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As the penalty phase of trial for the man convicted of the “Grim Sleeper” murders of nine women and a 15-year-old girl continued Monday, prosecutors worked to build their case tying the defendant to two additional uncharged murders in 1984 and 2000.

Los Angeles police detectives, a forensic lab technician and a fingerprint expert each provided new testimony related to either the January 1984 shooting death of 21-year-old Sharon Dismuke or the shooting of Georgia Mae Thomas, 43, who was found dead Dec. 18, 2000, in an industrial area of South Los Angeles, with two gunshot wounds to the left side of her chest and blunt-force trauma to her head.

The defendant, Lonnie Franklin Jr., a 63-year-old former Los Angeles city garage attendant and sanitation worker, wasn’t charged in either of the two crimes. However, detectives have long cited Franklin’s suspected involvement in killings beyond the 10 for which he was convicted May 5.

Dismuke’s body was found in the men’s restroom of an abandoned gas station in South Los Angeles, naked and lying under a piece of old carpet and surrounded by trash.

“She had in her mouth a wadded-up, what looked like a white terrycloth washcloth totally soaked with blood,” Detective Billy Smalling told the jury panel.

Dismuke had been shot in the arm and chest and Smalling said that drag marks on her heels and backside, along with the lack of shell casings at the scene, led him to believe that she had been shot elsewhere and later dumped at the gas station.

In her opening statement in the trial’s penalty phase, Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman told jurors that the gun used to kill Dismuke was also used to shoot Janecia Peters — the final victim in the charged “Grim Sleeper” killings. That weapon was found during a July 2010 police search of Franklin’s property, according to the prosecutor.

“This was the first murder in a series of murders committed by the defendant,” Silverman said of Dismuke’s killing, telling jurors that the same gun being used was “like bookends on this series of murders.”

The prosecutor said the weapon used to kill Thomas was found in Franklin’s garage and his fingerprint was found on a magazine of the gun.

A forensic lab technician testified today to tearing away a part of a “false wall” in Franklin’s garage during a three-day search in July 2010 and finding a yellow plastic bag from Best Buy wrapped around a manufacturer’s gun box holding a Titan .25 caliber pistol.

Members of the team carrying out the search warrant “had a funny feeling that there might be items concealed out of view” in the garage, LAPD forensic scientist Guy Holloway testified.

Elsewhere in the garage — seen in a photo cluttered floor-to-ceiling with boxes, tools, papers and small appliances — searchers found a high school ID card belonging to 18-year-old Hawthorne High School senior Ayellah Marshall and a Nevada ID card belonging to 29-year-old Rolenia Morris.

Silverman had told jurors that Marshall vanished in January 2006 and Morris disappeared in September 2005. Authorities have not been able to locate either woman, the prosecutor said.

Franklin is also suspected in the killing of 28-year-old Inez Warren, who was found Aug. 15, 1988, with a gunshot wound to the left side of her chest and blunt-force trauma to her head, according to the prosecutor.

A kit used to collect potential DNA evidence from the woman was inadvertently destroyed in 2000 — years before Franklin’s arrest — but the killing bore the “same pattern or signature” as the other killings, the deputy district attorney said during her opening.

Franklin, while serving in the U.S. Army in Germany in 1974, also joined with two other men to grab a 17-year-old girl off a street, gang-rape her and take photos of her, the prosecutor alleged.

Franklin’s attorney declined to present an opening statement at the start of the penalty phase.

In closing arguments for the guilt phase of the trail, defense lawyer Seymour Amster contended that an unknown assailant might have been responsible for the 10 killings for which Franklin was prosecuted.

Today, Amster cross-examined the fingerprint expert who had discovered prints on the Titan pistol and magazine, asking on what basis she believed that fingerprints were unique and do not change over time.

The expert cited a variety of research in support.

Amster then questioned her about other prints on the gun or its magazine and the witness said she didn’t recall identifying another other prints or partial prints.

The prosecution has consistently countered that there was no evidence to support the defendant’s theory of another killer and told jurors that “the only DNA profile that repeats itself again and again is the defendant’s.”

Families of the victims also offered emotional accounts today of loved ones lost.

Dismuke’s sister tearfully told jurors that she “refused to believe that she was gone,” while Bernita Sparks’ brother said he was so angry when he was told his baby sister had been killed that he punched a tree.

“She would do anything for anybody in the family who asked her,” Alvin Reed said of Sparks.

Jurors deliberated about 1 1/2 days before finding Franklin guilty of the killings, which occurred between 1985 and 1988 and 2002 and 2007, with the assailant dubbed the “Grim Sleeper” because of what was believed to be a 13- year break in the killings.

In addition to the 10 first-degree murder counts, the seven-woman, five- man jury also found Franklin guilty of the attempted murder of Enietra Washington, who survived being shot in the chest and pushed out of a moving vehicle in November 1988. In testimony Feb. 25, she identified Franklin as her assailant.

Franklin was convicted of killing:

— Debra Jackson, 29, found dead from three gunshot wounds to the chest in an alley on Aug. 10, 1985;

— Henrietta Wright, a 34-year-old mother of five who was shot twice in the chest and found in an alley with a cloth gag stuffed in her mouth on Aug. 12, 1986;

— Barbara Ware, 23, shot once in the chest and found under a pile of debris and garbage in an alley on Jan. 10, 1987;

— Bernita Sparks, 26, shot once in the chest and found in a trash bin with her shirt and pants unbuttoned on April 16, 1987;

— Mary Lowe, 26, shot in the chest and found in an alley with her pants unzipped behind a large shrub on Nov. 1, 1987;

— Lachrica Jefferson, 22, found dead from two gunshot wounds to the chest — with a napkin over her face with the handwritten word “AIDS” on it — in an alley on Jan. 30, 1988;

— Alicia Alexander, 18, killed by a gunshot wound to the chest and found naked under a blue foam mattress in an alley on Sept. 11, 1988;

— Princess Berthomieux, 15, strangled and discovered naked and hidden in shrubbery in an alley in Inglewood on March 9, 2002;

— Valerie McCorvey, 35, strangled and found dead with her clothes pulled down at the entrance to a locked alley on July 11, 2003; and

— Janecia Peters, 25, shot in the back and found naked inside a sealed plastic trash bag in a trash bin in an alley on Jan. 1, 2007.

Franklin has remained jailed without bail since his arrest in July 2010 by LAPD Robbery-Homicide Division detectives.

–City News Service

Bloody rag stuffed in mouth of Grim Sleeper victim: DA demands death was last modified: by

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