOR: After a 14 year hiatus, the killer was back.
The murders of Valerie McCorvey and Princess Berthomieux
took his tally of victims to nine.
So what happened to Princess was
she had apparently been picked up by him,
I don't like to say his name.
He had had sex with her, and then he had strangled her.
NARRATOR: The killer had a new method of murder.
After shooting all of his victims in the 1980s,
he'd moved on to taking life with his own bare hands.
It changed with Princess Berthomieux where it becomes
more intimate, strangulation.
That's a manual strangulation.
Her body is found nude.
So to us it tells us, OK, this isn't
somebody that was in a car, this is something more intimate.
NARRATOR: When the story broke that the LAPD were hunting
for a sexual predator who'd taken a 14 year
break between murders, he was given the macabre moniker
of the grim sleeper.
By the end of 2006, cold case Detective Cliff Shepard
had been desperately trying to identify the killer
for over three years.
A new year would bring new information
but it all started with yet another murder.
January the 1st of 2007, a woman by the name of Janecia
Peters was found murdered in the alley near the location
where Bernita Sparks was found murdered
almost 20 years earlier.
But we weren't notified until April
that there was a DNA match from her murder
to our other murders.
NARRATOR: Janecia Peters had been shot in the lower back
and placed into a trash bag.
She'd become victim number 10 of the grim sleeper.
22 years after the death of Debra Jackson in August 1985,
the police were still no closer to catching the elusive killer.
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: He's just as ruthless
as he was before but he's older and he's wiser now.
And if we look at the way he's killing,
he's much more sadistic.
CLIFF SHEPARD: We've got a serial murderer in Los Angeles.
He's still active.
We don't have a clue who he is.
We have a vague description, and we
need to find him and stop him.
NARRATOR: Investigators had little
to work with apart from a police sketch given
to them by survivor Enietra Washington
over two decades earlier.
But the recording of a 911 call from 1987
convinced them they already knew what the killer sounded like.
The call was made just after the murder of his third victim,
Barbara Ware in January 1987.
CLIFF SHEPARD: We pulled the 911 tape at that time,
and the caller is talking to a 911 dispatcher.
And he says, there was a blue and white van in the alley.
A man pulled a body out of it and put some debris on her.
And he provided the license plate of the van.
When asked for the description of the driver,
he says I didn't see him.
If a person saw what he claims that he saw,
he'd have to be right there.
That didn't make sense.
So is this the murderer?
I mean, all we have is a voice so we didn't have a location
for where the call was placed.
At that time payphones were still around.
I think the closest payphone that we
found was about a block away.
He's like an arsonist.
He kills these ladies or dumps them.
He calls the 911 and then he sits back,
and he just watches the police activity or the response
to the scene and the chaos that he just created.
And he's probably learning police
procedures by doing that.
GEOFFREY WANSEL: It's the act of the man with the most
extraordinary vanity.
You've just taken the life of an entirely innocent young woman
for your own sexual gratification,
and then you have the brass neck to call the police
and tell them where the body is.
NARRATOR: Over 30 years later, the killer
had murdered 10 women.
And despite placing an unprecedented $500,000 reward
on his head, investigators were no closer to apprehending him.
But police scientists had a new ace up their sleeves,
which they hoped would identify the grim sleeper
once and for all.
Familial DNA is a really useful tool that's
developed in recent years.
So the police can run a profile through their databases.
And it doesn't necessarily have to exactly match with somebody
in there, it could be that someone
in that is a family member of the person
that they're trying to get a hold of.
And that connection can be made that way.
NARRATOR: Investigators began to search
the database of convicted felons for a male relative match.
PAUL COULTER: All males have a Y chromosome.
I have the male profile from my father, from my grandfather,
all the way back.
My brothers have the same profile.
So they separate this Y chromosome, the male chromosome
from the suspect DNA profile.
NARRATOR: In July 2010, detectives finally got
a familial DNA match with a man named Christopher
Franklin, who'd been arrested in 2009
on a weapons possession charge.
He pled guilty to a felony, the gun charge,
therefore making him a convicted felon.
And he had to be swabbed, and his sample
got uploaded into the convicted felon database.
NARRATOR: It was a startling breakthrough in the case.
The DNA match proved that a male relative of Christopher's
was the notorious grim sleeper.
Detective soon homed in on his father, Lonnie Franklin Jr. who
lived on West 81st Street, the road
that Enietra Washington had mentioned
in her statement 22 years ago.
CLIFF SHEPARD: When we looked at his father's address, it's him.
His father lived right there on 81st Street.
Enietra Washington told us she was taken to 81st Street,
the guy got out of the car to get something.
He went to his house where most of the victims
are found up and down the Western.
This guy that lives right there, he's probably
going to be our murderer.
GEOFFREY WANSEL: If you put pins in a map, anybody would say,
look at that footprint, he must live there,
and he must know all the alleyways and trash
dumpsters extremely well.
Of course he did, he knew them intimately.
NARRATOR: Former garbage man, Lonnie Franklin had been living
a double life for 25 years.
The 57-year-old was responsible for the murder
of at least 10 young women.
But on the surface he was a friendly neighbor
and a family man.
He was known in the neighborhood
as really being a nice guy.
If you had a problem with your car, bring your car to him
and he'd work on it.
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Franklin is quite a nice approachable guy
on the outside.
He's somebody that doesn't appear to stand out.
He doesn't draw attention to himself.
And that's very important if you're a serial killer,
you need to be a comedian.
You need to blend in.
NARRATOR: Franklin's former profession
had given him an insight into some of the more
hidden areas of Los Angeles.
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Working for the sanitation department,
Franklin really did get to know areas of the city
that people didn't know about.
He knew how busy or quiet particular areas are
when the trash was collected.
He got to know the patterns and the rhythms of the city.
And he was able to use this for his advantage,
it would buy him time.
He would also have known where particular refuse trucks would
go in terms of the areas of landfill sites,
how deep some of the waste would be buried.
All of this knowledge is very, very useful
for the disposal of bodies.
NARRATOR: Detectives immediately place
Franklin under surveillance.
CLIFF SHEPARD: He was seen getting into his car
and driving up and down Western one night,
which presented a problem to us because he
was talking to women.
And the surveillance team said, what do you want us to do?
We can't let him take another woman into a car
and drive off with her.
Fortunately, a patrol vehicle drove past
and shined their light on them and told them to move on,
and they did.
So he didn't get a victim that night.
But with that, it put us in a bigger panic
is that we can't have him murder somebody right under our nose.
NARRATOR: Detectives needed to secretly recover a DNA sample
from Franklin so they could prove
he was undoubtedly the killer.
When the 57-year-old went to a pizza restaurant
on the 5th of July 2010, the police
pounced on the opportunity.
CLIFF SHEPARD: One of the surveillance
team members acted as if he was working at that store.
He cleaned up the plate and some of the discarded pizza,
brought it back with him, separated
from all the other items.
Took it to our lab.
We had it analyzed, and it took about three days.
And the media likes to report they
got DNA from the pizza slice.
And yes, they did get DNA from the pizza slice.
But the main part of the DNA was obtained from the napkins
he used to wipe his mouth.
CLIFF SHEPARD: But with that, we had him.
The DNA matched perfectly, and that's what we needed.
Now we know, Lonnie Franklin is our man.
NARRATOR: After decades spent terrorizing South Central LA,
the grim sleeper was about to get an unexpected wake up call.
CLIFF SHEPARD: He had been murdering
women for about 20 years and had gotten away with it.
He's placing the phone calls to the police
and then laughing about it.
I think the whole time he's taunting
us knowing that-- he believes he was smarter than we are.
So he's out just another day in Los Angeles,
and he was watering his lawn when police approached him.
PAUL COULTER: We went over, we introduced ourselves to him.
Said we have a warrant for your arrest.
He was very calm, OK.
So these detectives are going to take you downtown,
we'll meet with you and tell you what's
going on in a little bit.
NARRATOR: Lonnie Franklin Jr., the grim sleeper
was finally in police custody.
A great deal of relief to vindicate
us that we were doing our job.
We were trying very hard but we were not being successful.
Had it not been for the advent of the technology of the DNA,
I don't know if we'd ever have caught this guy.
NARRATOR: DNA linked Franklin to the bodies of the women.
But detectives needed to directly
link him to their deaths.
Investigators knew they had to prove beyond doubt
that Franklin was responsible for the murders
so they could put the grim sleeper
case to bed once and for all.
Now began the hunt for clues at his West 81st Street home.
PAUL COULTER: I don't know if it was one of the biggest
searches in LAPD history.
It certainly was in my career, one of the biggest searches
I had ever been involved in.
It lasted over three days.
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Franklin's garage had over 800 items
of evidence in it.
The police had to erect a tent on his front lawn
to sort through all of it.
There were cameras, phones, photographs, cash, underwear.
This was a real challenge for the investigation to record
and documents all of this evidence.
NARRATOR: Investigators were searching for a specific piece
of evidence that a woman who survived being shot by Franklin
in 1988 had told them about.
PAUL COULTER: Enietra Washington said
that the suspect or Franklin in this case,
after sexually assaulting her took Polaroid photos of her.
And we thought, who is going to take
a Polaroid photograph of somebody they just
sexually assaulted and shot?
One of the photos that was recovered
was a Polaroid photo of Enietra Washington
after she had been shot.
This was really significant because this
was a piece of evidence that Franklin had been with her.
In a mini fridge in the garage, was
a photograph of Janecia Peters smiling with one
of her breasts exposed.
So this links the suspect to the victim.
And Franklin took these pictures for his own gratification
to relive the things that he'd done.
But they would come back to haunt him,
and they'd be really vital in securing his conviction.
NARRATOR: The search of Franklin's garage
unearthed hundreds of other Polaroid pictures of women.
We don't have a clue where they are.
We've never recovered their bodies,
they've never reappeared and contacted their family.
I'm certain they're murder victims
but what did he do with them?
NARRATOR: As the search continued,
Lonnie Franklin was in police custody.
Detective Paul Coulter was tasked
with interviewing the 57-year-old former garbage man.
When you're doing your interview,
even though you know this guy is a monster,
you still have to do that professional demeanor
with them.
You can't let your emotions take you.
NARRATOR: But Lonnie Franklin refused to admit to anything.
He denied knowing.
As I took each 8 by 10 photograph put in front of him,
he denied knowing any of those victims.
I say, OK, your DNA on this one, it's a coincidence.
This one, mhm, I don't know.
But then as you go on, he just denied knowing all of them.
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: I don't know these women.
I've never seen them before.
It was just a flat right denial.
And this was a very well rehearsed line for him.
This was the type of thing that he'd
used with police in the past.
So this must have been incredibly
frustrating for anybody investigating these crimes.
NARRATOR: Despite his unwillingness to confess,
in July 2010, Lonnie Franklin Jr.
was charged with the murder of 10 women,
and the attempted murder of Enietra Washington.
After numerous lengthy delays, the trial finally
began in February 2016 at the Clara Shortridge
Foltz Criminal Justice Center.
Franklin pleaded not guilty on all counts.
Samara Herard, the sister of 15-year-old victim, Princess
Berthomieux was in attendance.
SAMARA HERARD: I was going to be there for her because somebody
had to be there for her.
No one else was there for her.
But I wanted them to know she had value,
and she was a beautiful spirit and a beautiful child
who did not deserve it.
NARRATOR: The prosecution was armed
with a wealth of evidence, including ballistic data,
and Franklin's DNA recovered from the bodies in the bin bags
that proved beyond doubt that he was the killer.
The strongest evidence in the trial to me
is that Polaroid photo of Enietra Washington
that we found in that garage, there's
no way to explain that away.
The photos of Janecia Peters that we found in that garage
is pretty powerful stuff.
NARRATOR: The prosecution called over 40 witnesses
during the three month trial.
The evidence against the 63-year-old was overwhelming.
In May 2016, the jury found Lonnie
Franklin guilty on all counts.
At the sentencing hearing the following August,
the victim's family members were given
the opportunity to confront Franklin
face to face in the courtroom.
And indeed each and every one of them
tells Franklin what they think of him.
One calls him truly a piece of evil, and that's who he is.
He didn't look remorseful.
He looked like I'm being inconvenienced by all of you.
And I just I was like he is so full of the devil.
He is so messed up right now.
He doesn't even understand the gravity of what he's done.
The people you're scowling at, you've destroyed their lives.
You've hurt them in ways that can't be explained
in the depths of their core, and you're looking at us like,
what?
NARRATOR: In an act of defiance, Enietra Washington
also spoke out.
The woman who'd survive being shot by Lonnie Franklin
Jr. almost 30 years previously, finally
got to face her attacker once more.
But this time, she held all the power.
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: When Enietra intruder Washington
took to the stand, this must have
been really traumatic for her.
This was an event that was likely to have had an impact
on how she went about her daily life, her relationships
with men, what she thought of men.
How much she trusted other people.
So to take the stand and to directly confront Franklin
and to say, I know it's you, you harassed me, you assaulted me,
really was an incredibly brave thing to do.
So this wasn't just about presenting evidence,
this was about actually showing him up
for the misogynist that he was.
NARRATOR: After damning testimonies from all the people
affected by the murders of Lonnie Franklin Jr.,
it was time to put the memory of the grim sleeper to rest.
Finally in August 2016, Judge Kathleen Kennedy
pronounces 10 death sentences.
She remarks to Franklin, there can be no justification
for what you've done because what you've done
is not justifiable under the laws of God or the laws of man.
That is an admirable judgment.
Justice is a weird name.
I mean, maybe to some family members, it gives them closure,
I don't know.
It's not going to bring their loved ones back.
So as far as justice to the family
members, that's probably something
you would have to ask them.
SAMARA HERARD: It's still hard.
You know they say closure, yeah, closure in some aspects,
instances of saying, OK, they've apprehended her killer.
He is paying the penalty of his actions, great,
but I'm not going to get her back.
Every August on her birthday, I've got to remember
that she won't be there.
I'll never see her get married, graduate from high school,
college, live her life.
All taken away from her.
And it's just, there's nothing I can do about it.
The only one to blame for her death was him, period.
He's the only one who literally held her life in his hands
and decided to end it.
He's the only one who is to blame in this whole situation.
NARRATOR: Lonnie Franklin Jr. was
on death row in San Quentin Prison
for just 3 and 1/2 years.
The 67-year-old killer was found dead in his cell
on the 28th of March 2020.
He took any further secrets with him to the grave.
For the LAPD to think that, oh, we've identified every case
that Franklin was involved in, would
be pretty arrogant on our part.
There's probably cases we know nothing about.
He worked for the sanitation department.
He knew the routes, he knew where the dumpsters
were that would be picked up.
On a search of his residence, we found
photos, IDs of young ladies that we have no idea.
They are off the face of the Earth,
and their families have not heard from them.
And I'm sure there's other ones.
NARRATOR: Although it's likely he
was responsible for many more deaths,
Franklin was at least brought to justice for 10 murders.
Had the grim sleeper not awoken in 2002,
he may never have been caught.
There has to be a chance that if he hadn't gone back
to killing again after that hiatus of almost 14 years,
he might never have come to justice at all.
He would simply have disappeared off the radar, a serial killer
who got away with it.
NARRATOR: Franklin, was a serial sexual predator
who killed for his own selfish gratification.
He preyed on vulnerable women who
he thought were as disposable as the trash he
threw into dumpsters across South Central LA.
There is some poetic justice in the fact,
it was the DNA recovered from his own trash napkin
that led to the downfall of Lonnie
Franklin Jr., one of the world's most evil killers.
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