Grim Sleeper probe: fears for 160 missing women

Police in Los Angeles have published photographs of around 160 unidentified women found at the home of a suspected serial killer known as the 'Grim Sleeper'. They fear that many of them may also be victims of Lonnie Franklin Jnr, who has already been charged with 10 murders.
 
Franklin, a former rubbish collector and mechanic who once worked for the LAPD, was arrested in July and charged with killing 10 women and the attempted murder of another. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
 
The culprit was dubbed the 'Grim Sleeper' because of an apparent 14-year hiatus between crimes. Seven of his victims were found between 1985 and 1988 and the other three were killed between 2002 and 2007. This suggested he took the 1990s 'off'.
 
However, the LAPD now fear that their suspect Franklin was active during the 1990s.

When they raided his home in July, they found more than 1,000 photographs of women and hours of home video footage. Having spent months trying to identify all the women, they are left with approximately 160 they cannot place – and who they fear may have been killed.

In an effort to track the women down, the police have resorted to publishing the photos and asking for the public's help.

If Franklin did kill some of these woman, then he could turn out to be one of America's most prolific serial killers, with dozens of victims.
 
Since his arrest, police have re-investigated 30 other unsolved murders which bear a resemblance to those carried out by the Grim Sleeper, including some where bodies were found at landfill sites in LA.
 
Franklin was arrested earlier this year after police used a DNA technique called familial searching to link him to the crimes.
 
The police were frustrated by the fact that they were unable to find a match between DNA found at the crime scenes and any of the profiles in California's DNA database. However, when Franklin's son was arrested in relation to a different matter they discovered that he was likely to be a close relative of the killer.
 
Franklin then emerged as a suspect and police got a sample of his DNA by swabbing a cup he had used at a restaurant, and subsequently arrested him. The police said it was the first time 'familial searching' had been used in the state. ·