Chester Dwayne TURNER

Classification: Serial killer
Characteristics: Rape
Number of victims: 13
Date of murders: 1987 - 1998
Date of birth: November 5, 1966
Victims profile: Paula Vance, 24; Brenda Bries, 39; Diane Johnson, 21; Annette Ernest, 26; Anita Fishman, 31; Regina Washington, 27; Andrea Tripplett, 29; Desarae Jones, 29; Natalie Price, 31; Mildred Beasley, 45; Tammie Christmas; Debra Williams, 32; Mary Edwards, 42
Method of murder: Strangulation
Location: Los Angeles, California, USA
Status: Sentenced to death on July 10, 2007

Chester Dewayne Turner (born November 5, 1966 in Warren, Arkansas) is a convicted serial killer. He was charged with the murders of 10 women in Los Angeles; on April 30, 2007, he was convicted for all 10 murders, and was also found guilty in the death of one of his victim's unborn child, making him one of the most prolific serial killers in the city’s history. On July 10, 2007, Turner was sentenced to death.

Early life

Turner moved to Los Angeles with his mother when he was five years old, after his parents separated. He attended public schools in Los Angeles but dropped out of high school. Working for Domino's Pizza as a cook and delivery person as a young man, he lived with his mother until she moved to Utah. After that, he moved around to different homeless shelters and missions. Turner was jailed seven times from 1995 to 2002, six for nonviolent offenses and one assault charge on an officer on April 9, 1997.

Murders

Turner has been connected, through DNA, to 13 murders that occurred in Los Angeles between 1987 and 1998. Eleven of these murders took place in a four-block-wide corridor that ran on either side of Figueroa Street between Gage Avenue and 108th Street.

The two murders outside of this corridor occurred Los Angeles County:

Paula Vance, 24, found in the business, Olympia Tool, in Azusa.

Brenda Bries, 39, found strangled in a portable toilet near Little Tokyo.

The Vance murder was witnessed from a bystander at a neighboring trailer park. There was DNA recovered from the Vance crime scene.

At that time, Turner was serving an eight-year sentence at a California state prison for sexually assaulting a 47-year-old woman in March 2002. Turner assaulted the victim for approximately two hours and threatened to kill her if she told the police. Upon his conviction, Turner was required to give a DNA sample to California’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS). In September 2003, based on that sample, Turner was identified as a match for DNA recovered from Vance and Beasley.

Detectives then began a careful examination of Turner’s background. Nine of the 11 unsolved murders were matched to Turner using DNA evidence:

Diane Johnson, 21, found partially nude and strangled in March 1987 in a roadway construction area west of the Harbor Freeway.

Annette Ernest, 26, found lying on a shoulder of a road in October 1987, partially nude and strangled.

Anita Fishman, 31, strangled and left partially nude outside a garage in an alley off Figueroa Street in January 1989.

Regina Washington, 27, also found partially nude and strangled inside a garage off Figueroa Street in September 1989. Washington was six months pregnant. The death of the fetus was attributed to the strangulation of the mother, and it was ruled a homicide.

Andrea Tripplett, 29, strangled, found partially nude behind a vacant building on Figueroa Street in April 1993.

Desarae Jones, 29, found strangled next to a vacant residence in May 1993.

Natalie Price, 31, found partially nude and strangled next to a vacant residence in February 1995.

Mildred Beasley, 45, found partially nude and strangled; she was left amongst the bushes alongside the 110 Fwy in November 1996.

Wrong man convicted

During the investigation of these cases, detectives also reviewed similar solved cases. In doing so, the detectives found that David Allen Jones, 28, had been convicted of three murders that occurred in the same area where Turner was known to be operating:

Tammie Christmas, found strangled in September 1992 at the 97th Street Elementary School.

Debra Williams, 32, found lying at the bottom of a stairwell that led to a campus boiler room in November 1992.

Mary Edwards, 42, found inside a carport next to the 97th Street Elementary School in December 1992.

Jones, a mentally disabled part-time janitor who was barely literate, was questioned without an attorney and admitted using drugs with the victims in the areas where their bodies were found.

Rather than using these convictions as a basis for excluding Turner, the detectives revisited these “solved” murders and re-evaluated the physical evidence. The detectives found that Jones’ 1995 trial had relied upon other evidence, including Jones’ coerced statements to police, instead of DNA technology. At the detectives’ request, the LAPD Crime Laboratory processed the available evidence using the latest DNA applications.

Conviction

It was discovered that Turner was responsible for two of the murders for which Jones had been convicted — those of Williams and Edwards. Although DNA analysis could not be used to reinvestigate the Christmas murder, prosecutors and police are confident that Jones is innocent of the Christmas murder and that Turner is the likely culprit.

During his trial, Jones had also been convicted of a rape unrelated to the murders. He had served out his sentence for the 2000 rape conviction. The new investigation revealed that the blood-typing evidence did not match the blood types found at the crimes for which he spent 11 years in prison, and he was exonerated as a murderer.

Jones was released from prison in March 2004, and has filed a lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles. Jones was awarded $720,000 in compensation.

Wikipedia.org

Accused serial killer to stand trial

November 02, 2005

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- A former pizza deliveryman accused of being one of the city's most prolific serial killers was ordered Tuesday to stand trial on charges of murdering 10 women, two of whom were pregnant.

Superior Court Judge William R. Pounders ruled during a preliminary hearing that there was sufficient cause to believe Chester D. Turner committed the slayings that occurred from 1987 to 1998.

Turner, 38, is currently serving an eight-year prison sentence in an unrelated rape case. Pounders set a November 15 arraignment date.

Turner's DNA was matched to evidence from the bodies of all the victims, said Carl Matthies of the police department's scientific investigations division. The likelihood of the genetic profile belonging to someone other than Turner was one in one-quintillion, Matthies said.

Defense attorney John Tyre said outside court that DNA does not prove murder. "If it is his DNA it indicates he had sex with these women some time prior to them dying," Tyre said.

Deputy medical examiner Lisa Scheinin testified that all 10 women were strangled, nine had cocaine in their systems, one was more than six months pregnant and one was between four and five months pregnant.

Prosecutors have not said whether they would seek the death penalty if Turner is convicted. In addition to 10 counts of murder, Turner is accused of the special circumstances of multiple murder and murder committed during a rape.

The slayings remained unsolved until a cold case homicide unit began looking into them. In 2002, Turner agreed to submit a DNA sample as part of a no-contest plea to the unrelated rape charge. A detective allegedly found that it matched evidence found in two murders and began looking for more.

Court Views Chilling Video of Serial Killer in Action

October 31, 2005

A detective this morning recounted how he found a security camera that shot the only known footage of one of Los Angeles' worst serial killers.

The grainy, chilling video shows a "husky muscular man" forcing a woman onto the ground, raping and strangling her, Los Angeles Police Department Sgt. Mark Pampano testified in court today.

Pampano was one of four police officers to testify today during a preliminary hearing in Los Angeles County Superior Court about finding some of the dozen victims allegedly killed in South Los Angeles between 1987 and 1998 by Chester D. Turner.

Turner, 38, was in state prison for a rape conviction when he pleaded not guilty to charges in 10 of the 12 strangulation killings. Prosecutors say they have not decided whether to seek the death penalty.

Turner is accused of killing Paula Vance, 31, whose body Pampano described; Annette Ernest, 26; Anita Fishman, 31; Regina Washington, 27; Mildred Beasley, 45; Andrea Tripplett, 29; Desarae Jones, 29; Natalie Price, 31; Brenda Bries, 31; and, one unidentified woman who appeared to be in her 20s.

Police said he may have been involved in as many as 20 homicides, but there is no DNA evidence to link him to that many.

Vance died of asphyxiation in 1998, when investigators did not realize they were looking for a serial killer. One man was wrongly convicted of three of the murders now attributed by DNA evidence to Turner, and released last year.

The killings occurred over 11 years, when Turner moved often, bouncing between prison, skid row missions, girlfriends' apartments and the home of his mother and grandfather. He was in and out of prison for years on various convictions, including theft and drug possession.

For more than a decade, Turner escaped notice amid the largest crime wave in city history, when killings, concentrated primarily in South Los Angeles, sometimes topped 1,000 a year.

The crimes Turner is accused of took place mostly in a 30-block stretch of motels and apartments along the Figueroa corridor next to the Harbor Freeway, an area still notorious for prostitution, drug crime and violence. Police have said they believe there were several other serial killers operating in the South L.A. area frequented by Turner.

If convicted, Turner would rival some of the worst killers in the city's history. "Skid Row Slayer" Michael Player was convicted of killing 10 transients in downtown Los Angeles in 1986. Douglas Clark, called the "Sunset Strip Killer," is suspected of killing 25; he was convicted of six 1980 killings.

Turner's defense is expected to focus on the difficulties of properly maintaining the evidence used for DNA testing that implicated Turner.

Serial-Murder Trial Hinges on DNA Evidence

October 31, 2005

When the first DNA hits began rolling in on a string of South Los Angeles strangulation murders, investigators imagined their killer as a Jack the Ripper type with a rap sheet to match.

But as detectives pursued the suspect, now believed to be one of the most prolific serial killers in the city's history, they were surprised to find evidence pointing to Chester D. Turner, a quiet man with a criminal record primarily of minor drug offenses and a single rape.

Had it not been for genetic links to the rape and killing of a dozen women between 1987 and 1998, Los Angeles Police Det. Cliff Shepard said, the former pizza delivery man and father of four would not have made it "onto our radar screen."

Turner, 38, was in state prison for a 2002 rape conviction when he pleaded not guilty to charges in 10 of the 12 strangulation killings. Turner faces a preliminary hearing in Los Angles Superior Court today on the charges. Prosecutors say they have not decided whether to seek the death penalty.

He is accused of killing Annette Ernest, 26; Anita Fishman, 31; Regina Washington, 27; Paula Vance, 31; Mildred Beasley, 45; Andrea Tripplett, 29; Desarae Jones, 29; Natalie Price, 31; Brenda Bries, 31; and one unidentified woman who appeared to be in her 20s.

Police said he may have been involved in as many as 20 homicides, but there is no specific DNA evidence to link him to that many.

"Skid Row Slayer" Michael Player was convicted of killing 10 transients in downtown Los Angeles in 1986. Douglas Clark, called the "Sunset Strip Killer," is suspected of killing 25; he was convicted of six 1980 killings.

Although science is expected to take center stage at the hearing, detectives have said that reconstructing Turner's life — in search of a clear motive — has been perhaps the hardest part of their investigation.

Irwindale-based defense attorney John D. Tyre said Friday he continues to delve into Turner's psychological and family history. But whatever he finds, Tyre said, he believes the case rises and falls on the DNA evidence.

"There also are no witnesses to tie him to the murders," Tyre said. "Their case is based on 20-year-old DNA, and there's going to be issues about whether it's been properly stored and analyzed."

The defense also could be aided by the case of David Allen Jones, wrongly convicted in 1995 of three murders, according to police and court records.

Jones, 45, who has the mental capacity of an 8-year-old, served nearly nine years in prison before he was released in March 2004 after DNA tests run in 2003 by Shepard's cold-case unit exonerated him in two of the cases and appeared to implicate Turner. Prosecutors, however, declined to charge Turner with those deaths.

Jones was convicted largely because he confessed, but his lawyers and a psychologist said he was easily led in questioning; they disputed the truth of his confession.

Born in Arkansas, Turner moved with his mother to a small home in the 600 block of Century Boulevard during the 1970s, police said.

She worked two jobs, and Turner was described as a latch-key kid who stuck close to home.

"He didn't have a regular childhood. He didn't go nowhere," said a relative who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "He didn't go to the park, the gym. He couldn't, because his mother would not let him. He was always at home helping her."

Turner eventually dropped out of high school and began hanging out with neighborhood kids, portraying himself as a gang member, police said.

Around 1992, Turner began a rocky relationship with a woman named Felicia Collier, police said. The couple had a child but fought constantly.

During one violent confrontation, a relative of Collier intervened and shot Turner.

Shepard said he believes that Turner's anger and frustration at home were channeled into the outbursts of violence that claimed his victims.

"I think he wasn't targeting any particular person," Shepard said. "But if someone crossed his path at the wrong time, he would vent on them."

Turner worked odd jobs as a cook and pizza delivery man. But police say the pull of drugs and the street was never far away.

During the 11 years when the slayings occurred, Turner moved often, bouncing between prison, skid row missions, girlfriends' apartments and the home of his mother and grandfather. During that time, he fathered three more children, police said.

He was in and out of prison for years on various convictions, including theft and drug possession.

For more than a decade, Turner escaped notice amid the largest crime wave in city history, when killings, concentrated primarily in South Los Angeles, sometimes topped 1,000 a year.

Despite a task force of Los Angeles police, county sheriff's deputies and suburban police officers set up in January 1986 to find the Southside Serial Killer, police had no description to work with and no eyewitnesses. Blood-typing technology, a precursor to DNA sampling, was evolving but not precise enough to narrow a large field of potential suspects.

Because victims in the strangulation cases included homeless women, drug users and prostitutes, their deaths did not always get much attention. But in some of the cases, rape kits and other evidence proved useful later. That, police say, is what ultimately led them to Turner.

Man Pleads Not Guilty in Series of 11 Killings

November 16, 2005

Suspected serial killer Chester D. Turner pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges that he murdered 10 Los Angeles women and a victim's fetus during an 11-year rampage that began in 1987.

Turner, 39, a convicted rapist whom authorities have termed Los Angeles' most prolific serial killer, entered the plea after prosecutors added an extra murder charge for the death of the fetus of Regina Washington, who was killed in September 1989.

The charges were amended based on a physician's testimony at Turner's preliminary hearing earlier this month that Washington's 6 1/2 -month fetus was viable at the time of her death.

Prosecutors at the two-day hearing also presented DNA evidence and a shadowy, grainy 1998 videotape of a man killing a woman in a downtown parking structure. At the proceeding's conclusion, Turner was ordered to stand trial, and a pretrial conference was set for March 20, with the trial to begin within 60 days.

Turner is serving an eight-year prison sentence in a rape case. Genetic testing conducted after that conviction tied him to sperm cell matter found on the bodies of the 10 women, according to an analyst with the LAPD's Scientific Investigations Division.

Turner's DNA was also allegedly linked to two other slayings, wrongly blamed on David Allen Jones, who was released from prison in March because of the wrongful convictions. Turner has not been charged in those killings.

With an eye to possibly challenging the DNA evidence, Turner's attorneys are seeking a discovery hearing next month on the chain of custody of the sperm samples collected from the 10 women's bodies.

Turner is accused of killing Annette Ernest, 26; Anita Fishman, 31; Washington, 27; Paula Vance, 31; Mildred Beasley, 45; Andrea Tripplett, 29; Desarae Jones, 29; Natalie Price, 31; Brenda Bries, 31; and one unidentified woman who appeared to be in her 20s.

2004_10_23: LA police to charge serial killer

Los Angeles officials are expected to charge a prison convict next week with the murders of a dozen women in South Los Angeles during the 1980s and 1990s.

The Los Angeles Times said Saturday that DNA tests had linked Chester Turner with the rapes and murders that occurred in South-Central Los Angeles and would place Turner among the most prolific of L.A.'s many serial murderers.

Police told the Times the killings primarily involved women who were by and large homeless and involved in drugs and prostitution.

The victims were killed between 1987 and 1998 and were sexually assaulted and strangled.

Turner himself was frequently homeless in between various stretches in prison for mainly non-violent offenses. Another man had been convicted of three of the killings, but was freed from prison nine years later after DNA tests cleared him.

2004_10_25: DNA link traps prolific serial killer, police claim

When Mildred White's 26-year-old daughter, Annette Ernest, was found strangled by the side of a road in South Los Angeles in 1987, she turned to her friend Jerri Johnson for comfort.

When Ms Johnson's 29-year-old daughter, Andrea Tripplett, was found strangled behind an empty building in 1993, Ms White was there for her.

That friendship cemented by tragic loss took an amazing turn on Saturday when Los Angeles Police Department detectives announced that newly analysed DNA evidence has convinced them that the same man - Chester Dewayne Turner - killed both young women during an 11-year spree of killings and sexual assaults.

"I remember comforting her way back then," Ms Johnson recalled. "Later, she was comforting me, never knowing there was any connection between the two."

At a press conference, led by police chief William Bratton and attended by both mothers, detectives said they believe Turner killed at least 13 women in the South Los Angeles area, making him the most prolific serial killer in the city's history.

Turner, 37, is serving eight years in Northern California for rape, one of numerous convictions dating back to 1995.

Police said DNA evidence links him to deaths as far back as March 9, 1987, when they allege he killed 21-year-old Diane Johnson.

Her body was found partially clothed with strangulation marks, a hallmark of the murders that persisted until the April 6, 1998, murder of 37-year-old Brenda Bries, strangled in a portable toilet in South Los Angeles.

Police say Turner, a former pizza deliveryman, maintains his innocence in the killings.

Detectives Cliff Shepard and Jose Ramirez, of the Robbery Homicide Division's cold case unit, began investigating the case in 2001, building it steadily after they said they found the first DNA link between the sexual assault and killing of 38-year-old Paula Vance on February 3, 1998, and the March 2002 rape that landed Turner in prison.

Although they kept checking in with Shepard and Ramirez, neither Ms White nor Ms Johnson had a clue that the same man was alleged to have killed their daughters.

"Mrs Johnson called me and said the detectives had tracked someone down," Ms White said. "Do you believe the same guy killed her daughter and my daughter? I'm astonished. I'm going to shake myself to see if it's really true."

"I can exhale half way, but I can't do it all the way," Ms Johnson said. "I know these trials take time, but knowing he won't be on the streets any more really is a relief. When he's convicted, then I'll be able to breathe again."

Detectives will present their evidence to district attorneys this week. They believe it will result in 10 murder charges.

2004_10_25: Suspect in 22 Slayings of Women Was Frequently in Prison for So-Called 'Non-Violent' Crimes

A serial felon currently in prison for rape will soon be arrested in 12 Los Angeles killings to which he is linked by DNA evidence, and is a suspect in 10 other killings, according to the front page of Saturday's L.A. Times.

ThrowAwayTheKey.org, a national advocacy group that works on behalf of past and future victims of crime, says Chester Dwayne Turner's alleged rape and killing spree shows why Proposition 66 would lead to more crime victims across California.

According to the L.A. Times, Turner "has been in and out of prison for years on various convictions, including theft and drug possession ... Until the 2002 rape conviction, his criminal record was not a violent one, consisting mostly of theft and drug-possession convictions and parole violations. Turner returned to prison seven times after his first felony conviction for car theft in 1995 ... Several of the murders in which he is suspected occurred within a few weeks of his being paroled after serving partial sentences."

"Prop. 66 would stop counting just the type of allegedly 'non-violent' crimes that Turner was convicted of during his alleged killing spree," said Michael Paranzino, president of ThrowAwayTheKey.org, from San Diego. "If anything, this shows that California law is still too weak. After all, this alleged serial killer is currently set to be released in just 6 years."

Prop. 66 would weaken the state's 'three-strikes' regime that has dramatically cut the number of crime victims across California. The measure, funded primarily by a few wealthy men, would create more than 17,000 new middle-class crime victims over the next 3 years, many of them women and children.

"Rich white men living in gated communities will be just fine if Prop. 66.passes," Paranzino continued. "Studies show it is California's middle and working-class folks, like the women of color allegedly killed by Turner, who will be victimized by the 26,000 dangerous felons who will be released under Prop. 66.

"Let's be clear: If Prop. 66 passes, additional women will be raped and additional children will be molested across California. We just don't know the victims' names yet."

2004_10_27: Pizza deliveryman a serial killer, police say

A former pizza deliveryman now serving a prison term for rape was charged Thursday with murdering 10 women whose deaths were allegedly linked to him through DNA evidence.

Police call Chester D. Turner, 37, the city’s most prolific killer. They allege Turner accosted most of his victims in South Los Angeles, raped and strangled them, then dumped their bodies.

Turner is expected to be arraigned tomorrow or Friday, said Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office.

The 10 women were killed between 1987 and 1998, authorities said. Their slayings remained unsolved until the police department’s cold case homicide unit began looking into them.

In 2002, Turner agreed to submit a DNA sample as part of a no-contest plea to the rape charge, and it was placed in law enforcement databases. A detective allegedly found that it matched evidence found in two murders and began looking for more.

Turner is serving an eight-year sentence at a state prison near Stockton.

Prosecutors will decide later whether to seek the death penalty in the murders, the district attorney’s office said.

2004_12_23: L.A. serial killer suspect pleads not guilty

A man who police say may be the worst serial killer in Los Angeles history pleaded not guilty to charges that he murdered 10 women between 1987 and 1998. Chester Turner, 38, could receive the death penalty if convicted, because some of the murders involved the special circumstance of rape and because he is accused of committing multiple murders. He was already serving an eight-year sentence for a 2002 rape conviction when detectives matched his DNA to some of the killings.

2005_10_31: Court Views Chilling Video of Serial Killer in Action

A detective this morning recounted how he found a security camera that shot the only known footage of one of Los Angeles' worst serial killers.

The grainy, chilling video shows a "husky muscular man" forcing a woman onto the ground, raping and strangling her, Los Angeles Police Department Sgt. Mark Pampano testified in court today.

Pampano was one of 10 police officers to testify today during a preliminary hearing in Los Angeles County Superior Court about finding some of the dozen victims allegedly killed in South Los Angeles between 1987 and 1998 by Chester D. Turner.

Police said he may have been involved in as many as 20 homicides, but there is no DNA evidence to link him to that many.

For more than a decade, Turner escaped notice amid the largest crime wave in city history, when killings, concentrated primarily in South Los Angeles, sometimes topped 1,000 a year.

Turner's defense is expected to focus on the difficulties of properly maintaining the evidence used for DNA testing that implicated Turner.

2005_11_01: Suspected Serial Killer Ordered to Stand Trial

A judge today ordered Chester D. Turner to stand trial for the murders of ten women, crimes which if proven could make him one of Los Angeles' most prolific serial killers.

Wrapping up a two day preliminary hearing, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge William R. Pounders ruled that prosecutors presented enough evidence to order Turner to trial.

DNA tests from the victims match Turner's DNA, police said.

At one point, police described a videotape from a surveillance camera that showed the rape and strangulation of 31-year old Paula Vance in 1998. DNA linked Turner to Vance's killing police alleged.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Alan Jackson called officers who responded to each of the 10 homicides, which occurred between 1987 and 1998. All of the victims were raped and strangled.

In addition to Vance, Turner is accused of killing Annette Ernest, 26; Anita Fishman, 31; Regina Washington, 27; Mildred Beasley, 45; Andrea Tripplett, 29; Desarae Jones, 29; Natalie Price, 31; Brenda Bries, 31; and one unidentified woman who appeared to be in her 20s.

The onetime pizza-delivery man and cook was serving time in state prison for rape when he was charged with new crimes. Prosecutors said they have not decided whether to seek the death penalty.

The defense is expected to attack the LAPD's handling and storage of DNA evidence.

The crimes of which Turner is accused took place mostly in a 30-block stretch of motels and apartments along the Figueroa Street corridor next to the Harbor Freeway, an area notorious for prostitution, drug crime and violence.

2005_11_03: LA pizza man serial killer police say

A onetime pizza delivery man who police say is the most prolific serial killer in Los Angeles history has been ordered to stand trial for strangling 10 women.

Chester Dewayne Turner, who is already serving an eight-year sentence for rape, was linked to 10 murders committed between 1987 to 1998 through DNA evidence obtained from sperm found on the bodies.

After a two-day preliminary hearing, Superior Court Judge William Pounders found that there was enough evidence to try Turner, 38, for the 10 murders and set his arraignment for November 15.

Prosecutors may seek the death penalty in the case.

Turner's attorney, John Tyre, told reporters after the preliminary hearing that the DNA evidence did not prove his client murdered the women, most of whom were prostitutes killed in or near downtown Los Angeles.

"If it is his DNA, then it indicates he had sex with these women sometime prior to them dying," Tyre said.

Turner was identified as a suspect in the killing spree after his 2002 rape conviction, which was unrelated to the current case but required him to submit a DNA sample.

The bodies of the 10 women, who ranged in age from 21 to 45, were all found partially nude and strangled. Two of the women were pregnant when they were killed.

Prosecutors said they were investigating Turner in at least two other murders for which another man, David Allen Jones, was convicted. Jones was freed from prison in March 2004 after evidence surfaced linking Turner to those crimes.

Los Angeles police said in a statement that whoever killed the 10 women was "the most prolific serial killer ever identified in the city of Los Angeles."

Silent Wraith: Chester Turner

By Christine Pelisek - LAWeekly.com

One Spring day in 1993, Jerri Johnson held a “repast dinner” for her 29-year-old murdered daughter, Andrea Tripplett. It was the end of a day marked by two burials: Andrea’s, and that of her 5-and-a-half-month-old fetus, poignantly laid to rest at her mother’s feet.

Close by — filling her home and backyard, bringing food and eating together — were family and friends, including a quiet and familiar neighborhood man, Chester Turner.

Turner joined other mourners “in the backyard, eating my food,” Johnson says. Widely known for his violent temper, he hung around the nearby liquor store on Figueroa and 76th streets and earned the nickname “Cisco” for a wine cooler he favored. Standing around, says Johnson — “that is what [Turner] was known for.”

He also used to walk the streets near his home with a buddy named Elliott, hang out with the local prostitutes on Figueroa, and get in brawls with neighborhood kids. “He was known in the neighborhood as someone who was off his rocker when he got mad,” says a close friend who has always known Turner — but refused to be identified.

As Turner awaits sentencing on 11 murder convictions for slaying one fetus and 10 young and middle-aged women in downtown and South L.A. over an incredible 11 years, a tale has emerged of a silent wraith who lived where he killed — and killed with impunity.

Police believe Turner, an often unemployed father of four with a history of violent relationships, so seamlessly fit into the troubled streets of L.A. that he even killed while he worked “security” at the old Midnight Mission, where he lived for a time. So brazen was he that he showed up — and chowed down — at the funeral dinner held for his pregnant victim Andrea Tripplett.

Said by police to be the most prolific serial killer in Los Angeles city history, with 13 dead women and two fetuses linked to his DNA, Turner was charged with killing 10 of those women and one fetus, all found within 20 blocks of his various homes and flophouses. The murder sites create a horrific map of sorts — with Turner’s address always close to the mayhem.

He was such a successful chameleon that the cops spent years looking for entirely different suspects. Harriet Evans, a friend of victims Tripplett and Desarae Jones, tells L.A. Weekly that Turner “didn’t look suspicious because we saw him all the time. . . . He played us — he knew that area.” Police blamed big, brooding Chester’s murders on a composite dubbed the South Side Slayer, possibly with a Caribbean accent, possibly a pockmarked face. Those dozens of murders turned out to be the work of several men, including Turner.

TV and print media barely noticed his killings of mostly black women such as Tripplett with promiscuous lives, “strawberries” who traded casual sex for drugs — who nevertheless didn’t deserve to die. But there’s little argument that those 15 deaths would have been global news had the women been from Santa Monica or Silver Lake.

Dr. Jeff Victoroff, associate professor of clinical neurology and psychiatry at the University of Southern California, says, “Society tends to focus on dramatic explosions of violence against people with whom they identify,” so when drug-using minority women die, “it usually fails to stimulate much public outrage... There might even be in some people’s minds some kind of moral difference drawn.”

Turner seemed to mine this truism about the mean streets. Truc Do, one of two prosecutors during Turner’s five-week trial, says, “Their addiction made them an invisible class... On the fringes of society.”

In the end, it took an extremely unusual act by a troubled victim, who broke through her own indifference bred of street life and drugs, to report Turner’s brutal rape to police. Thanks to the guts of Maria Martinez, Turner is widely expected to get the death penalty.

“I never thought that he was that kind of person,” says the longtime friend who never suspected a thing. While Turner’s mother could be too tough on him as a teen, “locking the food up” and making him wait outside until she got home from work, “You have to deal with those things. I knew he had problems — but I never thought he would go out and kill people.”

How did Chester Turner, who the relatives of one victim say was dubbed by his classmates in school “Chester the Molester,” fall so utterly through the cracks? Looking back, it seems obvious.

The 1980s were a violent time, with a crack epidemic, a PCP epidemic — and the city still reeling from mass murders and serial killings that began in 1969 when Charles Manson and his followers committed the sensational Tate-LaBianca murders.

The “Skid Row Slasher,” Vaughn Greenwood, terrorized transients, cutting their throats as they slept. The “Freeway Killer,” William Bonin, an unemployed Downey truck driver, was convicted of murdering and raping 14 boys and men in Orange and Los Angeles counties in 1979 and 1980. Then came “Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez, convicted in 1989 of 13 horrific torture-murders.

Beyond those ghastly cases, Southside cops had their hands full when the bodies of victims started to pile up along the Figueroa Corridor, a 30-block-long area known for its prostitution, drugs and desperation.

“We were averaging 25 to 30 murders a year, with two detectives,” recalls Detective Victor Pietrantoni, who worked the Southeast Division. “When I left Southeast after three years I had just shy of 100 murder investigations.”

Yet even against all that background noise, in April 1985, authorities began to suspect that a serial killer was afoot, when the bodies of mostly black prostitutes were found dumped in parks, alleys, along unpaved roadsides and even in a schoolyard.

Public pressure at first was nearly nonexistent, but the black community demanded action. The Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders was formed in 1986, its organizers citing concerns that “the low-profile media coverage and problems with the investigation are all examples of women’s lives not counting and black prostitute women counting least of all.”

It was nothing like 1965, when popular black crooner Sam Cooke was found killed in the same area. “[Sam] Cooke’s death got a lot of attention, and these murder victims got no attention,” says Detective Cliff Shepard, who helped crack the Turner case and was a patrol officer at the time.

But the police did pay attention. That January of 1986, the LAPD and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department created the South Side Slayer Task Force — 49 detectives who logged more than 4,800 tips in just two years and solved dozens of felonies, including two murders.

They had one, clear fact in hand: a black man, or men, was killing people — despite the urban legend that serial killers are white. Victoroff, of USC, calls it “an equal-opportunity profession.” But in fact, police were dealing with one of the most effective sociopathic killers in L.A. history, operating at a perfect time: Turner worked his evil amid the largest crime wave in city history, when murders topped 1,000 a year.

“They were murdered in his own backyard,” says Do. “The women were easy prey.”

Police considered many suspects, but never the well-known local, Chester DeWayne Turner. Says Shepard, “With Chester, no one came forward.” Police investigated a Southern California Rapid Transit District supervisor and a teenage boy who claimed to be on a Satanic mission. Their biggest arrest was 31-year-old Louis Craine, an unemployed construction worker from Watts with an IQ of 69 who committed some of the murders ascribed to a then-imagined South Side Slayer.

Then, following a KABC-TV report that at least nine women had been found shot to death between 1985 and 1989, Rickey Ross, an L.A. County Sheriff’s narcotics officer assigned to LAX, was arrested — but ballistic tests linking Ross to the murders were proven wrong.

Turner blended in, sharing with his mom a modest one-story bungalow in the 600 block of West Century Boulevard. His mother owned her own cleaning business, and he attended Harte Junior High, Gompers Middle School and Locke High School.

There was nothing in Turner’s life to tip off authorities, and he later offered surprisingly garden-variety complaints to detectives: His father was too strict, his stepmother used to hit him, and he wasn’t allowed to fight back against his half siblings.

At 17, he dropped out of high school and his life became a series of brushes with the law. In one stabbing incident, he knifed a childhood friend after the teen pulled a weapon on him. He claims that he was jumped by three thugs who sliced his right cheek, leaving a dramatic facial scar. According to police, he began a rocky relationship with a childhood friend named Felicia Collier who lived across the street. With Collier, Turner became a father.

None of it fit the stereotypical profile of a serial rapist-killer. “His arrests were not what we expected,” says Shepard. “I was expecting someone with an extensive wrap sheet, especially for sexual assaults.”

To this day, nobody — not the families of victims, not the prosecutors or cops — understands why he began his reign of terror. His first murder was of Diane Johnson when Turner was a 20-year-old Domino’s Pizza delivery man. Johnson, 21, was found partially nude alongside the 110 freeway in 1987. Then, police believe he strangled Elandra Bunn near 98th and Figueroa streets. Then Annette Ernest, 26, a troubled young mother, was found face down, partially nude, three blocks from where Johnson was discovered. All three women had been sexually assaulted.

Ernest’s mother, Mildred White, a retired nurse and seamstress, sadly recalls of her daughter, “When I found out this happened to her, I went and got her children — and they have been here ever since.” White saw her daughter shortly before her murder: “She had called me, and I said I was cooking turkey wings, gravy and dressing. I brought her a big pan.”

In one tantalizing clue missed until much later, the killings halted for a time, after a violent fight between Turner and his girlfriend, Collier, during which a relative of Collier’s shot Turner in the abdomen.

But the South Side Slayer Task Force was disbanded in 1988, its detectives frustrated by a lack of clues. Then, in early 1989, Anita Fishman, 31, disappeared — and two weeks later a group of elementary-school boys discovered her badly decomposed body behind a mattress in an alley.

Suzanne Sulzbach, her sister, was busy raising five children but had tried to help her sister, who was addicted to crack cocaine. She says with regret, “We just couldn’t help her. She had no self-esteem or self-worth.”

Nine months later, Regina Washington, six and a half months pregnant, was found hanging by an electrical cord inside a garage. Says co-prosecutor Bobby Grace: “Time, effort and cruelty was put in to kill Washington.”

Chester the Molester was growing more vicious, but still no pattern emerged to lead police to him. He was in fact busily training to be a manager at Domino’s. But in late 1991, the very first inkling of Turner’s sexual deviance surfaced. He was arrested for lewd conduct, masturbating in front of a crossing guard. Released in fall 1992, within hours he was again arrested for indecent exposure — then was released from custody the same night.

Three weeks later, the body of Tammie Christmas was found next to a portable classroom at Barrett Elementary School on West 98th Street — a harrowing incident for the school. Then, Debra Williams’ body was found on a stairwell at the school on November 16. One month later, on December 16, 1992, the body of Mary Edwards was discovered near a rundown hotel adjacent to the school. All these sites were within walking distance of Turner’s house.

Police turned out to be dead wrong about the sort of killer who would leave three bodies at or near a grade school. David Allen Jones was convicted of those three murders, but was years later exonerated — after the DNA in two cases was matched to Chester Turner. (Turner was not, however, tried for those two murders.)

Then, on April 2, 1993, Andrea Tripplett vanished, last seen getting into a small brown car with a black male. Just over a month later, Desarae Jones was found in a backyard, in May 1993.

To the Los Angeles media, deaths like that of Desarae Jones did not stand out. But to Jones’ brother Frank Jones, she was worth remembering: a sister who, he told the Weekly, was “smart, outgoing and funny,” working at a rest home for the elderly before she succumbed to her “drug problem.”

Around 1994, police say, new girlfriend Maria Condon moved with Turner to Salt Lake City, where his mother had moved. There, he worked at a homeless shelter and a fast food restaurant, but soon found yet another girlfriend, Annie Bell, and returned to L.A. The body count increased when, in February 1995, Natalie Price, 31, was found dead outside a crack house.

Police say his last known murder victim in his original South Los Angeles environs — before he moved downtown and started killing women there — was 45-year-old Mildred Beasley, who was married and had a teenage son. She had moved to L.A. only eight weeks earlier, from Texas, when her partially nude body was found in the 9600 block of South Broadway in the fall of 1996.

In early 1998, he was living at a downtown hotel when he lured a mentally ill transient named Paula Vance to a walkway next to an office building. Horribly, a security camera caught the images of Vance’s brutal rape and murder, but did not show the face of her killer.

Then, just over two months later, Brenda Bries was found dead in a portable bathroom — a ligature tight around her neck. Bries was just 50 yards away from the Regal Hotel, the very place where Chester Turner was staying.

Finally, on St. Patrick’s Day of 2002, authorities say, Chester the Molester attacked and raped a woman who, unlike the others, found a way to fight back — even though the police at first were not exactly sympathetic to this unlikely heroine’s tale of rape.

Although Turner was registered in 2000 as a sex offender for lewd conduct, the Midnight Mission allowed Turner to work as a “security guard” as part of a drug-rehabilitation program for cocaine abuse.

Maria Martinez, an admitted drug dealer and addict, knew Turner from the mission, where she took her showers and sold single cigarettes to feed her habit. Turner later told police he called her the “cigarette lady.”

She glared defiantly at Turner during his sordid trial, recounting the night she was walking to an all-night hamburger joint on Los Angeles Street when Turner called her over for a light. She testified that he grabbed her by the throat and pulled her behind a dumpster, where he raped her repeatedly.

She also testified that Turner threatened, “If I was to tell the police and if he got picked up” he would kill her. As she stumbled away from the rape scene, she told the jury, “I am not feeling. I am just walking.”

In shock, she walked to the LAPD’s nearby Central Division station, thinking, “I could take refuge until he leaves,” she told the jury. But when she tried to report the rape, the front desk cops saw little more than a street person with a wild story. They told her to “sit and wait.” Feeling slighted, she went back to her encampment on Boyd Street.

An administrator at the mission, Carrie Gatlin, urged Martinez to fight back by insisting on talking to police. She encouraged Martinez to file a police report, testifying that Martinez “wanted someone to believe her... She wanted to make it clear with me that she wasn’t partying with him.”

At California Hospital Medical Center, Martinez was given a sexual-assault exam — producing the genetic evidence that positively linked Chester Turner with a rape. Turner was arrested later that day, hiding fully clothed in a shower at the mission.

“I am still puzzled as to why he left her alive,” says Detective Shepard. But Martinez became the turning point the LAPD wanted and needed. At long last, in September 2003, Turner’s DNA was matched with sperm found in Paula Vance and Mildred Beasley.

Praying that this was finally their big break, the detectives began testing a broad swath of about 100 unsolved murders in addition to 35 murders around the Figueroa Corridor.

According to prosecutor Grace, after years of police stumbling, lumping together unrelated murders and dubbing it all the work of the South Side Slayer, the number of definitively linked cases was “like water from a faucet,” even exposing the tragic casualty of David Allen Jones, a mentally retarded janitor wrongly convicted of the three 1992 school-related murders. (Jones was later awarded $720,000 by the city after spending 11 years behind bars.)

In some ways, Chester Turner is still, despite his ghoulish new place in city history, an invisible ghost. One recent day during his trial in the Criminal Courts Building downtown, no crowds pressed forward to catch a glimpse of him. The area around the courthouse was crowded — but the media and onlookers were there to see music legend Phil Spector, on trial in the murder of a beautiful blond actress — the kind of story the media can get behind.

USC’s Victoroff tells the Weekly that despite the belief of police that Turner could be the most prolific killer in city history, his trial is relegated to the inside local pages of the Los Angeles Times and rates only passing mention in other media outlets because the victims “aren’t beautiful young starlets.”

Awaiting his guilty verdict on Monday, Jerri Johnson, the mother of victim Andrea Tripplett, snapped at a Times reporter for describing most of the slain women as “prostitutes,” saying, “My daughter wasn’t a prostitute!” She later wept openly, tears streaming down her face.

The families of the dead wonder what kind of horrible fame Chester Turner would have earned in Los Angeles had he murdered downtown secretaries or well-to-do tourists. But even worse are the questions that haunt those who were close to Turner — and never suspected anything.

Today, an elderly woman in South Los Angeles who knew Turner all his life says he could at times be like Jekyll and Hyde, but “I never would have thought nothing like that."

Man convicted in murder of 10 women, fetus

Los Angeles killings happened in the 1980s and 1990s

April 30, 2007

LOS ANGELES - A man described by prosecutors as possibly the city's most prolific serial killer was convicted Monday of murdering 10 women and one victim's unborn fetus in the 1980s and '90s.

The jury also found Chester Turner guilty of the special circumstances of multiple murder and murder committed during rape.

The six-man, six-woman jury had deliberated since April 26.

Turner did not appear to react as the jury's verdicts were read. He could receive the death penalty in the penalty phase of the trial, scheduled to begin Wednesday.

Only a handful of victims' relatives were present because of short notice of the verdict. Among them was Robert Williams, 50, the brother of victim Mildred Beasely, 45, who hurriedly called her five sisters with the news.

"It feels so good," he said between calls. "I've spent nine years waiting. This is the happiest day in a long time. There's a little bit of closure. Justice has been served."

Turner, 40, is already serving an eight-year prison sentence for the 2002 rape of a woman on Skid Row.

His DNA in that rape case linked him to the serial killings that spanned from 1987 to 1998.

Eight of the killings occurred in South Los Angeles when Turner was living in that area, the prosecution said.

Two pregnant victims

One victim was Regina Washington, 27, who was 6 1/2 months pregnant when she was strangled with an electrical cord behind a vacant house in September 1989. Her unborn daughter was one of the murder victims.

Another woman, Andrea Tripplett, 29, was 5 1/2 months pregnant when she was strangled in April 1993. Turner wasn't charged with killing Tripplett's unborn child, however, because California law specified at the time that a 5 1/2-month-old fetus was not considered viable.

There were no eyewitnesses to any of the killings, but a security camera recorded the murder of Paula Vance, 38, in February 1998. The grainy video made it hard to make out Vance and her assailant, but it did show her being thrown to the ground. After about 15 minutes, a man could be seen walking away from her body.

The other victims were Diane Johnson, 21; Annette Ernest, 26; Anita Fishman, 31; Desarae Jones, 29; Natalie Price, 31; and Brenda Bries, 37.

Before police identified Turner as a suspect, a mentally disabled janitor was wrongly convicted of three other slayings police believe are connected to Turner. Turner hasn't been charged with those murders.

David Allen Jones, 44, was released in 2004 after 11 years in prison. He received $720,000 in compensation.