Question

Lonnie David Franklin was known as “The Grim Sleeper”. He is an accused serial killer. Franklin is suspected of killing numerous women in the LA area between 1988 and 2002. Sociologists and some crime scholars have suspected that this case did not gain national attention due to the demographics of the victims Franklin was ultimately caught using a controversial arrangement to collect his DNA.. This week, we’ll compare means of investigation and apprehension of serial killers –and- we’ll analyze victims of serial killers. Address the following prompts:

•   You can see a trailer for the Grim Sleeper documentary . Go to Youtube.com to reach further clips from it if you’d like.
•   What were the victim demographics for the Grim Sleeper (age range, race, profession, family composition etc.)? Per your research, were there any child victims? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grim_Sleeper)
•   What are some of the types of criminal investigation for serial killers?
•   How was DNA used to catch Lonnie David Franklin? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grim_Sleeper)
•   In your opinion, what is the future of serial killers? That is, will this pattern/trend continue?

Answer 1

1. The Victims of “Grim Sleeper” or David Franklin were mostly Females. He is accused of killing more than 10 people within the age group of 15 to 36 years. Most of his victims were Sex workers. He also killed one Minor girl of 15 years old. One of his suspected victims was a black male also. All but one of the victims were Black women.

• There are four types of serial killers .They are Power & Control, Visionary, Mission and Hedonistic.
  • Power & Control- This type of Serial killers experiences complete sexual gratifications from the domination and humiliation of the victims.
  • Visionary-Serial killers of this type are compelled by voices or visions they experienced and are considered psychotic.
  • Mission-This type of serial killers feels a “need” or duty to kill certain type of people or “class” of people such as religious or racial groups.
  • Hedonistic-This type of serial killers make a strong connection between personal violence and sexual gratification.

1. Initially Police did not find exact match between DNA found at the crime scenes and any of the profiles in California's DNA profile database, so they searched the database for stored profiles that demonstrated sufficient similarity to allow police to infer a familial relationship. Then they found similar DNA belonging to Franklin's son, Christopher, who had been convicted of a felony weapons charge. After matching the DNA samples of Franklin’s Son with that of Franklin, Police was confirmed that Franklin was the serial killer whom they were looking for long. After that Franklin was arrested.