Franklin, 60, is charged with 10 counts of murder in the deaths of women — many of them prostitutes and drug addicts, whose corpses were often found dumped in alleyways and Dumpsters in South-Central Los Angeles — between 1976 and 2010, and who is believed to have taken a break of 13 years in between, hence the Grim Sleeper moniker.
Franklin was arrested in 2010 and at the time LAPD made public the photos, found in his possession, of some one hundred women they believed might be his victims. Some photos seemed to be normal snapshots, but others showed women undressing.
Many were identified through public outreach, but some were not. So the FB page is one more attempt to find the identify of women whose photos Franklin possessed when he was arrested.
For years, many Grim Sleeper killings were believed part of other sprees. News of an LAPD investigation into the killings as connected to one man was made public in 2008 by Christine Pelisek in the LA Weekly.
The Grim Sleeper case is fascinating for several reasons. But one of them is that it involves a black man. For decades, serial murderers were almost all white. Think Ted Bundy or the Green River Killer. But the chaos of the crack-epidemic years apparently created black serial killers, who often prayed on street women, and whom DNA technology has only recently allowed police to identify, in LA at least. Franklin is suspected to be one of them. Chester Turner and John Floyd Thomas are others.
I find it very interesting that you have mainly identified the east coast as having a problem with Heroin. Twenty six years ago I was forced to open a Newborn nursery for babies with pre natal exposure to heroin and many other drugs. At that time babies were being born on street corners and in hotels weighing a pound and a half at birth, hospitals worked their finger to the bone just to help the babies survive only to have to send the babies out weighting 3-4 pounds because they had so many. Today it has changed some what, the heroin is still affecting our babies but at this time 3-4 other drugs accompany the heroin.
At one time our interstate highway received special funding due to the amount of drugs coming in from Mexico and heading up to Canada. Now 26 years later I am working with many states that are trying to open a nursery such as our to accomadate the number of babies affected. There doesn’t ever seem to be a answer for the babies.
In Washington State there is over 12000 babies born exposed to mothers illegal substances every year.