During the upcoming penalty phase of the Grim Sleeper case, the prosecution has indicated it intends to introduce evidence that Lonnie Franklin, Jr. committed even more sex assault murders than the 10 for which he was convicted.
During a court session out of the jury's presence, Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman also said she intends to call two witnesses who were assaulted by Franklin in Germany four decades ago when Franklin was in the service.
The prosecution is seeking the death penalty.
The Grim Sleeper reference stemmed from a 14-year gap in the murders, from 1998 to 2002, during which it appeared the killer had quit. But detectives concluded otherwise.
"There was no gap," said Paul Coulter, a now retired LAPD homicide detective who served on the task force that identified and arrested Franklin, and personally questioned him. "As a police department, we'd be foolish to think we caught all of them."
Concerns remain about the wellbeing of several dozen women seen in photographs found in Franklin's house after his 2010 arrest. Two of his victims are among the nearly 200 photos. As part of efforts to identify the others, LAPD published the photos and sought the public's help. Now, nearly six years later, some 35 remain unidentified, according to LAPD Capt. Andrew Neiman.
Franklin was one of a number of serial killers who began preying on the vulnerable in South Los Angeles during the turbulent 1980's, though arrests and convictions in many cases did not come until years later.
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Chester Turner was convicted of a total of 14 murders between 1987 and 1998. Just two years ago, Samuel Little was convicted of three murders in the late 1980's.
But apart from the convictions, the disappearances of dozens of other women remain unsolved.
"There are very few people who really think this case with Lonnie Franklin is really the end of it," said Margaret Prescod, founder of the Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders.
Prescod believes more than a hundred unsolved disappearances of women may have been serial murders.
"We've got a community still in pain and suffering--not only for the Grim Sleeper victims, but other families as well," Prescod said.
Prescod initially formed her group in the mid-1980's to advocate for police to dedicate more resources to the plague of killings targeting vulnerable women, some of whom were substance abusers who worked as prostitutes.
To this day, Prescod remains concerned that murders of more affluent victims command more public attention.
The Grim Sleeper case ultimately was solved by an LAPD task force formed in 2007. Prescod wants the department to re-activate the task force to work further on identifying and locating the women in the Franklin photos. LAPD has assigned that responsibility to its cold case unit.
