'Grim Sleeper' Cops Trying to Taint Jury Pool With Photos, Attorney Charges
Dec. 18, 2010— -- The Los Angeles Police Department has tentatively indentified five of the dozens of women found in photos discovered on the "Grim Sleeper" serial killer's property.
Deputy Chief of Police and Chief of Detectives David R. Doan said that "five people have identified five specific names" from photos posted on the L.A.P.D.'s website. All claims came through their tip hotline.
He said that "three or four of the five at this point" have come forward and said "it was me in the picture."
"We have not confirmed that and we're going to personally interview everyone," Doan said.
All of the photos were found on the property of the suspected "Grim Sleeper" serial killer, Lonnie David Franklin Jr., and police say they hope people will recognize the faces and contact investigators.
Police are investigating all claims called in and entering them into their computer database. Doan said they are now tracking down the people who made the calls, saying that they were turning most of their attention to people calling in to report that someone in one of the photos is a missing person.
"[It's a] hotter lead...if the person has not been seen for a couple of years," Doan said. "They say 'it's me' is not as hot as someone reported missing."
Doan said that all of the 180 images will remain on the L.A.P.D. website for now.
"We'll take them down if we're satisfied that the individual has been possibly identified," he said.
Los Angeles Police homicide detective Dennis Kilcoyne said various area police websites have received over 8 million hits since the photos were made public on Thursday, and the department has recieved hundreds of phone calls.
The photos show women ranging from teenagers to others who look as if they're in their 60s. Some are smiling, others appear to be unconscious.
Click here to view all of the "Grim Sleeper's" victims' photos.
"These people are not suspects," Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said of the photos on Thursday. "We don't even know if they are victims. ... We certainly do not believe that we are so lucky or so good that we know all of the victims. We need the public's help."
Beck also cautioned the public that some of the photos are decades old, and that the women "will have changed, aged."
Many of the photos of these women show them with either their breasts exposed or fully naked.
Detective Kilcoyne, who headed the team that tracked down Franklin, would not comment on the nature of the photographed women's "lifestyle or situation." He did acknowledge that the L.A. Police Department was showing only the women's faces, which was "indicative of the content in the photos."
"Our best wish is that we get a phone call from each and every one of the them and that everyone is OK," he said.
Detectives also encouraged any of the women who are still alive to come forward and explain how they came to be photographed.
Franklin, a 57-year-old mechanic, was charged with 9 counts of murder and one count of attempted murder in July in the "Grim Sleeper" case. He is accused of murdering 9 young women between 1985 and 2007 in South Los Angeles.
When detectives searched Franklin's home and surrounding property, they found more than 1,000 photos and hundreds of hours of home video footage in his procession.
"It's a long period of time that he's been taking pictures," Kilcoyne said.
Authorities working on the case said they had been trying to identify the women in the images for months.
Franklin pleaded not guilty to the charges on Aug. 23, 2010, during a court appearance. He remains in custody.
Franklin's attorney, Louisa Pensanti, cricicized the release of the photos, saying it created several problems.
In a statement to ABC News, Pensanti said among the problems "is that the photographs were not part of the discovery that I have been provided with so far from the District Attorney's Office. The photographs include members and friends of the Franklin family, all now subject to the intense scrutiny of the public as well as the police."
Los Angeles police offered Franklin's wife the opportunity to view the photos at police headquarters in order to identify friends or family members, but she refused, a high-ranking official tells ABC News.
Pensanti also criticized investigqtors for comments made at a press conference, which she said were "a deliberate tainting of public opinion and the jury pool. Sadly, the public officials who have the duty to uphold the Constitution have forgotten the basics in their desire for sensationalism and are jeopardizing Lonnie Franklin's chance for a fair trial."
Determining the identity of the "Grim Sleeper," who had eluded police for more than two decades, was helped by a DNA sample taken from the suspect's son.
ABC News' Neal Karlinsky reported on a technique called familial DNA led police to Franklin in July.
Police said the DNA technique could prove more revolutionary than fingerprinting in solving crimes.
"This is a landmark case. This will change the way policing is done in the United States," Beck said at the news conference in July.
The technique may also be controversial, and likely faces legal challenges.
"This arrest provides proof positive that familial DNA searches must be a part of law enforcement's crime-fighting arsenal. Although the adoption of this new state policy was unprecedented and controversial, in certain cases, it is the only way to bring a dangerous killer to justice," said Attorney General Jerry Brown in a statement.
The familial DNA program was started by Brown in April 2008 as a way to fight violent crimes when there is "serious risk to public safety," according to the attorney general's office. California is the first state to use familial searches.
The high-profile case had languished unsolved, and had haunted the files of the L.A.P.D. cold-case unit for years.
According to the attorney general's office, the suspect's son was arrested and convicted on a felony weapons charge and swabbed for DNA last year. When his DNA was entered into the database of convicted felons, detectives were alerted to a partial match to evidence found at the "Grim Sleeper" crime scenes.
Police began investigating Franklin's son's relatives, and found a match in Lonnie Franklin. Police said he had never been a suspect until now.
The data bank, which contains more than 1.5 million samples, is the third largest criminal database in the world. Only data from convicted felons is collected, according to Brown, and a number of safeguards are taken before the Department of Justice releases the information to police.
Kilcoyne, who headed the investigation, said it was the second time a query was run for familial connections in the "Grim Sleeper" case. From the DNA matches, a tight circle of law enforcement officers zeroed in on Franklin based on the suspect's residence, location of the victims, his race and age.
Familial DNA database searches have come under fire from privacy and civil liberty advocates, who argue, among other things, that they put more minorities, who are disproportionally represented in the database, in an at-risk group.
The Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of familial DNA sample collection and searches. Brown said the office of the attorney general will be in court again next week defending the technique, and raised the possibility of more legal challenges.
The killings of 9 young black women and one man, beginning in 1985, have all been blamed on the "Grim Sleeper." Franklin has not been charged in the shooting death of 36-year-old Thomas Steele, but police said they believe his death is connected to the other killings.
