Sep 3, 2008 12:38 pm US/Pacific
$500,000 Reward Offered To Nab L.A. Serial Killer
LOS ANGELES
-
-
Councilmember Bernard C. Parks asked the City Council to approve the maximum reward allowed to help catch "The Grim Sleeper."
CBS
The City Wednesday offered a $500,000 pool of reward money for information leading to the arrest and conviction of a serial killer who is believed responsible for a string of Southland murders between 1985 and 2007.
Dubbed by LA Weekly as "The Grim Sleeper", the killer has preyed on young women, many of whom were known prostitutes. Many of the victims were sexually assaulted. Most were also black.
The suspect has killed nine people in the city of Los Angeles, one in Inglewood and one in an unincorporated area of the county in the last 23 years.
LAPD Capt. Denis Cremins said fifteen suspects have been eliminated as the "Grim Sleeper".
"This individual committed several homicides from 1985 through 1988,
and then there was a 13-year hiatus. What accounted for that gap we still don't know," Cremins said.
The Los Angeles Police Department established a cold case unit in 2001
to investigate unsolved homicides.
Five years later, detectives discovered the 11 murders were connected through DNA and ballistics evidence.
During a morning news conference at City Hall, the parents of one victim -- 18-year-old Monique Alexander -- asked for the public's help in solving their daughter's murder.
"Monique was my baby girl," said Mary Alexander. "She just loved everybody -- animals, people ... it's very hurtful when I see my nieces and her friends and all growing up and I think about what would she have been like. It's very hard."
One woman -- identified as Victim No. 9 -- survived an attack by the
Grim Sleeper. The woman was shot in the chest and raped. The bullets removed from her chest matched the gun used on the first eight victims.
Victim No. 9 described the killer as a 30-ish black man with short hair,
driving a rust, red or orange Ford Pinto, according to LA Weekly.
One route the LAPD has not yet been able to try is comparing the serial killer's DNA with samples in the criminal database in search of one of his
close relatives. According to the Weekly, crime-scene analysts discovered traces of the killer's dried saliva on victims' breasts.
The "familial searches" -- decried by some as an invasion of privacy -- require the permission of the state attorney general, whose office has not
said whether such a search would be approved.
"They have linked these cases as having common threads of evidence -- ballistics, DNA and a variety of other forensics," said City Councilman
Bernard Parks, who sponsored the reward.
The city offered a maximum of $500,000 in reward money.
If an individual provides information that solves all of the Grim Sleeper crimes, the most that person can collect is $200,000. If multiple people provide information, up to $500,000 is available.
Anyone with information on the murders was asked to contact LAPD Robbery-Homicide at (213) 485-2531 or (877) LAWFULL.
(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Wire services contributed to this report.)
Click to enlarge
Stumble It!
