Man Charged in Killings City Didn't Know About
LOS ANGELES, Oct. 29 - When the police announced last week that they had tracked down the worst serial killer in the city's history, the news was met here with detached astonishment.
Serial killer? What serial killer? For the better part of a decade, the police say, a man was raping and strangling women and almost nobody knew.
Chester D. Turner, 37, a convicted rapist and former pizza deliveryman, is charged with killing 10 women between 1987 and 1998. With the special circumstances of rape, he will be eligible for the death penalty. Detectives say Mr. Turner may have murdered a half dozen others, though they lack physical evidence to connect him to some of those crimes.
As it happened, Mr. Turner was already behind bars for an unrelated rape when detectives pieced together his secret with DNA evidence.
Moreover, another man - a janitor with the mind of an 8-year-old - spent nine years in prison for two of the murders now attributed to Mr. Turner. The man, David A. Jones, was released in March after he was cleared by DNA specimens.
While the women were being raped and killed, there were no handouts by the police to warn that the City of Angels had a devil in its midst. There was no dragnet; no shocking nickname like the Hillside Strangler, the Night Stalker or the Freeway Killer, all infamous Southern California predators. There was nothing to capture or focus the public's imagination. Women were raped, strangled and dumped in vacant lots and stairwells like so much worn-out furniture.
The women, for the most part, were black, drug-hobbled prostitutes who worked the street corners and hot-sheet motels in the notorious south side, the black part of town known for misery, gangs and spectacular violence.
Jeanette Moore, a prostitute, said she was close to some of the victims. She said the women who work along Figueroa Street, where the police say Mr. Turner did his killings, knew there was a serial killer at work.
"There had to be, but the police never asked nothing," she said while standing on the corner of Figueroa and 84th Streets, her place of business for the past 22 years. The rain tinged her knee-high boots. She nervously lighted a cigarette.
"They never investigated nothing," she said. "I knew half those girls. I know the man's face. If it was in the better neighborhoods, you could be sure somebody would be asking questions. But it was here, so nobody cared."
The editorial page of The Los Angeles Times agreed, calling the general attitude indifferent. "It was simply one more example of how the rest of the city had grown inured to the slaughter in South Los Angeles," one editorial read.
It is difficult to know that a serial killer is at work without telltale signs, said Capt. Al Michelena, commanding officer of the robbery and homicide division of the Los Angeles Police Department. There was no strange positioning of the bodies or mocking notes to the police, as some of the more notorious killers preferred.
"Realistically, it was hard to connect these things," Captain Michelena said. "No witnesses. Not a lot of clues. No DNA tests back then. In these kinds of cases, it's just difficult to know."
Semen and blood specimens can and often do sit for months or even years as overwhelmed lab technicians deal with fresh cases or cases moving toward trial. Even with a federal grant to help clear the books, the Los Angeles Police Department's crime lab still has a backlog of about 200 murder cases, said Detective David P. Lambkin, the officer in charge of the cold case homicide unit.
There was one gumshoe who never gave up: Detective Cliff Sheppard, who used to walk the beat on the South Side in the late 80's, when citywide murders topped 1,000 and detectives were busy with the gang wars.
Back then, South Side detectives talked among themselves about the possibility of at least one serial killer in the area, preying upon broken-down and vulnerable women. Yet no description was ever cobbled together. One grainy photograph taken by a security camera yielded nothing. Women were strangled, but detectives say that many sex crimes end in strangulation.
Though the murders happened in a 30-block corridor of Figueroa Street, authorities say many such murders occur along Figueroa Street.
The classic profile says serial killers tend to be white men. No one had noticed a white man plying the streets. There were no witnesses. There was nothing, except semen samples.
Detective Sheppard was transferred to the cold case unit when it was created in 2001 to investigate more than 9,000 unsolved killings in Los Angeles dating back to 1960.
He brought the memory of one particular murder with him - that of Paula Vance, 38, who was strangled and raped in 1998 and dumped behind a downtown building. Detective Sheppard reached out to the precinct houses, questioned registered sex offenders, but it led nowhere.
Then last year, he got the department's overwhelmed crime lab to test some residue from Ms. Vance's body. There was a DNA match to another unsolved killing off Figueroa Street.
As part of his plea agreement in an unrelated rape case in 2002, Mr. Turner had submitted a DNA sample to the authorities. It matched the two killings. The police have charged Mr. Turner with those two slayings and eight others in which the police say DNA evidence implicated him.
At the same time, Detective Sheppard and his partner, Detective Jose Ramirez, cleared Mr. Jones, who had been wrongly imprisoned for two murders. A part-time janitor said to be retarded, Mr. Jones was convicted even though blood samples from the crimes did not match his. Despite that, as well as ambiguous testimony and no physical evidence, Mr. Jones was sent to prison.
Though the police now say that DNA evidence from those killings matches Mr. Turner, they were not among the 10 killings that Mr. Turner has been charged with so far. Those cases are under review, said Joe Scott, spokesman for the Los Angeles district attorney.
A lawsuit against the city has been filed on Mr. Jones's behalf. The district attorney has promised a full investigation of how Mr. Jones's case was handled.
CHARLIE LeDUFF
L.A.Times
Serial killer? What serial killer? For the better part of a decade, the police say, a man was raping and strangling women and almost nobody knew.
Chester D. Turner, 37, a convicted rapist and former pizza deliveryman, is charged with killing 10 women between 1987 and 1998. With the special circumstances of rape, he will be eligible for the death penalty. Detectives say Mr. Turner may have murdered a half dozen others, though they lack physical evidence to connect him to some of those crimes.
As it happened, Mr. Turner was already behind bars for an unrelated rape when detectives pieced together his secret with DNA evidence.
Moreover, another man - a janitor with the mind of an 8-year-old - spent nine years in prison for two of the murders now attributed to Mr. Turner. The man, David A. Jones, was released in March after he was cleared by DNA specimens.
While the women were being raped and killed, there were no handouts by the police to warn that the City of Angels had a devil in its midst. There was no dragnet; no shocking nickname like the Hillside Strangler, the Night Stalker or the Freeway Killer, all infamous Southern California predators. There was nothing to capture or focus the public's imagination. Women were raped, strangled and dumped in vacant lots and stairwells like so much worn-out furniture.
The women, for the most part, were black, drug-hobbled prostitutes who worked the street corners and hot-sheet motels in the notorious south side, the black part of town known for misery, gangs and spectacular violence.
Jeanette Moore, a prostitute, said she was close to some of the victims. She said the women who work along Figueroa Street, where the police say Mr. Turner did his killings, knew there was a serial killer at work.
"There had to be, but the police never asked nothing," she said while standing on the corner of Figueroa and 84th Streets, her place of business for the past 22 years. The rain tinged her knee-high boots. She nervously lighted a cigarette.
"They never investigated nothing," she said. "I knew half those girls. I know the man's face. If it was in the better neighborhoods, you could be sure somebody would be asking questions. But it was here, so nobody cared."
The editorial page of The Los Angeles Times agreed, calling the general attitude indifferent. "It was simply one more example of how the rest of the city had grown inured to the slaughter in South Los Angeles," one editorial read.
It is difficult to know that a serial killer is at work without telltale signs, said Capt. Al Michelena, commanding officer of the robbery and homicide division of the Los Angeles Police Department. There was no strange positioning of the bodies or mocking notes to the police, as some of the more notorious killers preferred.
"Realistically, it was hard to connect these things," Captain Michelena said. "No witnesses. Not a lot of clues. No DNA tests back then. In these kinds of cases, it's just difficult to know."
Semen and blood specimens can and often do sit for months or even years as overwhelmed lab technicians deal with fresh cases or cases moving toward trial. Even with a federal grant to help clear the books, the Los Angeles Police Department's crime lab still has a backlog of about 200 murder cases, said Detective David P. Lambkin, the officer in charge of the cold case homicide unit.
There was one gumshoe who never gave up: Detective Cliff Sheppard, who used to walk the beat on the South Side in the late 80's, when citywide murders topped 1,000 and detectives were busy with the gang wars.
Back then, South Side detectives talked among themselves about the possibility of at least one serial killer in the area, preying upon broken-down and vulnerable women. Yet no description was ever cobbled together. One grainy photograph taken by a security camera yielded nothing. Women were strangled, but detectives say that many sex crimes end in strangulation.
Though the murders happened in a 30-block corridor of Figueroa Street, authorities say many such murders occur along Figueroa Street.
The classic profile says serial killers tend to be white men. No one had noticed a white man plying the streets. There were no witnesses. There was nothing, except semen samples.
Detective Sheppard was transferred to the cold case unit when it was created in 2001 to investigate more than 9,000 unsolved killings in Los Angeles dating back to 1960.
He brought the memory of one particular murder with him - that of Paula Vance, 38, who was strangled and raped in 1998 and dumped behind a downtown building. Detective Sheppard reached out to the precinct houses, questioned registered sex offenders, but it led nowhere.
Then last year, he got the department's overwhelmed crime lab to test some residue from Ms. Vance's body. There was a DNA match to another unsolved killing off Figueroa Street.
As part of his plea agreement in an unrelated rape case in 2002, Mr. Turner had submitted a DNA sample to the authorities. It matched the two killings. The police have charged Mr. Turner with those two slayings and eight others in which the police say DNA evidence implicated him.
At the same time, Detective Sheppard and his partner, Detective Jose Ramirez, cleared Mr. Jones, who had been wrongly imprisoned for two murders. A part-time janitor said to be retarded, Mr. Jones was convicted even though blood samples from the crimes did not match his. Despite that, as well as ambiguous testimony and no physical evidence, Mr. Jones was sent to prison.
Though the police now say that DNA evidence from those killings matches Mr. Turner, they were not among the 10 killings that Mr. Turner has been charged with so far. Those cases are under review, said Joe Scott, spokesman for the Los Angeles district attorney.
A lawsuit against the city has been filed on Mr. Jones's behalf. The district attorney has promised a full investigation of how Mr. Jones's case was handled.
CHARLIE LeDUFF
L.A.Times
posted by R7 | 10/30/2004 10:57:00 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home