Prolific serial killer Chester Dewayne Turner, who was already on death row for killing an unborn child and 10 women, was found guilty Thursday of killing four more women, prosecutors said.

The latest verdict against Turner, 47, would make him subject to the death penalty again, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said in a statement.

Jurors deliberated for less than a day to return with guilty verdicts on four counts of first-degree murder, prosecutors said.

Interactive graphic: Trace serial killer’s path through South L.A.


A penalty phase in Turner’s trial is scheduled to start at 10 a.m. Friday.

Turner, a onetime pizza deliveryman, was charged in 2011 after DNA evidence connected him to the 1997 slaying of Cynthia Johnson, whose abandoned body was found near a church in the Green Meadows neighborhood.

He was eventually charged with the deaths of three other women who were found strangled to death in South Los Angeles.

Turner was sentenced to death in 2007 for the murder of 10 other women and a 6 1/2-month-old fetus, all of which occurred between 1987 and 1998. Most of the victims were raped and strangled.


The killings occurred mostly in a 30-block stretch of motels and apartments that runs south from Slauson Avenue along Figueroa Street -– an area that was at the time notorious for prostitution, drug crime and violence.

For breaking news in Los Angeles and California, follow @VeronicaRochaLA, or email her at veronica.rocha@latimes.com.