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LOS ANGELES - Lonnie David Franklin Jr., the alleged "Grim Sleeper" serial killer accused of murdering 10 victims over a more than 20-year span, was arraigned today on an indictment charging him with the killings.

"The indictment in the 'Grim Sleeper' case that was unsealed today in the Superior Court was necessitated by a desire to move this significant murder case forward to trial," said District Attorney Steve Cooley in a written statement.

"The families of the victims should be accorded timely resolution of the allegations of the murders of their loved ones," the District Attorney added.

Franklin, 58, was charged in July of last year with 10 counts of murder with the special circumstance allegation of multiple murders. He also was charged with one count of attempted "willful, deliberate and premeditated murder" in the case of an 11th victim who survived. The indictment contains the same charges.

Although the case was filed nearly a year ago, there never was a date scheduled for a preliminary hearing of the evidence, which would have been the next stage of the proceedings. At a preliminary hearing, a judge determines if there is sufficient evidence for a felony defendant to stand trial.

The indictment returned Wednesday afternoon by the Los Angeles County Grand Jury following a little more than six-day hearing supersedes the criminal complaint and moves the case directly to trial.

Franklin is accused of killing his victims - girls and women ranging in age from 14 to 36 - between August 1985 and January 2007. Most of the victims were discovered dumped in alleys and covered with debris. They were shot to death and/or strangled.

The charges make Franklin eligible for the death penalty, but the District Attorney's office has not made a final decision on whether death or life without parole will be sought against the defendant.

Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman of the Major Crimes Division and Deputy District Attorney Marguerite Rizzo of the Family Violence Division are prosecuting the case.

Franklin was arrested by Los Angeles Police Department Robbery-Homicide detectives after a lengthy task force investigation.

LOS ANGELES -- Perhaps the "Grim Sleeper" never took a break after all.

Police on Thursday were investigating two additional homicides that could be tied to Lonnie Franklin Jr., a mechanic who already has been charged with killing 10 women from 1985 to 1988 and from 2002 to 2007.

The 14-year pause led to the nickname "Grim Sleeper."

Detective Dennis Kilcoyne said Franklin might also be responsible for the deaths of two women whose bodies were found in South Los Angeles in the 1990s. No charges have been filed in those cases. "I don't think there is a gap," Kilcoyne said. "He was here, he was active. I don't think you stop one day, take a 14-year vacation and then start up again."

Kilcoyne released few details about the additional cases but said the bodies were found in the same general area as other victims. He would not say if there was DNA evidence tying Franklin to the two women, as was the case in several of the deaths that led to charges.

Most of the victims linked to the "Grim Sleeper" were found in alleyways within a few miles of Franklin's mint-green stucco home a few miles south of downtown Los Angeles. Those victims were shot, strangled or both, usually after some kind of sexual contact. Several were prostitutes.

Detectives were led to Franklin after his son was arrested on an unrelated matter and swabbed for DNA. Using a controversial technique known as a familial DNA search, the sample came back as similar to evidence in the serial killings, leading police to investigate relatives of the man who was arrested.

Franklin has pleaded not guilty. A call to his attorney Louisa Pensanti was not immediately returned.

After Franklin's arrest in July, detectives spent days searching his house and garage for evidence. They seized a stash of hundreds of photographs and hours of home videotape of women, many of whom were engaged in sexually explicit behavior.

Learing there may be additional victims, detectives released images of dozens of the women and asked for the public's help identifying them.

Kilcoyne said 72 women in the pictures have been identified and ruled out as victims, and four new missing person cases have been opened involving people in the photos. Women in 62 pictures have yet to be identified.

The women in the two additional homicide cases were not depicted in the photos, Kilcoyne said.

The initial killings occurred during a time of extreme violence in parts of Los Angeles, when many young women were falling prey to crack cocaine and other drug addictions.

As many as 30 detectives investigated the slayings in the 1980s but exhausted leads within a few years.

LOS ANGELES -- The attorney for a mechanic accused of the "Grim Sleeper" serial killings criticized Los Angeles police Saturday for releasing photographs of women seized at the suspect's home.
Louisa Pensanti said the photos include family and friends of suspect Lonnie Franklin Jr. who are now under intense public and police scrutiny. She also said investigators' comments at a recent news conference were "jeopardizing Lonnie Franklin's chance for a fair trial."
"Those are family photos," she told The Associated Press, adding that Franklin's relatives are upset that the photos were released publicly.
LAPD spokeswoman Norma Eisenman said investigators could not immediately be reached for comment.
Last week, police released the photos of about 160 women in the hopes of finding out who they are and if anything happened to them.
Police said they've received hundreds of calls. Several callers told investigators they were among the women in the photographs, but police must interview them individually to be sure.
Before the photos were released, investigators contacted Pensanti asking that Franklin's wife come down to the police station to view the photographs, the lawyer said. When Pensanti instead requested a copy of the photos so she could review them privately, investigators refused, she said.
"There's no reason she had to come down to the police department," Pensanti said.
Franklin is accused of killing 10 women beginning in 1985, and he has pleaded not
guilty. The photos and videos were found in Franklin's home and garage during a search after his July arrest. None of the photos depicted the alleged victims.
Investigators spent years trying to crack the case. Franklin's arrest finally came after his son was swabbed for DNA after being arrested on an unrelated matter, and the sample connected the father to evidence from the killings.

From the Associated Press:

LOS ANGELES -- In hindsight, the investigation into the Grim Sleeper serial killings could have led to suspect Lonnie Franklin Jr.'s doorstep much sooner.
He lived in the same neighborhood where the serial killer stalked prostitutes and drug addicts over 22 years. He spoke openly about his contempt for prostitutes and said they deserved to die. He displayed photographs he'd taken of women in sexually explicit poses. He had a lengthy criminal record that included 15 arrests.
Now that police have identified Franklin as the man suspected of killing 10 young black women in the case, residents in this working-class Los Angeles neighborhood worry they missed warning signs and wonder if they should have alerted authorities.
"I'm a little shook up by the experience," said Franklin's longtime friend, Lydia Kam, as she stood in disbelief outside Franklin's shuttered house. "I'm wondering if we are too lenient. ... I should have made a better choice."
Franklin would often regale Kam with stories of his sexual exploits and was even more graphic with her husband, Mark Tribble.
"He would have violent fantasies," Tribble said. "He was putting the girls down ... saying someone is going to kill these girls, saying they were going to end up dead."
Despite a lack of community help, police used DNA evidence to arrest Franklin on July 7 at his home in the Manchester Square neighborhood nine miles south of downtown, an area dotted with Spanish-style and stucco homes.
To most neighbors, the place is still known as South Central, the name that was changed to South Los Angeles in 2003 by a City Council trying to re-brand an area notorious for gang crime, killings and urban strife.
The serial slayings occurred between 1985 and 2007, with the killer apparently taking a pause between 1988 and 2002, prompting the Grim Sleeper nickname.
Cold case detectives announced in September 2008 that a serial killer was on the loose and, partly in response to pressure from victims' families and activists, launched a publicity blitz to generate leads.
No one suspected Franklin, despite billboards being put up across the area where the killer struck, advertising a $500,000 reward.
In a neighborhood where helping police is often frowned upon, it was easy for people to dismiss his stories as the fantasies of an unhappily married man who could get them cheap used car parts.
"This man was an A-1 mechanic," said Kam, who has known Franklin for about a decade. "He didn't make mistakes on how he fixed cars. He was a good man to know."
Franklin, 57, was arrested after his son was arrested and swabbed for DNA. Using a controversial technique known as a familial DNA search, the sample came back as similar to evidence in the serial killings, ultimately leading police to Franklin.
Aside from the 10 murder charges, police suspect Franklin killed a man who may have discovered
he was a killer. They are also reviewing whether Franklin was involved in about 30 other homicide cases. He has not been charged in those cases.
Franklin was arrested at least 15 times for investigation of burglary, assaults and other crimes but avoided state prison. He is alleged to have killed one of his victims in July 2003, a time when he should have been in county jail but was released early because of overcrowding.
His attorney, Regina Laughney, said she expected Franklin to enter a not guilty plea at his Aug. 9 arraignment. She declined to comment further. His wife and sons have not spoken publicly about his arrest.
The family's mint-green house on 81st Street has become a tourist attraction of sorts, with a steady flow of traffic moving slowly past the single-story home where a Doberman and German Shepherd circle the front yard.
Some drivers stop to talk to each other and share recollections on the man they knew as Lonnie; others just snap a cell phone picture and drive on.
Tribble is reconstructing conversations they had. Looking back, he sees plenty to be alarmed about.
"You would have a normal conversation, but he'd end up saying something gruesome," Tribble said.
Asked why they weren't more concerned about Franklin's stories, Tribble and other residents said it never occurred to them he might be the killer because he looked nothing like a series of composite sketches drawn from descriptions provided after a woman survived an attack.
The sketches show a slender man with gray hair. Franklin has a more spherical head and a thin mustache.
"It didn't look like him," said resident Carmella Coleman.
After hitting a wall in their investigation, detectives released the sketches in hopes of generating publicity. They also released a recording of a 1987 call to police in which a man describes seeing a body in an alley.
Though it jogged no one's memory when it was released in February, several residents are now convinced the voice is Franklin's. Cold case Detective Dennis Kilcoyne isn't so sure but is looking into it.
Family members of some of the victims faulted police for their initial investigations, saying
the cases didn't carry the same importance they would have if the victims had been from a wealthier part of town.
Alice Brown, an aunt of Henrietta Wright, who was found shot to death in an alleyway in 1986, said police at the time could have been trying harder.
"I don't think the police did too much investigating," Brown said. "I wasn't questioned until recently."
A search warrant released Thursday shows police came tantalizingly close to catching the killer in 1988, after a woman he is accused of shooting and leaving for dead survived and provided investigators with an address where she thought her attacker had gone to fetch something.
Detectives searched the home but found nothing. It turned out the survivor identified a house three doors down from Franklin.
Kilcoyne said detectives did thorough investigations but lacked the technology available today.
"I have always known that sooner or later, we would catch the guy and it would be someone we have had multiple contacts with," Kilcoyne said.

From the Associated Press:

LOS ANGELES -- Los Angeles authorities missed a chance to collect a DNA sample from a suspected serial killer before he allegedly killed his last known victim.
A newspaper reported Wednesday that the DNA profile of Lonnie Franklin Jr. was supposed to be collected under a state law that went into effect in November 2004.
Proposition 69 required the Los Angeles County Probation Department to gather DNA samples from tens of thousands of local offenders who were on probation.
Though Franklin was on probation following a 2003 conviction for receiving stolen property, his DNA was never taken.
The probation department says it took time after the law's approval to implement the new requirements.
Franklin's last alleged victim was killed New Year's Day 2007.

From the Associated Press:

LOS ANGELES -- A one-time police garage attendant suspected of killing 10 people and stumping detectives for more than two decades was finally arrested Wednesday after police used DNA from his son to track him down.
Lonnie Franklin Jr., 57, was charged with 10 counts of murder, one count of attempted murder and special circumstance allegations of multiple murders that could make him eligible for the death penalty if convicted, District Attorney Steve Cooley said.
"Today is a good day," Donnell Alexander, the brother of victim Monique Alexander, said as he watched police activity outside the South Los Angeles house where the arrest was made earlier in the day.
Detectives have spent years investigating slayings between 1985 and 2007 in which the killer targeted young black women and one man. The attacker was dubbed the "Grim Sleeper" because he apparently took a 14-year hiatus from his crimes, from 1988 to 2002.
The break in the case came after Franklin's son was arrested and swabbed for DNA, said Alexander, who was given a briefing on the case by robbery-homicide detectives.
Using a controversial technique known as a familial DNA search, the sample came back as similar to evidence in the serial killings, leading police to investigate relatives of the man who was arrested.
Detectives later swabbed a cup used by Lonnie Franklin Jr. at a restaurant and confirmed his DNA matched that in the serial killings, Alexander said, citing his briefing by police. Two police officials confirmed Alexander's account.
Cooley believes the "Grim Sleeper" case was the first time a familial DNA search has been used successfully in California.
State Attorney General Jerry Brown said the match came when an unspecified family member of Franklin was swabbed after getting convicted on a felony weapons charge.
Los Angeles city personnel director Maggie Whalen said Franklin was hired in 1981 as an attendant at a Los Angeles Police Department garage, where he helped work on cars.
The following year, he moved to the sanitation department, where he worked a number of jobs before becoming a refuse collector. He left city employment in 1989.
Earlier Wednesday, dozens of police officials closed off a block around the 81st Street house where Franklin was arrested.
Neighbors described him as friendly and quiet and were stunned when they learned of his arrest. They said he was often seen working on cars in his front yard and would sometimes stop to chat with passers-by.
Alexander joined a crowd at the end of the block where the green house is located. A mobile
command post was parked out front, and a line of police tents sheltered tables in the front yard.
Alexander said he always kept faith there would be an arrest.
"You don't think about it every day, but every birthday, every holiday, every Christmas," he said. "It's not closure but it helps."
The "Grim Sleeper" case has dogged police even though they had the killer's DNA, a description from a survivor and had offered a $500,000 reward.
The victims were shot, strangled or both, usually after some kind of sexual contact. Several were prostitutes.
Police have said it's possible the lone male victim, Thomas Steele, who was shot in 1987, was a friend of another victim or discovered the killer's identity.
All the bodies were found outdoors, often in alleys a few miles south of downtown Los Angeles.
Rochell Johnson, whose mother Henrietta Wright was thought to be the killer's second victim when she was murdered in 1986, praised detectives.
"I was just waiting for the day," she said. "It's a big relief for all the victims' families."
The initial killings occurred during a time of extreme violence in parts of Los Angeles, when many young women were falling prey to crack cocaine and other drug addictions. As many as 30 detectives investigated the slayings in the 1980s but exhausted leads within a few years.
A special squad of detectives was assembled after the most recent known "Grim Sleeper" killing, the June 2007 shooting of Janecia Peters, 25, whose body was found in a trash bin.
The detectives have been focusing on the January 1987 slaying of Barbara Ware, a 23-year-old with a history of prostitution who was found shot in a South Los Angeles alley.
A man called police to report seeing her body being dumped from a blue-and-white van. Within an hour police had used the license plates to locate the van at its registered address at a church. The van's engine was still warm and there were several congregants in the church, but none seemed to know anything. The trail stopped there.
The one suspect description came from a woman who was sexually assaulted then shot and survived. She said a man with chiseled features and a black polo shirt who was driving an orange Ford Pinto offered her a ride to her sister's house.
She said they exchanged banter and shortly after getting into the car, she was attacked and
pushed from the vehicle.
Keisha Smith was among the crowd kept away from the 81st Street investigation scene by police
tape. She said Franklin was well known as a mechanic in the neighborhood and had often helped
find parts for her truck.
"It makes me feel scared," she said. "I have three little kids and he was that close to my kids."
Franklin was expected to be arraigned Thursday.

From City News Service:

LOS ANGELES -- A reward of up to $500,000 was in effect Thursday for information leading to the capture of the "Grim Sleeper," who is believed responsible for 11 killings in South Los Angeles over the past 25 years.
The serial killer has been linked by DNA evidence to eight murders between 1985 and 1988 and three murders between 2001 and 2007, Los Angeles police Detective Dennis Kilcoyne said.
The killer was dubbed the "Grim Sleeper" because of the 13-year break between killing sprees.
The reward was reinstated Tuesday by the Los Angeles City Council in an effort to re-publicize the case and encourage tipsters to call police. The reward will be in effect for six months.
All but one victim was a woman and most were prostitutes, Kilcoyne said. Some were raped before being fatally shot. Their bodies were dumped in alleys and trash bins in South Los Angeles, Inglewood and unincorporated areas.
A woman who survived an attack in 1988 described the suspect as a black man in his 20s, driving an orange Ford Pinto. She said he picked her up, raped her, shot her in the chest, then pushed her out of his car.
Anyone with information was asked to call homicide detectives at (213) 486-6830 during normal office hours, or at (877) LAPD 24-7 around the clock.

LA Weekly this week chronicles the case of a serial killer on the prowl in south Los Angeles. The killer who was prolific in the mid 1980s resurfaced in 2002 and 2003, according to the Weekly, who gave the person or persons the moniker Grim Sleeper:

Local journalists haven't even assigned him a creepy nickname, like Night Stalker (Grim Sleeper was chosen by the Weekly to mark his 13 years of inactivity before killing again).

It's coincidental that I began my column this week on the crime wave of 1985 and 1986, because apparently the Grim Sleeper was most prolific during this period. Going through teh Tribune archives over the past several days, I believe I read some news accounts of the at least three of the slayings. I'll post up scans later this week.