LOS ANGELES, Calif.–LAPD detectives have significantly widened the number of cases they are reviewing as they search for more victims of the Grim Sleeper serial killer, it was reported today.
Detectives are now looking at 230 missing persons cases and unsolved killings going back to the mid-1970s, seeing whether there are any links to Grim Sleeper suspect Lonnie David Franklin Jr., who has been charged in 10 killings, the Los Angeles Times reported on its website this morning.
Officials told the newspaper they are not sure how many cases might ultimately be linked but that they considered it important to cast the largest net possible.
The bid to expand reviewable cases, whose number recently stood at 60, began three months ago as LAPD robbery-homicide detectives sought to include cases in South Los Angeles dating to May 1976, when Franklin got out of the Army. The previous effort was concentrated from the early 1980s until Franklin’s arrest in July 2010.
During that time Franklin worked in the LAPD’s motor pool and with the Los Angeles City Department of Sanitation.
The sources interviewed by The Times stressed it would be a slow process to pull the records and remaining evidence from archives and that it was likely that many cases might never be linked. Nonetheless, they said it could provide some answers to families about the fate of their loved ones.
