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A convicted serial killer known as the “Grim Sleeper” has been found dead in his California San Quentin State Prison jail cell.
Lonnie Franklin, Jr., 67, was found unresponsive and pronounced dead at 7:43 p.m. inside of his cell on Saturday. His cause of death is not yet known, but there were reportedly no signs of trauma, the state Corrections Department released in a statement, according to NBC News.
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Franklin was convicted of murdering nine women and a teenage girl and attempted murder in Los Angeles in a crime spree that started in 1985 and ended in 2007. He was known as the “Grim Sleeper” because he took a 14-year break in between murders before he began killing again. He killed seven women between 1985 to 1988 and then killed the remaining two from 2002 to 2007.
Police say Franklin could have killed even more women as they found him in possession of hundreds of photos of women at the time of his arrest. Prosecutors said they declined to pursue additional charges against Franklin because of the length of time it would take to prosecute more murders, according to NBC Los Angeles.
Of the 180 photos and videos found inside Franklin’s home during his arrest, police have accounted for most of the women, excluding about 30, NBC reported.
The woman who survived Franklin’s attack testified against him in 2016, telling jurors that he raped her and then shot her. She then directed her fury to Franklin, telling him that if she died, she would haunt him for the rest of his life.
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Franklin’s victims were mostly poor and Black women. The former garbage man discarded their bodies in alleys and trash cans. Prosecutors got a break in the case in 2010, after a cold case task force linked his DNA evidence to the murders.
Franklin was sentenced to death for his crimes.
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