Los Angeles man guilty in 10 'Grim Sleeper' serial killings

LOS ANGELES -- A former trash collector in Los Angeles was convicted Thursday of 10 "Grim Sleeper" serial killings that spanned two decades and targeted young black women in the inner city.

Lonnie Franklin Jr. showed no emotion as a clerk read the 10 murder verdicts in Los Angeles County Superior Court after a two-month trial in the potential death penalty case.

Franklin also was found guilty of one count of attempted murder.

Jurors were told to return Thursday for the trial's penalty phase. Franklin could receive the death penalty.

The killings from 1985 to 2007 were dubbed the work of the "Grim Sleeper" because of an apparent 14-year gap after one woman survived a gunshot to the chest in 1988.

The crimes went unsolved for decades and community members complained police ignored the cases because the victims were black, poor, and some were prostitutes and drug users.

Much of the violence unfolded during the nation's crack cocaine epidemic when at least two other serial killers prowled the part of the city then known as South Central.

The 10 victims, including a 15-year-old girl, were fatally shot or strangled and dumped in alleys and garbage bins. Most had traces of cocaine in their systems.

Franklin, 63, a onetime trash collector in the area and a garage attendant for the Los Angeles Police Department, had been hiding in plain sight, said deputy district attorney Beth Silverman.

Police eventually connected Franklin to the crimes after a task force was assigned to revisit the case that dozens of officers failed to solve in the 1980s. The DNA of Franklin's son, collected after a felony arrest, had similarities to genetic material left on the bodies of many of the victims.

An officer posing as a busboy later retrieved pizza crusts and napkins with Franklin's DNA while he was celebrating at a birthday party.