LAPD Hunts Resurfaced Serial Killer

Missed chance on DNA, staked out wrong house,

(NEWSER) - The alleged serial killer known as the Grim Sleeper could have been stopped two years earlier if the police had collected his DNA. Lonnie David Franklin should have been added to a DNA database under a 2004 law called Proposition 69, finds the LA Times . He wasn't—apparently because it took the cops too long to get organized. "If only,” laments the mother of one of the victims. “Her life could have been possibly saved.” More»

Itzcoatl Ocampo to be charged with stabbing Raquel Estrada, Juan Herrera

(NEWSER) - Authorities believe Itzcoatl Ocampo, the 23-year-old Iraq veteran charged with stabbing four homeless men to death in California, also killed two other people—ones that he knew. Ocampo will be charged today with the murders of Raquel Estrada, 53, and her 34-year-old son, Juan Herrera, the mother and brother of a friend Ocampo has known since high school. That friend, Eder Herrera, had originally been charged with the murders, but those charges were dropped Friday, CNN reports. More»

18 likely murders and still counting, say cops

(NEWSER) - Los Angeles investigators believe they've tied eight more victims to "Grim Sleeper" serial killer suspect Lonnie Franklin. Evidence of some of the women have been found in Franklin's South Los Angeles home, and one missing woman's photo was found inside his refrigerator. The fridge "appears to be his special location" for storing his cache of pictures of women, including victims, said the lead homicide detective. Franklin, 57, is currently charged with murdering 10 women between 1985 and 2007. More»

UN tribunal testimony implicates Pol Pot in '96 hit on Oscar-winner

(NEWSER) - The LAPD and FBI call the 1996 murder of actor Haing Ngor a closed case of gang violence, but many Cambodians and Cambodian-Americans remain convinced that Pol Pot ordered a hit on the Oscar winner—and recent testimony at a UN tribunal on the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime has boosted their case. "Haing Ngor was killed because he appeared in the film The Killing Fields," a former Khmer Rouge prison chief told the court. More»

(NEWSER) - Charles Mason has reached out to former music producer Phil Spector, sending the actress-killer fan mail in the California prison they now share, reports the New York Post. Manson, a mediocre musician before he turned cult leader, sent Spector a note via a guard that he wanted to meet and thought he was the greatest producer who ever lived, said Spector's wife, Rachelle. "It was creepy," she told the Post. "Phil didn't respond." More»