In the latest installment of the Grim Sleeper investigation, detectives are working to confirm eight additional fatalities whose deaths share significant characteristics with the 10 already attributed to the killer. Like the other unfortunates, the newly added victims apparently led troubled lives.
Rolenia Morris, 29, was added to the list after her Nevada driver license was found among paraphernalia confiscated in the home of accused defendant Lonnie David Franklin Jr., along with a series of photographs allegedly showing her in sexually explicit poses.
Also found was a Hawthorne High School identification card belonging to Ayellah Marshall, who was 18 when she disappeared in 2005. Marshall had been involved in high-risk behaviors, including dropping out of school, substance abuse, and chronic running away before abandoning her infant daughter and leaving home altogether.
The items linking these women to the case were reportedly found in a refrigerator in Franklin’s house along with scores of other pieces of evidence that police have sifted through since they arrested Franklin last July.
Additional ties have been made to the deaths of Cathern Davis, Rosalind Giles, Lisa Knox and Anita Parker, women said to have engaged in the lifestyles that made the other casualties vulnerable. Of the six additional suspected victims, six were previously classified as missing persons, one is unidentified, and the final one is another homicide that has not been conclusively linked to Franklin (all of these remain unsolved).
Despite these developments, it is unclear whether any additional charges will be added to the 11 counts Franklin already faces. The former Los Angeles Police mechanic and neighborhood handyman was arrested after DNA from debris he’d discarded in an Orange County pizzeria was connected to materials collected from his son, who’d been convicted on a felony weapons charge.
This controversial process, known as familial DNA testing has stirred up a maelstrom of debate for and against its use, even though its only been utilized in two criminal cases thus far. In the aftermath of Franklin’s apprehension, Elvis Garcia was arrested for the rape and imprisonment of a female barista at knife point in the walk-in refrigerator of a Santa Cruz coffee shop in 2008.
Garcia was detained, after police linked his DNA to that of his father who’d been convicted on an unrelated charge.
In both these cases, the genetic materials were not exact matches, as blood relatives yield only partial corresponding characteristics. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which boasts the largest DNA data base, has been slow to embrace the process, leaving individual states to make that determination for themselves. Thus, while this method has been successful in the two California investigations, states like Nevada still bar its use.
Despite the protests of civil-liberties advocates, who warn about the high probability for false matches and say it may well be a Fourth Amendment violation (meaning it would infringe upon the protection against unreasonable searches and seizures), prominent law-enforcement officials, including newly elected California Attorney General Kamala Harris tout the new technology as a great leap forward in crime detection. Other law-makers such as Rep. Adam Schiff (D-29th District) have pushed for more states to use familial DNA.
