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How the Search for One L.A. Serial Killer Led to Another
Photo by VeryBadLady via Flickr
When the LA Weekly broke the news about the still-out-there "Grim Sleeper" serial killer, who would rape and murder victims in South LA, one detective had an idea. What if the matching DNA from the crime scenes was of a registered sex offender who had not yet been swabbed? Of the 1,500 local sex offenders that matched the Grim Sleeper's description, 92 of them did not have DNA on file. So police began collecting DNA samples and one of those samples matched a number of crimes, but not the Grim Sleepers, another one, possibly the Westside Rapist:
When [Detective Diane] Webb ordered her massive manhunt last fall for the 92 unswabbed men who might include the Grim Sleeper, she couldn’t have known that hers was the final act in a series of decisions by detectives stretching over three decades, in what amounts to one of the longest-running manhunts in L.A. history. Without these independent acts, from Detective Larry Manchester’s quirky 1970s decision to save trace evidence after reading about newfangled “DNA science” to a random decision by cold-case detective Richard Bengtson in 2002 to reopen Manchester’s unsolved Elizabeth McKeown murder case, suspected Westside Rapist John Floyd Thomas would not be safely locked away.
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You come to LAist because you want independent reporting and trustworthy local information. Our nonprofit newsroom doesn’t answer to shareholders looking to turn a profit. Instead, we answer to you and our communities. We are free to follow facts wherever they lead and to hold power to account without fear or favor. Our only loyalty is to our readers and listeners and our mission: to inform, engage, and strengthen Southern California’s communities.
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