The location where Janecia Peters was found

This is the location where Janecia Peters was found.

It is situated behind 9508 South Western Avenue in Los Angeles, California.

Peters was the last known victim of serial killer Lonnie David Franklin Jr., also known as the Grim Sleeper.

On January 1st, 2007, a homeless man was searching through a dumpster at this section of the alleyway when he noticed a red fingernail protruding from a trash bag.

When the police arrived at the scene, they found a young woman who had been shot in the lower back.

The victim was later identified as 25-year-old Janecia Peters. She had been killed elsewhere, stripped of her clothing, and then dumped in the alley.

During the 1980s and 1990s, dozens of sex workers were murdered in Los Angeles. Although the LAPD launched a task force to investigate the killings, it was slowly wound down due to its failure to identify a suspect. Later, it came to light that the investigation was inadequate in a number of areas, particularly when it came to public outreach.

In the decade that followed, there were large improvements in forensic science and DNA profiling. This eventually led to the arrest of two serial killers named Chester Turner and Michael Hughes, who had operated independently of each other in South Central Los Angeles between 1986 and 1998.

Surprisingly, DNA and ballistics evidence indicated that an unknown individual was responsible for at least 10 of the other unsolved murders.

When the authorities tested a DNA sample found at Peters' crime scene, it proved to be a match with the unidentified killer. This third offender was nicknamed the Grim Sleeper because he had seemingly gone dormant between 1988 and 2002.

After Peters' murder, the police established a new task force to identify the Grim Sleeper. For three years, the investigation went nowhere. Despite identifying 400 suspects, none of them proved to be a match with the killer's DNA profile.

The tide started to turn in 2008 when the Attorney General of California, Jerry Brown, authorized the use of familial DNA searching. Two years later, in June 2010, investigators discovered that the killer's profile was a partial match with a young man named Christopher Franklin, who had recently been convicted of a firearms charge.

Christopher was too young to have committed the murders. However, his father, Lonnie Franklin Jr., was the perfect age. Furthermore, he lived very close to where the victims had been found.

One month later, the authorities obtained Franklin's DNA profile from a pizza crust that he had discarded while attending a children's birthday party. While they were awaiting the results, a team of undercover officers kept watch over his house on West 81st Street.

On the morning of July 7th, 2010, the lab confirmed that the profile from the pizza crust was a perfect match with the killer.

Franklin was immediately arrested and charged with ten counts of murder. Six years later, he was found guilty and sentenced to death. He died in his jail cell in March 2020, at the age of 67. The cause of death was never released.