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Jury Convicts 'Grim Sleeper' Lonnie Franklin Jr. of 10 South Los Angeles Murders

Franklin sat silent as the clerk read guilty verdict after guilty verdict for nine women and a 15-year-old girl, and for the survivor who testified against him.

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An empty jury deliberation room with a long table, rolling chairs, closed notepads and a water pitcher, sunlight striping the table through half-closed blinds

The clerk read the verdicts one at a time on Thursday afternoon, May 5, 2016, in a Los Angeles County courtroom, and every one of them was guilty. Lonnie David Franklin Jr., 63, a former city sanitation worker, sat silent and stared straight ahead. In the seats behind him the families and friends of the dead wept quietly.

The jury convicted him of ten counts of first-degree murder: nine women and a 15-year-old girl, killed in South Los Angeles over more than twenty years. Debra Jackson, 29, was found on August 10, 1985. Henrietta Wright, 34, was found in August 1986. Barbara Ware, 23, Bernita Sparks, 26, and Mary Lowe, 26, were all found in 1987. Lachrica Jefferson, 22, and Alicia Alexander, 18, were found in 1988. Then came a long silence that gave the killer his name, until Princess Berthomieux, 15, was found on March 19, 2002. Valerie McCorvey, 35, was strangled and found on July 11, 2003. Janecia Peters, 25, was found on New Year's Day, 2007.

The jury also convicted him of trying to kill Enietra Washington, who testified that in 1988 a man she believed was Franklin shot her in the chest and sexually assaulted her, and that she lived.

Prosecutors had spent more than two months laying out their case. In closing, Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman told the jury it was "not a close call." The prosecution described a pattern: women picked up on the streets, sexually assaulted, shot from the driver's seat of a car and dumped in alleys under mattresses, debris and trash cans. Two of them were strangled.

The arrest had come in 2010, when DNA from Franklin's incarcerated son led detectives to the father. Families of some of the victims believed that because the women were mostly poor and Black, the police had not done all they could to catch the killer or to warn the neighborhood. And the nickname itself had come into doubt. Police had found nearly 100 pictures of unidentified women in Franklin's home, and detectives had since released 150 photographs asking the public to help confirm that the women in them were safe. Thirty-five were still unaccounted for.

The case went on to a penalty phase, with the jury due back on May 12 to decide whether Franklin should die. It recommended death, and on August 10, 2016, Judge Kathleen Kennedy imposed it.

What this story covers. The verdicts, the courtroom scene, the names, ages and discovery dates of the ten victims, Enietra Washington's testimony, the prosecution's closing argument and pattern, the family complaints about the police, the photographs found in Franklin's home and the May 12 return date come from NPR's report of May 5, 2016, which relayed KPCC's coverage. Some later reports give Henrietta Wright's age as 35 and Bernita Sparks's as 25. Franklin's age and his not-guilty pleas come from CBS News's verdict-day report; the jury's death recommendation from the Associated Press report of June 6, 2016; and the sentence from the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office release of August 10, 2016.

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