Louis Craine was convicted in April 1989 of murdering four women in South Los Angeles between 1985 and 1987. He was 32, an unemployed construction worker from Watts. A jury in Compton found him guilty of four counts of first-degree murder with special-circumstance allegations, acquitted him of the murder of a fifth woman, and then recommended that he be put to death. He died in prison later the same year.
His case belongs to a larger history. For years the deaths of women in South Los Angeles were grouped under one name, the "Southside Slayer", on the belief that a single man was responsible. Two of the four killings for which Craine was convicted had been counted in that series. Detectives who reopened the old cases with DNA evidence decades later concluded that several men had been killing women in the same area at the same time.
Gail Marie Ficklin was found strangled on August 15, 1985. She is the earliest of the four women whose murders Craine was convicted of.
Loretta Perry was found on January 25, 1987.
Vivian Collins was killed on March 18, 1987.
Carolyn Barney was found in May 1987. She is the last of the four women in the case.
A fifth woman, Sheila Ray Burris, 30, was also named in the charges. The jury found Craine not guilty of her murder, and her death is not counted among his convictions.
The deaths came during a long run of killings of women in South Los Angeles. United Press International, reporting from Compton at the close of Craine's trial, described the "Southside Slayer" killings as claiming the lives of 18 women from the fall of 1983 through May 1987. Two of Craine's four victims were among those 18.
The single name hid a more complicated picture. In December 2008, ABC News reported that prosecutors in Los Angeles believed four or more men may have been responsible for the deaths of dozens of women in the city in the 1980s and 1990s. Using DNA evidence, detectives reinvestigating unsolved cases from the era had come to believe that many of the killings once attributed to the Southside Slayer were the work of several men stalking the same area. Prosecutors put the number of women killed in those cases at as many as 80. The killings took place during a wave of crime linked to the crack cocaine epidemic, and many of the victims were poor, the report said.
"I don't think there's ever been anything similar to this where you have multiple people targeting the same type of victim," Deputy District Attorney Bobby Grace told ABC News.
By then, ABC News listed Craine as one of at least two men already convicted in the South Los Angeles killings. The other was Chester Turner, a pizza deliveryman who had been sentenced to death the year before for killing 10 women and the unborn child of one of them. A third man, Michael Hughes, already serving a life sentence for murder, had been charged in December 2008 with four more killings in South Los Angeles committed between 1986 and 1993.
After his arrest, Craine gave the police a long confession in which he admitted three of the murders, according to UPI. At his trial, that confession became the main subject of his defense.
The case was tried before a Superior Court jury in Compton, with Judge Janice Clair Croft presiding. Deputy District Attorney John Watson prosecuted. Craine was defended by Morris Jones and Ronald Skeyers.
Five counts of first-degree murder with special-circumstance allegations were put to the jury. The special-circumstance allegations made the case one in which the death penalty could be sought.
Craine took the stand and recanted his confession. "Yes, I did lie to them," he testified, referring to the police. "One thing led to another. ... It was a big mistake."
Watson pressed him under cross-examination. "You're just an innocent man then?" the prosecutor asked. "That's the way it is," Craine replied.
His lawyers argued that he had not understood what he was telling the detectives. They described him as illiterate, with a fourth-grade education and an IQ of 69.
On April 26, 1989, the jury found Craine guilty of four counts of first-degree murder with special-circumstance allegations, for the deaths of Gail Marie Ficklin, Loretta Perry, Vivian Collins and Carolyn Barney. It found him not guilty of the murder of Sheila Ray Burris.
The same jury then heard the penalty phase, in which prosecutors sought death and the defense asked the jurors to spare his life. The choice before them was death or life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Deliberations did not go smoothly. At one point the jurors told the judge they were deadlocked. Croft ordered them to keep deliberating. She later replaced one juror with an alternate and told the panel to begin its deliberations again from the start.
The reconstituted jury recommended a death sentence. Croft scheduled formal sentencing for June 6, 1989.
Craine died in prison in 1989, ABC News reported in 2008.
Craine was tried while the deaths of women in South Los Angeles were still spoken of as the work of a single Southside Slayer. The later work described by ABC News, using DNA to link old cases to different men, recast that history. In the account prosecutors gave in 2008, the deaths that had been grouped under one name were spread across several killers, of whom Craine was one convicted man among others.
Fall 1983 to May 1987: the period of the 18 "Southside Slayer" killings, as described by UPI in 1989.
August 15, 1985: Gail Marie Ficklin is found strangled.
January 25, 1987: Loretta Perry is found.
March 18, 1987: Vivian Collins is killed.
May 1987: Carolyn Barney is found.
After his arrest: Craine confesses to three of the murders, according to UPI.
1989: trial before Judge Janice Clair Croft in Superior Court, Compton; Craine testifies that he lied to police.
April 26, 1989: guilty on four counts of first-degree murder with special-circumstance allegations; not guilty of the murder of Sheila Ray Burris.
1989: after reporting a deadlock and the replacement of a juror, the jury recommends death; formal sentencing is set for June 6.
1989: Craine dies in prison.
December 2008: Los Angeles prosecutors say four or more men may have been responsible for the killings of dozens of women in the city in the 1980s and 1990s.