The LA Garbage Man That K*lled 25 Women: The Story Of Grim Sleeper

 

 

In the dirty back streets of South Central LA, where sirens never sleep and bodies drop without warning, there was one man nobody ever suspected. A quiet garbage truck driver. Seemed chill, kept his head down, did his job. But behind that calm face, a cold-blooded killer. They called him the grim sleeper.

 For 25 years, he hunted women like trash, dumped them like they were nothing. Cops didn’t notice. Streets stayed silent and the body count, it kept growing. How did a man like that stay hidden for so long? And did he finally pay for what he did? Or did the system fail again like it always does in the streets of LA? Join us as we take a closer look at the disturbing case of the Grim Sleeper, a cold, twisted killer who left a trail of bodies behind. The Grim Sleeper.

 Before anyone knew the name Grim Sleeper, Lonnie David Franklin Jr. was just another face in South Central LA. Born on August 30th, 1952, he grew up right in the middle of a city where sirens and crime were just part of the background noise. He wasn’t flashy, no known gang ties, no big moves, just a city garbage man and part-time mechanic at an LAPD garage.

 Kept his head down, married, had two kids, looked like he was grinding out a regular life. But under all that, there was something way darker. People who worked with him never guessed what he’d done. But Lonnie wasn’t just a trash collector. He was trash himself. In 1975, he was dishonorably discharged from the US Army.

 Why? Because the year before in Germany, he and two other soldiers had picked up a 17-year-old girl. Said they’d give her a ride home. Instead, they put a blade to her throat and took her to a field. Then all three of them physically abused her over and over. It was violent, cold, sick. But Franklin slipped up. The girl stayed calm and smart.

 She asked for his number, pretending to be interested. That move got him caught. He got locked up, but didn’t learn a damn thing. Years later, back on the streets of LA, Franklin still had that same evil in him. And just like back in Germany, he used charm and lies to pull women in. Most of them were black. Many were dealing with addiction, some involved in street work.

 They were struggling but human. Still, he treated them like garbage, just like the job he did by day. According to Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman, I don’t think anything was by chance. I think he went looking for them, and it sure looked like it. The way he operated was brutal. He’d lure women into his car, then either shoot them close range with a 0.25 cow pistol or strangle them.

 Then he dumped their bodies like trash. Sometimes under piles of garbage, sometimes in alleys, even dumpsters. The city was already on edge from the crack epidemic. And now women were being hunted like prey. He left their bodies exposed, decaying in the streets. Still, for years, no one caught him. He was too careful, too quiet, too normal looking.

But inside, he was still taking sick photos just like he did in Germany of the women he violated. His killings went on for decades. Between 1985 and 2007, at least 10 women lost their lives, probably more. But what made Franklin even more terrifying was the so-called sleep. That gap in the murders between 1988 and 2002 earned him the nickname grim sleeper.

 Seemed like he took a break. But experts say that’s unlikely. Forensic psychologist Joanie Johnston made it clear it’s not common. Most serial killers don’t stop on their own. So, what really happened during those 14 years? Maybe he didn’t stop. Maybe the bodies just weren’t found. Or maybe the cops just didn’t connect the dots.

 And that brings us to the real problem. How this man was able to keep killing in plain sight. Back in the 80s, bodies of black women were showing up all over South LA. Most were shot, strangled, or both. Cops started to suspect there was a serial killer out there. They called him the Southside Slayer.

 The cases were nasty. Victims were stripped, dumped in alleys, covered in trash. These weren’t high-profile victims. They were poor, addicted, doing sex work to survive. The streets called them strawberries, a street term for women who traded sex for drugs. The cops didn’t move fast. The press didn’t care.

 And the community furious. In September 1985, LAPD finally held a press conference. They asked the public for help, but it felt too late. People like activist Margaret Prescott weren’t having it. She and her group protested outside LAPD headquarters every week, pushing the department to take the murders seriously.

 She pointed out something real. When the nightstalker, Richard Ramirez, was out killing women in rich neighborhoods, police were all over it. But now, with dead women piling up in South Central, crickets. Prescott called it straight. racism, classism, and indifference. Her pressure worked. For a while, the city put together the Southside Slayer Task Force, bringing in more detectives.

 By early 1986, they had linked 15 murders. The case was growing. The heat was on. Prescott and her group, now called the Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders, even got the city council to increase reward money from $10,000 to $25,000. But nothing solid came out of it. Why? Because not all the killings matched.

 Different weapons, different styles, conflicting witness descriptions. It wasn’t just one killer. Turns out there were multiple predators working the same streets at the same time. The task force couldn’t keep up. Too many cases, not enough leads. So, in 1987, the operation started shrinking. No new info, no progress. One LAPD lieutenant told the LA Times, “The flow of clues is almost non-existent at this point. Meanwhile, Lonnie Franklin Jr.

was still out there, still living in the same neighborhood, still acting normal. But he wasn’t done. Not even close. His capture wouldn’t come until years later. But until then, the streets stayed quiet. The women kept disappearing, and the garbage man kept hunting. The first known murder in the grim sleeper case was Sharon Dismuk. She was just 21.

found dead on the floor of a men’s bathroom in an old gas station on January 15th, 1984. Nothing about it made the news for long. No one cared much. Another dead girl in the hood. But it was just the beginning. A few months later, in April 1985, Deborah Jackson was found. She was 29, worked as a cocktail waitress.

 Her body was rotting under a carpet in an alley near Westgage Avenue. Same area, same style, shot in the chest with a 0.25 caliber pistol. Another alley, another woman tossed like she didn’t matter. One year later, the body of Henrietta Wright was found the same way. She was a cafeteria worker, a mother of five, five kids left behind.

 She was dumped in an alley, dead. Same caliber weapon, same cold execution. Franklin’s victims kept adding up. Barbara Wear was next. She was 23. Then came Bernita Sparks who worked as a school monitor. She was 26. Mary Low followed. Then Lacria Jefferson only 22. Anz Warren and Alicia Monnique Alexander.

 She was just 18 when they found her body behind a building near 43rd place. She had vanished 6 days earlier. Her death was like the rest, brutal and silent. All of them were shot in the chest. All of them left out in the open, mostly in alleys. It was like the killer wanted to make sure the city saw them but didn’t care enough to act.

Then came the one who got away, the one who lived to tell the story. Her name was Enetra Washington. She was 30, a mother of two. On the night of November 19th, 1988, she was walking to a friend’s house. Then a car pulled up. It was an old orange Ford Pinto. The man inside looked neat. early 30s, clean shirt, khakis, looked like he worked a regular job. Nothing flashy.

 He offered her a ride. She said no, but he kept pushing. At one point, he snapped. That’s what’s wrong with you black women. People can’t be nice to you. Those words hit her. He made her feel guilty. So, she changed her mind, got in the car. She would regret that decision for the rest of her life. As they drove, the man said he needed to stop at his uncle’s house to pick up some money.

 He parked near an apartment and went to the front door, talked to someone, came back 10 minutes later, but something had changed. He got quiet, then strange, started accusing her of cheating on him, calling her names. I thought he said Brenda, and I was like, that is not my name, she later said in court. Then out of nowhere, everything went silent.

 She looked down and realized she had been shot in the chest. The pain hit hard. She blacked out. When she came too, he was raping her. She passed out again. When she woke up, there was a bright flash. He was taking a Polaroid picture. That was his thing. Photos, souvenirs. After the attack, he pushed her out of the car, left her bleeding in the street. And Yetra didn’t die.

 She crawled, stumbled, bled her way to a friend’s place. Her friend called an ambulance. She told the cops everything, gave them a description of the man, gave them the car, even led them to the spot where he had stopped. Still, nothing happened. No arrest, no follow-up. The grim sleeper went quiet and the trail went cold.

 But even in that silence, the damage kept piling up. Years later, detectives began to look at possible links outside California. There were whispers about murders in Bise between 1998 and 2000. Five girls had been abducted, raped, and murdered in Bleise City. One victim’s aunt even said she saw Franklin there at the time. That wasn’t all.

 The same van used in one of his LA killings somehow showed up in Bise. Franklin’s wife, Sylvia Castillo, was from Bleise. He had connections. The timeline of his so-called 14-year break matched those murders. It was all circumstantial, but too close to ignore. Still, Franklin was never charged in those cases. And then came May 16th, 2010.

 A body was found on the 105 freeway near Garfield Avenue. Her name was Edwenta Heraford, just 19 years old. She had been pushed from a moving car speeding eastbound, killed by the fall and blunt force trauma. Witnesses said they last saw at Snappy’s Liquor near Imperial Highway. That’s in Westmond, right in the heart of Franklin’s killing ground.

 It was close enough to raise eyebrows. Cops never confirmed the link, but they never ruled it out either. Her case is still open. Other names kept coming up. Women who vanished without a trace. Kathern Davis, 32, was last seen in June 1982 on West 49th Street. Rosalyn Giles, 26, vanished in January 1991 from East 64th Street.

 Lisa Renee Knox, 28, was last seen in May 1993 near 22nd Street. Anita Parker, 37, disappeared in 1998 near Brinhurst Avenue. All of them had something in common. They were last seen in Franklin’s territory. They were all involved in survival work, drug use, street hustling. No one looked too hard when they went missing.

 It wasn’t just Franklin hunting out there. In time, the truth came out. Multiple serial killers were operating in the same area. Lewis Crane was behind at least two of the Southside Slayer killings. Michael Hughes, Daniel Lee Sbert, Chester Turner, and Ivan Hill each had at least one victim. On top of that, some murders were likely done by pimps or clients, not serials. It was chaos.

 Too many predators, not enough police pressure. The system was too slow, too broken. Then came more mess. In 1988, three women were murdered with a 9mm pistol. Judith Simpson, Cynthia Walker, and Latana Johnson. All shot, all killed during the same season Franklin was active. Cops arrested Sheriff’s Detective Ricky Ross.

 They found him with a sex worker and drugs. His rusted out 9mm Beretta was in the trunk. It matched the bullet type. Ross got charged, but later independent tests showed the weapon wasn’t a match. Charges were dropped and all three cases remain unsolved. Still, one trail stood out among all the chaos. A very specific one. Women shot in the chest.

 Close range with the same.25 caliber gun. It started with Deborah Jackson in 1985. Then Henry at a right in 1986. By 1987, seven women had been killed with the exact same gun. That was no accident. That was someone’s personal tool. A killer’s favorite weapon. That was Franklin. And two decades later, when his name finally came out, they called him the grim sleeper because of the gap in the timeline.

 But the truth, there was no real sleep. The city just stopped listening. And the women, they kept disappearing. Let’s take a detailed look at the victims of the grim sleeper. While the full horror of Lonnie Franklin Jr. AMS crimes came to light only after his arrest. Behind the quiet face of a garbage man was a killer who targeted the most vulnerable.

The streets of South Central Los Angeles were his hunting ground. And his victims, mostly black women. Many were dealing with addiction or working the corners just to survive. But instead of help, they met death in the darkest way. Franklin didn’t just kill. He stalked, lured, and ended lives.

 then left bodies to rot in alleys, dumpsters, and filthy corners of the city. Cops found them shot with a 0.25 caliber handgun, some strangled. Each one told a story. Each one was ignored until it was too late. And the trail he left behind was far longer than anyone imagined. Remember the 29-year-old Deborah Ronette Jackson? On August 10th, 1985, she was shot three times in the chest and left in an alley near West Gage Avenue.

 But prosecutors believe his spree started even earlier. Sharon Alicia Desmuk, just 21, was found dead in South Park on January 15th, 1984. At first, no one linked her to the others. Only after Franklin was caught did the dots start to connect. His signature was clear. Young black women killed close range, bodies dumped in cold alleys like yesterday’s trash, and yet no alarms were raised.

 Then came more. Henrietta Wright, 35, found in August 1986. Her body was dumped under an old mattress near Vernon Avenue. She had been shot and possibly moved from another spot. 2 days later, Thomas Sylvester Steel was found dead. He was 36. Franklin was never charged with Steel’s death, but suspicions ran high. Steel may have been a witness or just someone who knew too much.

 Either way, the timing was no coincidence. January 1987 brought another name to the growing list. Barbara Bthun Wear. She was 23. Her body was dumped in central Alamita. 4 months later, it was Bernita Sparks, just 26. Tossed in a trash bin in Grammar Park like she never mattered. Then came Mary Low. Same neighborhood, same ending.

 Found in an alley, shot, discarded. By now, it was a pattern. Franklin was hunting with precision. He knew these neighborhoods. He knew who to target. and he knew no one was really looking. In January 1988, Lacrica Denise Jefferson was found dead at just 22. Later that year, 28-year-old Inz Warren was shot and found unconscious in an alley. She died shortly after.

 Her murder was only tied to Franklin after his arrest. Then came Alicia Monnique Alexander, only 18, found dumped in Vermont Square in September 1988. Shot, abandoned. It didn’t stop there. But Inetra Marget Washington changed the story. She was 30 when Franklin offered her a ride in November 1988. She got in thinking it was just a favor.

He drove her to a dark alley, pulled a gun, shot her, and left her bleeding. She survived barely. Her strength and memory would one day help bring Franklin down. But after Inatra, something strange happened. The killings appeared to stop. That’s when the so-called sleep began. 14 long years, no confirmed victims.

That gap earned him the nickname the grim sleeper. But many never believed he truly stopped. He kept so many pictures and trophies. Psychologist Joanie Johnston said that shows how strong the urge was. Franklin didn’t need to be active to be dangerous. He was always circling, always watching. LAPD detective Darren Dri said it flat.

 I don’t think he stopped killing and Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman confirmed some of the evidence we presented was between those two periods. So, what happened in those quiet years? Maybe bodies weren’t found. Maybe they weren’t linked. Maybe the system just didn’t care enough to connect the dots. But by 2000, the killing trail started again.

 Georgia May Thomas, 43, was shot and killed in South Park in December of that year. Her case wasn’t tied to Franklin until his trial, but she fit the pattern. Then came one of the saddest names on this list, Princess Cheyenne Bertomir, just 15 years old, a child, strangled and beaten. Her body was found in shrubs in an alley in Englewood in March 2002.

 She had gone missing in December 2001. Her story wasn’t just a number. Her sister, Herard, shared memories of a sweet, loving girl. Her death does not bring me closure. Herod said it brings me to my next chapter. Princess had escaped a horrible life. Abused as a toddler by her real father, she came into a new home with a family who cared.

 Her foster mother, Dolores Smart, used to say, “Send me your worst and I’ll repair them.” And she did. Princess had love, care, therapy, and a new life. But when Dolores died suddenly, everything fell apart. Princess was moved to a foster home in LA, far from the world she knew. She was a private school girl and they put her in the heart of the hood.

 Herard said she couldn’t handle it. She ran away. Not long after, she ended up in Franklin’s path. The killings rolled on. In July 2003, Valerie Louise McCorvy, 35, was found dead on Danker Avenue. Another alley, another bullet. Then came 18-year-old Ayella Jibo Zada Marshall. She was last seen at a medical clinic in February 2005.

 Her body has never been found, but her school ID was discovered in Franklin’s garage. Then there was Relania Adele Morris, 31. She vanished in September 2005. Her driver’s license and explicit pictures were in the same garage stash. He didn’t just kill, he collected. He kept photos, names, IDs, all trophies of lives he destroyed.

 And on New Year’s Day 2007, the last known victim, Jananishia Levette Peters, just 25, found in Grammarcy Park under a garbage bag, shot, dumped, forgotten until investigators pieced it all together. Franklin’s home was a house of horrors. When police searched it, they found guns, women’s belongings, and hundreds, literally hundreds of photos of women.

We tried to identify as many as we could, said Silverman. Some of those women were scared in the photos. Some were unconscious. Some were clearly being watched. Some of them nobody has ever seen again. That evidence painted the real picture. This wasn’t about 10 or 15 murders. This was a decadesl long spree hidden behind the face of a man collecting a paycheck from the city.

Psychologist Johnston saw it clearly. He became more violent. In the end, he wasn’t just shooting them. He was strangling. He was escalating. Franklin’s rage grew over time. He wasn’t just dumping bodies. He was silencing voices. He died behind bars in 2020. Natural causes, heart problems, not justice, not enough for Herard, Princess’s sister. It wasn’t an ending.

It seems so unfair. Why her? I couldn’t have asked for a better sister ever. The names go on. The stories stretch across years. And still many of the women in those pictures remain unidentified. Some never got the chance to be heard, but they existed. They mattered. And on the same streets where Franklin drove a garbage truck, he also turned his car into a trap.

 A place where trust led to death. These women weren’t just victims. They were part of this city. Their lives were stolen, but their stories won’t be. The hood remembers. And the scars never healed. For more than two decades, Lonnie Franklin Jr. managed to slip in and out of South LA’s streets like a ghost.

 Women were dying, bodies dumped, but cops had nothing. No name, no prints, just pain left behind. That all changed in the early 2000s when LAPD started taking another look at old unsolved cases. That’s when they noticed something chilling. Princess Berto Muer, only 15, had been strangled and left in an alley in Englewood in 2002. Then in 2003, Valerie McCorvy, a 35-year-old mom of two, was found dead.

 And finally, in 2007, Jennia Peters, just 25, was found in a dumpster on Southwestern Avenue. She had been shot in the back. That bullet didn’t kill her right away. It paralyzed her from the waist down, but she didn’t survive. So, what was the link between these women? It was the same DNA, the same weapon, the same brutal pattern that went all the way back to the 1980s.

 But there was one problem. The killer’s DNA wasn’t in Cotus, the national DNA database. Cops had nothing to match it with. Whoever this was, he had never been arrested for anything serious, or he had managed to hide for years. Either way, the trail went cold again until Franklin’s own bloodline gave him up. In the summer of 2009, Franklin’s son, Christopher, got arrested for carrying a weapon.

 Nothing major, just another bust in the system. But as part of the process, he had to give a DNA swab. When that sample went into the system, it set off alarms. It wasn’t a full match to the DNA found on the victims, but it was close. Real close, enough to suggest that the real killer was a close male relative.

 That’s when detectives locked in. They started looking at Franklin himself, a man in his 50s, a former sanitation worker, a guy who once worked as a mechanic for the LAPD, married a grandfather. Nothing about him screamed serial killer. That’s exactly why he got away with it for so long.

 As one person put it, “Of course, in hindsight, you’re like, he would have to be from that community. Who else would have been able to slip in and out unseen?” Writer Christine Pelisk summed it up even better. He certainly didn’t fit the profile of a serial killer, per se. And yet, of course, he did. He wasn’t the monster people imagined.

 No wild eyes, no messy look. He was quiet, normal, calm. That made him even more dangerous. After the match with Christopher’s DNA, the LAPD set a trap. Detectives followed Franklin to a pizza shop in Buena Park. They didn’t say a word, just watched, waited. When Franklin finished his food and left the table, an undercover detective posing as a bus boy moved in.

 He grabbed a fork, two plastic cups, a pizza plate, even the leftover slice. All of it went straight to the lab. What came back changed the case forever. The DNA on that pizza slice matched DNA found on the victims. It was over. Franklin had left behind his own evidence. And now it was in police hands. That’s when the search of his house began.

 And what they found inside was even worse than anyone expected. Cops tore through Franklin’s home and garage for three full days. What they found wasn’t just weapons or bullets. They found trophies, necklaces, rings, earrings, watches, little things stolen from women who never made it home. Even worse, photographs.

 More than 500 pictures. Some women were naked. Some were being forced into sex acts. Some looked terrified. Others unconscious. These weren’t just images. They were proof. Evidence of women who crossed paths with the grim sleeper and didn’t survive. In one of Franklin’s bedrooms, they found his gun, a small pocket pistol, an FIE Titan.

 25 caliber semi-auto. Later testing confirmed it was the same gun used to shoot Janisia Peters. It was his favorite weapon. Small, easy to hide, deadly at close range. It had done damage for decades. But the items in his garage told an even deeper story. Detectives found a Polaroid picture of Intro Washington, the one woman who survived his attack back in 1988.

 She had testified at his trial, describing every moment of her nightmare. And now her photo taken right after he shot and raped her was right there in his stash. It was haunting. In the same envelope, police found a photo of Janiceia Peters. And they weren’t done. They also found two IDs. The school ID card of Ayella Marshall and the Nevada driver’s license of Rolinia Morris. Both women had vanished in 2005.

Ayella was just 18. Relia was 31. Both were last seen near Franklin’s house on 81st in Western. Their bodies were never found, but their faces, their names, their belongings were all buried in his home. This wasn’t just a serial killer’s den. It was a trophy room. A twisted archive of pain. Every piece of jewelry, every photo, every scrap of ID told a story of someone who likely never made it out alive.

 LAPD officials believe there were even more victims, possibly dozens more. They began working to identify 35 women seen in Franklin’s photos. Some had no names. Some had never been reported missing. Others just disappeared without a trace. Franklin didn’t talk. He didn’t confess. But his collection spoke loud.

 It showed a man who never planned to stop. I doubt that he would have stopped. Pilisk said he was most interested in not getting caught. And for a long time, he wasn’t. He walked the streets, drove the truck, laughed with neighbors, then went home and filed away more pain in his drawers. Anyways, in May 2007, the murder of 25-year-old Janiceia Peters gave LAPD the break they had been chasing for decades.

 DNA linked her slaying to 11 unsolved murders going all the way back to 1985. That’s when things finally shifted. The LAPD moved quick but quiet. They built a team in secret, six detectives under the robbery homicide unit. The task force was named 800. No public press release, no community warning, not even a whisper from Mayor Antonio Villa Regosa or police chief William Bratton.

 The community didn’t even know a serial killer was still out there. It wasn’t until journalist Christine Pelisk from LA Weekly broke the story that people found out what was really going on. She exposed the task force, the connection to Janiceia’s murder, and how long the city had stayed silent. In fact, some families learned from the article that their daughters were confirmed victims.

The silence, it made the pain worse. Then in September 2008, the city finally put a $500,000 reward on the table. The case was later featured on America’s Most Wanted in November. It took until February 2009 for Bratton to speak publicly. That’s when the killer finally got a name, the Grim Sleeper. LAPD even released an old 911 call from the 80s.

 A man reported seeing a body being dumped. He gave a van description and plate number. That van had ties to the old Cosmopolitan church, a place Franklin had access to. March 2009 brought another big moment. Christine Pelisk sat down for a full interview with Inietra Washington, the only survivor. Intra gave a detailed description of Franklin.

 She called him a black man in his early 30s. Clean, geeky looking in a black polo and khakis. She even remembered his cars inside and out. She never forgot. But still, cops had no DNA match. The truth, Franklin’s DNA should have been in the system. In 2003, he got a felony conviction and was put on supervised probation for 3 years.

 But when voters passed Proposition 69 in 2004, making it law to collect DNA from all felons, Franklin slipped through. From late 2004 to mid 2005, the probation department had no setup to collect DNA from people under unsupervised probation. Franklin’s sample was never taken. That miss cost lives.

 Eventually, detectives used something new. Familiar DNA. They didn’t find an exact match, but they found someone close. Franklin’s son, Christopher, had been busted on a felony gun charge in 2008. His DNA was in the system. It wasn’t a full match to the crime scenes, but it was too close to ignore. That’s when eyes turned to the father, Lonnie Franklin Jr.

, they followed him. One undercover cop even acted like a restaurant waiter just to get his trash. At one pizza spot, Franklin left behind a fork, cups, crust, and plates. That’s all they needed. They swabbed the saliva, tested the DNA, and bam, it matched what was left on several victims. On July 7th, 2010, the hunt ended.

 Cops arrested Franklin at his home in South Central LA. The charges were massive. 10 counts of murder, one count of attempted murder, and a special circumstance for multiple killings. But what they found inside his home hit even harder than the charges. Franklin’s house was a nightmare. Investigators found photos and videos of 180 women.

 That number later grew. By the end of the search, they had uncovered over 1,000 images and hundreds of hours of footage. It was dark, sick, and personal. The women in the pictures, mostly black, a wide age range, some teens, some much older. Many were naked. Some were passed out. Some looked terrified. Some never woke up.

Police Chief Charlie Beck said it best when the 180 photos were released in December 2010. These people are not suspects. We don’t even know if they are victims, but we do know this. Franklin’s reign of terror in Los Angeles lasted for over two decades. That reign may have hurt even more people.

 In 2011, prosecutors came forward and said they believed Franklin had killed at least six more women beyond the 10 confirmed. cops had evidence. Two of the new cases were likely from the so-called gap years between 1988 and 2002. Two others were from the 80s. The last two women who vanished in 2005. Their bodies were never found.

 But something, maybe a photo, maybe a link to his house, tied them to Franklin. The pressure grew. Detectives dug into old files, combed through missing persons, compared faces from the photos. The case exploded again in November 2011 when Reuters reported Franklin was being looked at for six more slayings.

 Two of those victims were never found, but the timeline lined up with his activity. The pieces were all there. Actress Regina Hall narrated a documentary on the case, Cold Case Files, The Grim Sleeper. In her words, he hurt a lot of people in many ways. She said it best. He understood the times. He knew no one would look for that group of women.

 He saw it wouldn’t get coverage. He used that. It’s manipulative. It’s evil. She didn’t stop there. The true callousness of how he discarded and treated the victims. It was horrifying. She said she imagined what it felt like to live in that community back then. It would have been terrifying. Franklin knew how to blend in. He knew how to stay quiet.

 And he knew the system would overlook black women, especially those who were poor or struggling. That was his cover. And it worked for 23 years. But the DNA, that never lies. That’s what finally tore it all down. The aftermath of his arrest raised more questions than answers. Who were all the women in those photos? Were they alive? Were they victims? Were there even more we still don’t know about? The investigation didn’t end with his arrest.

 It kept going, digging deeper into a case that never should have gone unsolved for that long. Franklin had been living right in the heart of LA, hiding in plain sight. But now his secrets were out. By 2010, Lonnie Franklin Jr. was finally behind bars. The charges were heavy. 10 murders and one attempted murder, no bail. He was never charged for a suspected 11th victim, a black man, because no DNA could link Franklin to that death.

 But even with all that evidence, it still took time to get him in front of a jury. His trial didn’t start until February 16th, 2016, years after his arrest. Pre-trial hearings dragged on. discovery delays. But when it finally opened, the courtroom was packed. The jury heard it all.

 Victim after victim, case after case. The state called him a predator who hunted women he thought were not submissive enough. Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman told the court, “These crimes were about power and control.” She painted Franklin as a man who found pleasure in hurting women, in dumping their bodies like trash. “He definitely wanted to degrade these women,” she said.

He got off on that, too. That’s why he did it over and over. It gave him gratification. Silverman didn’t hold back. She told the jury Franklin wasn’t just killing. He was getting something sick out of it. And his actions weren’t random. They were planned, cold, repeated. Franklin’s longtime friend, Ray Davis, even took the stand.

 His testimony shocked the courtroom. He said Franklin used to talk about women like they were jokes. He gave them names based on what their bodies looked like. He didn’t smoke weed himself, but kept a stash just to give to women. These weren’t just hookups, they were setups. By May 2nd, 2016, the trial was nearing the end.

 That’s when closing arguments began. 2 days later, the jury started to deliberate. On May 5th, just a day and a half later, they came back with a decision. Franklin was guilty. All 10 counts of murder, one count of attempted murder. The jury didn’t need long. The evidence spoke louder than words. The victims named in court were Deborah Jackson, Henrietta Wright, Mary Lowe, Bernita Sparks, Barbara Wear, Lara Jefferson, Monnique Alexander, Princess Berto Mu, Valerie McCorvy, and Janiceia Peters.

 Most were shot, some were strangled. All were left to die, forgotten by the streets, except for one, Inro Washington. She survived barely and she faced Franklin in court, told the jury how he shot her, raped her, and then took a Polaroid while she faded in and out of consciousness. That picture was later found in his house, proof of the horror she lived through.

But that wasn’t all. Prosecutors brought in more evidence. They believed he also killed Sharon Dism, Rolinia Morris, Ayella Marshall, and Georgia May Thomas. They even said he tried to kill another woman, Laura Moore, in 1985. She was a waitress, just 21, when she was shot three times in the chest. She lived but barely.

 The sentencing hearing started on May 12th, 2016. The defense tried everything to avoid the death penalty. They asked for life in prison instead, but Judge Kathleen Kennedy wasn’t moved. She made it clear the evidence backed the jury’s decision. At the end of the day, the issue for the court is whether the evidence supports the jury’s verdict in this case.

 Kennedy said, “I find that the aggravating circumstances do so substantially outweigh the circumstances of mitigation as to warrant death.” She agreed with the jury. Death was the right call. In the courtroom, victim’s families got to speak. One by one, they stood up. Their voices cracked, their hands shook, but their words were strong.

 A sister looked at Franklin and said, “You sit there with a blank face since the whole trial. No remorse, no nothing, but today is our day.” Another woman said, “She still talks to me in my dreams. She had lost her sister, her best friend, everything.” “You are truly a piece of evil,” said one woman, staring directly at Franklin.

 Another mother spoke through tears. No one expects to bury their child, she said. But that’s what my husband and I had to do. These weren’t just statements. They were the voices of pain that had waited decades to be heard. Franklin sat still. Short hair, glasses, no emotion, no apology, just silence. As each family member faced him down, the courtroom was quiet except for the sound of grief.

Generations broken, lives forever changed. That day in court didn’t erase the pain, but it gave the family something they had been denied for years. Truth, justice, and a voice in the room. You see, Franklin’s crime stretched from 1984 to 2007. That gap in killings is what earned him the name Grim Sleeper.

 But as the evidence showed, he never really stopped. He was just getting smarter, playing the system, avoiding the spotlight, blending in. In May 2016, he was sentenced to death. but the hurt he left behind. No courtroom could ever undo that. At trial, prosecutor Beth Silverman reminded the jury of that moment.

 She also showed video from a police interrogation. Franklin didn’t show shock or fear. He didn’t even look worried. Instead, he laughed. Called one woman fat, another butt ugly. His attitude showed no remorse, no shame, just cold disrespect for the lives he had taken. The evidence against him covered decades. From the crackfueled chaos of the 1980s when serial killers were working South LA like hunters on a block to the more advanced world of DNA testing and cold case breakthroughs in the 2000s.

Franklin’s first known murders started around 1985. Seven women were linked by the same.25 caliber pistol. Then he disappeared, or so it seemed. In 2010, his DNA was matched using a new tool, familial DNA. It was his son’s arrest that led them to Franklin. Once they found him, they started connecting all the pieces that had been missed for years.

 Later, during his sentencing hearing, prosecutors brought up even more victims. These women hadn’t been confirmed by DNA or ballistics, but the task force believed they were his, too. Three of them, Sharon Dismuk, Inz Warren, and Georgia May Thompson were added after his arrest based on old reports going back to 1976. A fourth, Rolinia Morris, was tied to Franklin through items found in his garage.

 Her body was never found, but her ID was there. Prosecutors decided not to charge him for these four, only because they didn’t want to delay the trial further, but the jury had already made up its mind. On June 6th, 2016, Franklin was sentenced to death. A month later, on August 10th, the court formally sentenced him count by count, naming each of the victims.

 Years later, on March 28th, 2020, the grim sleeper finally died. He was found unresponsive in his cell at San Quinton State Prison. Medical staff tried to save him. He was declared dead at 7:43 p.m. No wounds, no marks, just gone. The official cause of death was not released. But one thing was clear. His chapter was over.

 Diana Wear, stepmother of victim Barbara Wear, gave her thoughts after his death. I won’t say I’m pleased he died, she said. But in the end, there was justice for all the bad things he did in his life. We can now be at peace. People who followed the case for years felt that peace, too. Christine Pelisk, the journalist who helped expose the LAPD’s secret task force, covered every twist of the story.

 She later wrote a book called The Grim Sleeper: The Lost Women of South Central. In the AKD documentary, Pelisk, along with Washington and families of the victims, shared everything they had been through. Pelisk remembered how Franklin kept trophies, photos, jewelry, IDs, how he laughed at victims in front of detectives, how calculated he had been.

Regina Hall, who narrated the documentary, said he understood the times and he understood that people wouldn’t look for that group of women. He understood it wouldn’t get coverage. Hall added, “It was incredibly calculated. He was compelled to hurt people.” She was struck by how Franklin discarded his victims.

The true callousness of how he treated them was horrifying. She said, “I was just thinking about living in that community. What that would have felt like, it would have been terrifying.” In court, it wasn’t just Inetra, Washington who had the chance to speak. Victim’s families were there, too. Some cried, some shouted, some just stared him down.

 One woman said, “You sit there with a blank face since the whole trial. No remorse, no nothing. But today is our day. Another told the courtroom, “She still talks to me in my dreams. Her sister had been taken from her. A mother shared her pain. No one expects to bury their child. But that’s what my husband and I had to do.” Lonnie Franklin Jr.

hurt more than just the women he killed. He tore apart families. He broke mothers, sisters, children. And even in court, even facing death, he showed no emotion. Just the same cold stare that had hidden in plain sight for years. His crime stretched across three decades. His house was a graveyard of evidence.

His trial exposed how deep the failures ran from ignored DNA to police silence. But in the end, the voices of survivors, families, and investigators cut through the silence. And those voices told the real story of the grim sleeper. And now, while the grim sleeper is gone, the damage he caused is still here.

 Do you think justice was truly served in the end, or did the system fail these women for too long? Let us know what you think in the comments box below. And if you liked how we presented you this video, hit that like button and make sure to subscribe for more.