Controversial DNA search led to arrest in serial-killer's case

LOS ANGELES —

The arrest in the case of the "Grim Sleeper" — a serial killer who terrorized South Los Angeles for more than two decades — has put one of the hottest controversies in U.S. law enforcement to its first major test.

Only two states, Colorado and California, have a codified policy permitting the use of so-called familial search — the use of DNA samples taken from criminals to track relatives who may have committed a crime. It is a practice district attorneys and the police say is an essential tool in catching otherwise elusive criminals, but one privacy experts criticize as a threat to civil liberties.

This week, the Los Angeles Police Department used the tactic to arrest a man they say killed at least 10 people in Los Angeles over 25 years. It is the first time an active familial search has been used to solve a homicide case in the United States.

Lonnie David Franklin Jr., 57, was charged Thursday with 10 counts of murder and one of attempted murder after the state DNA lab discovered a DNA link between evidence from the old crime scenes and that of Franklin's son, Christopher, who recently was convicted of a felony weapons charge. His arraignment was postponed until Aug. 9 at the request of his defense attorney, Regina Laughney.

The information developed from the state's familial-search program suggested that Christopher Franklin was a relative of the source of the DNA from the old crime scenes. The police confirmed the association of Lonnie Franklin through matching DNA from a discarded pizza slice. The match provided the crucial link in a seemingly unsolvable crime that struck terror throughout one of the city's poorest areas for years.

Chief Charlie Beck of the Los Angeles Police said Thursday that he expected to connect Lonnie Franklin, who is being held without bail, to other slayings.

"Breakthrough"

"This is truly a breakthrough," said Attorney General Jerry Brown, whose office wrote the DNA policy. The use of the practice demonstrates that law enforcement can "stop criminals in their tracks and lock up some of the most vicious and dangerous members of our society," Brown said. "That's why this technology is so important."

The arrest in the case could settle the internal debate among lawmakers and law-enforcement agencies across the country now considering use of familial search, evidence-law experts said. California is awaiting a court ruling on whether its DNA database can be expanded to include arrestees.

The Los Angeles case "shows why it can be tremendously useful in cases that seem pretty dead and hard to crack," said Jennifer Mnookin, a law professor and evidence expert at UCLA. "So therefore we will very likely see an increasing use of these techniques, and at a minimum one hopes it is done in a sensitive way that is thoughtful and attentive to the concerns" of its critics.

Some of those critics remain skeptical.

"Familial searching is a tool, and at this point it is a very imprecise tool," said Michael Risher, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, who added there was the possibility of innocent people being harassed in the pursuit of a crime.

Many law-enforcement agencies collect DNA samples of felons in hopes that DNA from other crime scenes can be matched to those individuals.

In the case of a close but imperfect match between crime-scene DNA and that of someone locked up, forensic scientists say, the person responsible in that crime may be a relative of the person locked up. Through a software tool, scientists then are able to painstakingly parse the DNA to determine sibling or parent-child relationships, information the police use to pursue possible suspects.

While the practice is common in England, it has been limited largely to Colorado in the United States. But in 2008, the California Department of Justice began using familial searches — in the face of significant protests — to solve hard crimes. The state restricted the practice to major, violent crimes in which all other investigative techniques had proved fruitless.

Privacy issues

Those who oppose the technique argue that there are inherent privacy concerns, and that it serves, in essence, as a form of racial profiling because a higher proportion of inmates are members of minorities.

"I can imagine lots of African-American families would think it is not fair to put a disproportionate number of black families under permanent genetic surveillance," said Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at George Washington University who has written about this issue.

Further, Rosen said, if other jurisdictions were not as strict at California about the technique's application — expanding it to nonviolent crimes, for instance — the issue would be even more complex.

"The technique is not inherently good or evil," he said. "It all has to do with what crimes it is used for, who's in the database, how the database is regulated and what is done with the samples."

Investigators had tried for years to solve the case of the Grim Sleeper, so known because of a 14-year hiatus in the killing streak, who committed the majority of his killings in the 1980s but in recent years had restarted his spree. The department, in conjunction with the state attorney general's office, ran a familial DNA search for the first time in 2008 that was unsuccessful, Detective Dennis Kilcoyne, who led the investigation, said Thursday.

About 1 ½ years later, there was the second run through the system, the detective said, and the department "learned of a man that as we know now turned out to be a direct relative of our suspect." The authorities then were able to narrow their focus to the elder Franklin over the past weekend, based on the proximity of his residence to the crime scenes, race, age and other factors.

Police then conducted an around-the-clock surveillance of Franklin.

In the end, it was a meal at a Los Angeles restaurant that tripped him up. An undercover officer pretending to be a waiter collected tableware, napkins, glasses and pizza crust at a restaurant where the suspect ate in recent days, allowing detectives to obtain a DNA match.

Only after closely guarded procedures were the victim's families alerted and Franklin arrested Wednesday as he went to move his car.

The Grim Sleeper began his killing of women and one man in South Los Angeles in 1985, shooting his victims — some of whom were prostitutes — and leaving them in alleyways and garbage bins. The killer stopped in 1988, and started again in 2002.

At a news conference in Los Angeles, some victims' relatives squeezed together into the crowd Thursday. LaVerne Peters held a photo of her daughter Janecia Peters — the most recent victim, killed in 2007 — wearing a green cap and gown.

"This presents some relief," Peters said. "There is nothing worse than having a child murdered."

Rebecca Cathcart contributed reporting.

The Associated Press contributed

to this report.