For decades, Lonnie Franklin Jr. managed to evade justice while women were murdered across Los Angeles.
Then he ordered a pizza.
An undercover LAPD officer posing as a waiter collected Franklin’s discarded pizza crust, giving investigators the DNA sample they needed to connect him to a string of murders stretching back decades.
Sometimes the break that finally cracks a cold case doesn’t come from a dramatic confession or a brilliant interrogation. Sometimes it’s sitting on a plate, waiting to be cleared from the table.
This story of how one of Los Angeles’ most notorious serial killers was finally identified is featured in California Surf, Sand & Murder.
“What would you like on your pizza, sir?”
Lonnie Franklin looked over the menu while the waiter poured him more water and collected his appetizer dish. Lonnie ordered, ate his pizza, and the waiter carried off his leftover pizza crusts. Lonnie paid his bill and left.
“Thank you for your DNA,” the undercover police officer turned waiter mumbled to himself.
For the 57 year old Franklin, the gig was up. He had been arrested more than 15 times over 40 years for burglary, car theft, firearms and assaults, but never went to prison. The pizza crust proved to be the end of the line.
Lonnie David Franklin was better known as “The Grim Sleeper,” a notorious serial killer who ravaged the Los Angeles area for nearly 25 years from 1985-2007. And then he stopped, hence the “Sleeper.”
Los Angeles Police began suspecting they had a serial killer on their hands when black women who were drug users and street sex workers began turning up dead. They first dubbed the cases “The Southside Slayer” after 13 women were found murdered in the 1980s. Then the cases became known as “The Strawberry Murders,” a street name for women who exchanged sex for drugs.
When the murders continued into another century, then stopped, the cases turned into “The Grim Sleeper.”
Detectives took Franklin’s pizza crust DNA and looked for a family match. They found it through his son, Christopher. And it matched the homicide victims. For police, it was a game changer.
“This will change the way policing is done in the United States,” Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said.
In 2016, Franklin would be charged with murdering 10 women, but police suspect the number may be well over 100. At his trial, which took three months, the evidence was so overwhelming that his defense attorney threw his hands up and screamed “I rest my case. I have no defense. I cannot represent this man any further!”
The jury, after a short break for lunch, came back with the death penalty. But “The Grim Sleeper” never made it that far. He was found dead in his San Quentin prison cell in 2020.
Want more true crime from beneath California’s sunny surface?
California Surf, Sand & Murder explores the killers, crimes, investigations, and strange twists that reveal a much darker side of the Golden State.
Read California Surf, Sand & Murder and discover the stories hiding behind the California sunshine.
