Officials in Los Angeles are offering half a million dollars to help catch a serial killer who has murdered at least 10 women and one man in two sprees over the past 20 years.
The killer is thought to have struck at least 11 times in Los Angeles
All the victims were black and were found in or near South Los Angeles. Police believe some of the women were prostitutes.
Seven women and a man were killed by the same handgun in a three-year period starting in August 1985. The women had been sexually assaulted and their bodies were often dumped in the same alley.
Los Angeles City Council has now approved a reward first proposed by city councilman Bernard Parks, who as police chief in 2001 ordered the department to look into a backlog of unsolved cases.
Alicia Monique Alexander was the last known victim in the first round of killings. Porter Alexander last saw his youngest daughter one evening in September 1988 as the 18-year-old ran out for what was supposed to be a quick trip to the shop.
"I said make sure you go to the store and come back. She says, 'okay'," Porter Alexander said. "She left, and that was the last time I saw my baby." Four days later, police knocked at the front door of the family home. They had found her body in a nearby alley with a gunshot wound in the chest. A 13-year break followed Miss Alexander's death, police said, and investigators retired or moved on to other cases.
"What accounted for that gap, we still don't know," police Captain Denis Cremins said at a news conference. "We try not to engage in conjecture." The break ended in March 2002, when 14-year-old Princess Berthomieux was found beaten and strangled in an alley in the city of Inglewood. DNA samples linked her to the suspect in the earlier murders.
Another killing came in 2003, and the most recent homicide was in January 2007 when the body of Janecia Peters, 25, was found shot and covered in a rubbish bag. The length of time between the killings prompted the LA Weekly newspaper, which first reported the case, to dub the killer the "Grim Sleeper". Though police have a DNA sample, only one physical description of the killer exists, taken from a victim who survived a 1988 attack. She said the assailant was a black man in his 30s driving an orange Ford Pinto. "But that's one person's account who was traumatised," Captain Cremins said.
Investigators are poring through prison and jail records to screen prisoners with a violent history who were locked up during the break in the killings. Authorities also hope to search DNA databases to see if there are any possible matches to the killer's family members.
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