Police: DNA links inmate to deaths of 12 women
Suspect is serving rape sentence
LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Two Los Angeles cold case homicide detectives used DNA test results to link an imprisoned rapist to the deaths of 12 women and an unborn girl between 1987 and 1998, Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton told reporters Saturday.
Another fetus was omitted from the toll because it was considered "unviable," Bratton said.
All of the victims were sexually assaulted and strangled.
The suspect in the killings, 37-year-old Chester Dwayne Turner, was convicted of rape in March 2002 and is serving an eight-year term at California State Prison. As a result of the DNA findings, 44-year-old David Allen Jones, who was sentenced to life on three murder charges, was released in March, the chief said. He had served about nine years.
Several relatives of victims were at the news conference, including two women -- friends for 30 years -- who recently discovered that Turner is accused of killing their daughters in separate incidents in the same neighborhood.
"He'll never be able to do this to someone else's child," said Jerri Johnson, the mother of Andrea Triplett, 29, whose body was found in 1993. "No family will have to go through what we went through."
Triplett was about five months pregnant when she died, her mother said. Johnson has been raising her daughter's other two children.
Most of the homicides occurred along about a two-mile section of the Harbor Freeway corridor.
According to Bratton, detective Cliff Shepard was the original investigator for one of the homicides.
When the body of 37-year-old Paula Vance was found in 1998, he spent considerable time on the case, Bratton said. In January 2002, Shepard asked that DNA evidence from the Vance homicide be submitted to the state database containing DNA samples from violent offenders.
In September 2002, Turner was connected to the Vance homicide and one other. Shepard and partner Jose Ramirez eventually linked Turner to 11 other killings, Bratton said.
"We're still not sure we've come to the bottom" of the case, Shepard said. "We could have additional victims out there."
Bratton said evidence in many of the killings will be turned over to the prosecutor next week.
If Turner committed all 12, a detective said, he would be the "most prolific killer in the city of Los Angeles history."
A proposal on the California ballot, Proposition 69, seeks to greatly expand the use of DNA evidence by taking samples from all suspects who are arrested in connection with felonies.
