Under the Radar — How a Broken Community Empowered a Brutal Killer
For over 20 years a serial killer stalked the streets of South-Central LA, claiming victims at will and evading capture with effortless anonymity. Like Jack the Ripper a century before him, the Grim Sleeper hunted on the fringes of an underprivileged society, taking advantage of institutionalised neglect, apathy and discrimination.
The stories of high profile criminals and their deeds have shocked and enthralled audiences for years. From Dr H.H Holmes, “America’s first serial killer” in the late 19th century to the “Axeman of New Orleans” to the unprecedented horrors of Jeffrey Dahmer’s cannibalistic killing spree, murder has always been the biggest drawcard. In an era where the stories resulting from true crime studies are hugely popular as entertainment in mainstream media, the story of the Grim Sleeper is a modern masterpiece of evil, mystery and political intrigue.
As stated by professor of criminology Anthony Walsh from Boise State University in the 2004 book Race and Crime, African-American serial killers are not uncommon, they simply receive a lot less attention. The reasons for this have not been definitively studied but casual analysis shows that the majority of all serial killers’ victims are from the same racial background as the murderer. This is true in the case of the Grim Sleeper where the victims are all African-American, as is the suspect currently on trial. There is plenty of evidence to support the belief that the lack of attention given to the Grim Sleeper’s crimes over the duration he was active is because his victims are black.
The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has a poor record on brutality, corruption and racial discrimination. Beginning in the 1960’s, unrest fuelled by widespread racial tension turned many parts of the city into battlegrounds and the LAPD reacted by developing a siege mentality. The organisation that was meant to “Protect and Serve” turned into an insular paramilitary outfit, officers so hardened by the bad they witnessed that many of them could no longer see any good in those who didn’t hold a badge.
In a city where the threat of a catastrophic earthquake looms continually for all inhabitants, a different kind of fault line caused a seismic shift in the landscape of LA’s organised crime scene. The crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980’s set the stage for an unprecedented level of violence and the cost was deadly for all sides. Stakes were high and rival gangs were quick to punish each other with lethal force. Outmanned and often outgunned, the Police were targeted by all of them.
Meanwhile, years of neglect and social disadvantage meant that dealing in the lucrative drug trade was the only path out of poverty for many of the city’s underprivileged people. With no other prospects in front of them, many African-American and Latino youngsters in LA turned to gang life and organised crime for money, security, status and a sense of belonging. This in turn caused an appalling style of criminal profiling within many of the LAPD’s rank and file — those who put their life on the line every day simply felt it was safer for them to assume everyone with brown skin was a dangerous criminal. The adversarial relationship thrived like poisonous bacteria, feeding on the hatred and distrust from both sides.
In underprivileged neighbourhoods were the gangs ruled, crime was rife and the law was non-existent, the LAPD as an organisation simply stopped caring. While the situation eventually came to a head with the beating of Rodney King and acquittal of the Police officers responsible, the resulting riots and eventually the events surrounding O.J Simpson’s “Trial of the Century”, there was at least one predator using the circumstances of Police neglect and in his community to his benefit.
The Grim Sleeper committed his first known murder in 1985 and his last in 2007. The public weren’t informed of his existence by the LAPD officially until 2009, despite the fact a taskforce had been set up to investigate his crimes in 2007. An LA Times reporter leaked the news of the taskforce the same year but the LAPD refused to warn the at-risk community for fear of further damaging a perpetually tarnished reputation. He earned his nickname because it was believed he took a 14-year break from murdering until 2002, following the escape of a potential victim in 1988.
Meanwhile a community based organisation, The Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders, formed in the area shortly after the first murders in 1985 and worked continuously to warn local residents and stop the killings. They were treated as outsiders by the LAPD, ignored and kept in the dark as a hunter prowled their streets, brutally and efficiently adding to his collection of victims.
In 2010, a 57 year-old African-American named Lonnie Franklin was arrested and charged with 10 counts of murder and one count of attempted murder. Franklin lived in the middle of the neighbourhood stalked by the Grim Sleeper. The LAPD announced that the hunt for the Grim Sleeper was over, and they had their man. Franklin had become a suspect in the case after being linked to semen and saliva evidence from the murders via “familial DNA”, a newly-approved process which saw DNA samples collected from convicted felons tested against DNA evidence from cold cases in an attempt to link them to a felon’s blood relations.
Lonnie Franklin’s son Christopher had been arrested on weapons charges and his DNA was so similar to that collected from the Grim Sleeper’s victims that their murderer had to be either Christopher’s father or uncle. An undercover LAPD officer posed as a waiter in a restaurant where Lonnie was eating and managed to collect his used cutlery and discarded pizza crusts. This provided the DNA evidence that irrefutably identified Lonnie Franklin as the Grim Sleeper.
While the LAPD were quick to claim credit for catching the serial killer Lonnie Franklin, the members of the community in which he lived had many questions. Franklin had been stalking their neighbourhoods for over 20 years, yet they had received no warning. On reflection Lonnie Franklin, a well-known and even popular member of the community, had given off plenty of signs that he was a dangerous and brutal predator.
Lonnie was a known petty criminal, a mechanic by trade but adept at dealing in stolen cars and car parts. He provided employment, both honest and criminal, for many of his neighbours and was particularly well liked by male members of the community. Females however, found him creepy and secretive and he was widely known to have extreme, even violent sexual tastes. Despite being a married father, Lonnie liked to cruise for prostitutes or drug addicts, luring them into his car and back to his garage with promises of cash or drugs. Many of his friends often joined him on these expeditions and, while they admitted his tastes were unpleasant, they thought nothing of it. In a place where human life had become devalued, drug abuse and poverty were commonplace and preying on those who had become lost to it all was no big deal. Others admitted that talking to the Police was not an option for them.
After Lonnie’s arrest, the LAPD searched his home, finding over 1000 photos and hundreds of hours of video, mainly depicting African-American women of a variety of ages. The images were taken over the duration of the Grim Sleeper’s killing spree and the subjects were unidentified. The poses and activities varied widely — smiling, fully clothed head shots, naked in sexually degrading poses, conscious and unconscious or worse, the images catalogued a chilling obsession.
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Photographs found in the possession of serial murder suspect Lonnie Franklin, dubbed the “Grim Sleeper”.[/caption]
180 of the images were released to the public in an attempt to identify the women, with no result. In 2015, British filmmaker Nick Broomfield made a documentary about the case. By simply walking into the street Lonnie Franklin lived, he did something the LAPD never could — he met Lonnie’s neighbours and friends, listened to them and was able to uncover a plethora of information that filled in many of the gaps in the case. With the help of Pam Brooks, a self-described reformed “crack whore” from the neighbourhood, Broomfield was able to track down a number of women who had experienced or escaped Franklin’s attacks during the period he is alleged to have been active as the Grim Sleeper. Despite this, the LAPD maintains there is only one known survivor of Franklin’s near-25 year reign of terror. Some of the women Broomfield interviewed were identified as subjects of the Grim Sleeper’s macabre collection of images.
Further victims and survivors were not the only thing Broomfield discovered. He also encountered a routine practice of the LAPD involving crimes against persons, including murder, within low socio-economic and high crime communities like south central LA. “NHI” was an acronym the officers commonly used when reporting and discussing such cases. It stands for “No Humans Involved”.
In another of the USA’s most famous serial killer cases, the disconnect between Police and the communities they operate in also had tragic consequences. In Milwaukee, a 14 year-old potential victim of the murderer Jeffery Dahmer escaped and was found by two Milwaukee Police officers roaming the streets, naked, dazed and bleeding. When Dahmer arrived on the scene he was able to convince the two officers that the boy was his partner and they had just had a drunken argument. The Police not only failed to take action against Dahmer, they also returned the boy to Dahmer’s apartment, where he was murdered by Dahmer later that night.
When Dahmer was finally arrested, the Detective who lead his interrogation was left so disillusioned by the numerous failings of the Police throughout Dahmer’s killing spree, particularly the above incident, that he left the Police force to study a PhD in education so he could teach Police Officers how to work better with their communities.
Detective Patrick Kennedy knew that Dahmer had evaded justice simply because he was a white man living in a black neighbourhood, and his word would be trusted by the Police over that of the neighbours who witnessed his continual suspicious behaviour. Pat Kennedy eventually taught a course at the University of Wisconsin, using his experiences from the Dahmer case to educate Police Officers on how to connect with and represent the communities they served more effectively.
The LAPD has tried the same by actively diversifying the racial make up of its force, but it has simply succeeded in changing the African-American community’s perception of the battle from “whites against blacks” to “blue against blacks”.
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Heavily-armed Los Angeles Police officers talk to an African-American man regarding a shooting near Ventura Boulevard in 2013[/caption]
As Franklin currently stands trial, facing a potential death sentence, the overwhelming evidence against him makes a not guilty verdict almost impossible, and his future is almost certainly sealed. Despite this, uncertainties remain. How was a man who practically broadcasted his identity as sexual predator able to operate and escape detection for so long? Why was a breakthrough in modern law enforcement required to catch a prolific serial killer when the most basic of Police investigation — a few well-placed questions — would have identified him 20 years earlier? Why a community was not warned that a dangerous predator lived among them? How could the same community allow their distrust of the Police overcome their fear when they sensed danger from one of their own? Why were those who did care summarily ignored and marginalised by those who were meant to help them?
One last question is depressingly easy to answer, although it will never be confirmed for certain. Why did the Grim Sleeper take the 14-year break from his crimes that earned him his nickname? Unfortunately it now seems that he didn’t stop killing, he just stopped being noticed.
Ironically, it was another local government institution that appears to have provided Franklin with the golden opportunity he needed most to go unnoticed during this 14-year period. Employed by the City of LA’s Sanitation Department, Lonnie Franklin worked unsupervised at a garbage dump where the completely undetected disposal of any materials was extremely easy for him.
There is no way of knowing just how many more victims the Grim Sleeper may have been allowed to claim and then discard this way during his supposed hibernation. What is known is that almost 200 women fitting the victim profile disappeared from the neighbourhood The Grim Sleeper stalked during the period Lonnie worked at the garbage dump. None have ever been found, dead or alive.
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A mugshot of the Grim Sleeper suspect Lonnie David Franklin, Jr., taken on his arrest in July 2010[/caption]
