Cold Case Files - REOPENED: The Grim Sleeper Part 1

Episode Date: July 23, 2026

In 1980s Los Angeles, a killer is terrorizing South Central, murdering African American women and discarding their bodies in the street. As the victim count rises–but suspects are few–fear and anger take hold in a community often overlooked by the police.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode contains descriptions of violence and sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised. I grew up in South Central, L.A. Back in the early 80s, we all knew that it was someone out there killing women. I found out my mom was killed by a serial killer when I was like eight years old. If I was a different race, maybe if I came from Beverly Hills and came down here and bought some rocks and he got me, maybe then it would have been something different. but we were all black women. He was called the Grim Sleeper.

He prayed on the weak and drugies. He prayed on prostitute women. It was like, we don't matter. Black folks don't matter. You never think you'll be one of the victims of a serial killer. We were left behind because we were drug addicts. It don't take you 39 years to catch your mother. There are 120,000 unsolved murders in America.

Each one is a cold case. Only 1% of a. are ever solved. This is one of those rare stories. It's January 2006 in Los Angeles, California, and reporter and author Christine Pellasek is out looking for a case to cover. I was covering crime for the LA Weekly, everything from, you know, gang killings to love affairs gone bad. I used to go and visit the coroner's office, just to see if there was any cases. The coroner told me about these body things. dumps. There were 38 women on the list, and it was women whose bodies were found in alleyways

and parks in South Central. The majority of the women were African American, and many of them were sex workers. I started making calls to different detectives about it. They were not used to getting calls from, like, the media on cases like that. But as I was going through the list, I ended up coming to two cases that were linked through DNA to a series of, you know, of 25 caliber shootings back in the 80s. And I was completely shocked when I heard this because I had never heard anything before about any serial killer in South Central.

And so that's actually how I ended up getting involved in the case. Was there a serial killer that nobody knew about? Eventually, we would call him the grim sleeper because of this very big gap between the killings. Christine would eventually write a book about the case called the Grim Sleeper, the Lost Women of South Central, where she details the lives and deaths of the victims. Some women were fortunate enough to escape with their lives,

but the memory of their brush with a serial killer is hard to shake. Survivor Pamela Brooks remembers a time before the man-hunting women in her community had a nickname. We all knew that it was someone out there killing women. At that time, he wasn't called the Grim Sleep. He was just called. called the men killing prostitutes. So now we're going to go back. I'm going to take it back. Former LAPD. Detective Cliff Shepard worked on many of the murder cases in the city. Los Angeles has become famous for many different reasons. Not all of them good. I'm a retired detective from the Los Angeles Police Department. My last 10 years working unsolved

murders. I worked in Southeast Division. Beginning around the mid-80s, rock cocaine started getting its hold in South Los Angeles in particular. People were becoming addicted to it, and you could find dealers making a fortune almost overnight. By 1984, crack cocaine-fueled drug wars were ravaging South Central Los Angeles. We had an epidemic of murders in South Los Angeles, where young black women were being found murdered on the streets, in abandoned homes, in alleyways. detectives didn't know whether the women were getting killed by their pimp or with their boyfriend. It really wasn't until there were more murders and then a pattern started emerging. It's August 12, 1986, and police are called to West Vernon Avenue.

A woman's body has been found beneath a mattress in an alleyway, and investigators find a piece of cloth stuffed down her throat. Although it's obvious the victim has been shot at least once, there are no shell casings found at the scene, leading investigators to believe she had been killed elsewhere before being dumped in the alley. The woman is identified as 34-year-old Henrietta Wright, a mother of five who is known to friends and family

by the name Cody. My name is Rochelle Johnson, and I'm Henrietta Wright's daughter. I found out my mom was killed when I was like eight years old. When you're eight, nine, it's hard to go to the night. adult like, can you tell me what happened to my mom? Cody's niece, Irene, recalls what she was like. She was a darn good mom.

Cody was very bubbly. She was a lot of fun. She worked for the L.A. Unified School District. She was always on the go. She used to love to play pool. She had several trophies from when she would win tournaments. Cody is close to her niece Irene and the family, and they all spend time together and help each other out.

We did things as a family. It was a village raising everybody's children. The neighborhood was rich in respect, you know, just wholesome. But I guess around the 80s, when the drugs came in, it just went all bad. I think that's just around the time Cody had got involved in that stuff. But it didn't show right away. You know what I mean? She was a functional person that was getting high.

After her home is destroyed by arson, Henrietta Cody writes, life begins to spiral out of control. She came to my mom's house crying saying she had to start over again, and then she moved in with us, and she was pregnant, and she was just devastated. And then she just started living to get high. She stopped working for the school. It was a very addictive drug, and it was like a snowball effect real quick.

Growing up, I always knew my mom did drugs. I was raised with two of my mother's sisters. I just was blessed and glad that she did not raise me in that environment that she was struggling in. The news of Cody's murder stuns her family. Their memories of seeing her after her body was discovered haunt them. The day after that, we went to identify the body. Oh, wow. They say it's Cody's, but don't.

The only thing I could recognize on her was the braids in her head. Because she was in the alley for a little bit of time, we were all really, really messed up behind this. The coroner discovers that Cody was sexually assaulted before being killed by a bullet fired from a 25-caliber pistol. The investigators struggle to find any witnesses or anyone who can provide a lead. Cody's friends and family are left to form their own conclusions as to why. what happened to her. We was always under the impression that some guy killed Cody because she stole his drugs. For years, that's what we believe.

People don't understand, you don't just kill that person. You kill everybody that love that person. And it goes on and on for generations. Five months pass. And another similar case is opened when a puzzling 911 call comes in. Yeah, not to get something. You know, he, like, he threw her out, like he threw a gas tank on top of her, and the only thing you can see out is her seat. It's shortly after midnight on January 10, 1987.

911 police dispatchers receive a phone call from an unidentified male saying, hey, a guy just dropped off a body in an alley. He describes the vehicle as it being a blue and white van. He provides a license number for the van. The operator asked for a disqualify. description of the man, the caller just kind of laughs as I can't see him as too dark. Okay, what's your name? Huh?

What's your name? Oh, I don't stand to knock on there. I know too many people. Okay, then, bye-bye. All right. Officers respond to the call and arrive with flashlights to try and illuminate the pitch black alleyway. They walk partway down the alley,

and as they're coming back, they spot a pile of debris. They can see someone's legs sticking out from beneath a gas tank. Upon closer inspection, they find a woman's body. And it's clear that she's been shot by a small caliber firearm. Investigators use fingerprints to identify the victim as 23-year-old Barbara Ware. A coroner will have to determine her cause of death. But the investigators notify Barbara's father and her stepmother, Diana Ware.

My husband was notified. And I could see he was distraught, and that's when he told me. He says they found a Barbara murdered over on Main Street. The detectives couldn't tell us anything else. It was a very bad time. We just didn't know what to do, what to think, what happened. So we were very, very, very distraught and upset at that time. Barbara Ware was my bonus daughter.

I consider my bonus children, my bonus children, not stepchildren. When the children were growing up, Barbara and her brother were into roller skating. That's what they'd like to do on the weekend. Barbara was just a very charismatic person for her age. There was nothing shy about her. They came to live with us. When they were still in junior high, after their mother passed away, suddenly she had an aneurysm. That was kind of when things started to go kind of bad for her.

Like Cody Wright, who had been murdered five months earlier, Barbara had also fallen victim to the streets and the drug epidemic that was raging. She was running the streets with the wrong people, doing the wrong things, and she was doing drugs. Barbara was just, she just wanted to do what she wanted to do. She got beat up one time, and we figured this would turn her around,

but I think the drug problem really was a bad thing. that she got into. Barbara had her child when she was 16. She had her child taken away. She got into the court system. That's how the police were able to identify her immediately through fingerprints because they had her fingerprints in the system. Investigators look into the case more

and realize that there's something else the victims have in common, the murder weapon. At first, I think they believed it was maybe a drug deal gone back, type situation. When she was taken to the corner's office, they found that just like Henrietta Wright, Barbara, had been shot in the chest with a 25-caliber pistol. And ballistically, the bullets matched Henrietta Wright's murder. The investigators know that the gun links the crimes, but it doesn't direct them to the killer. They go back to the 911 call and conduct a DMV check on the license number of the van that was allegedly spotted at the scene.

It came back to a van from a church in South Los Angeles called the Cosmopolitan Church. When the police got there, the van was warm. They were having a revival at the church. The officers took the whole group of them down to the police station and interviewed them. Did anyone use the van? And I said, yeah, we use it. We're dropping off other conferences. congregational members, taking them home.

But that's it. That van was impounded and then processed for fingerprints, but it was all church members, and they had nothing to do with the murder. So another frustrating lead that seemed to go nowhere. We still have a serial murder out there. By the mid-1980s, the drug epidemic in South Central had intensified an already strange relationship

between the community and the police. The families of the slain women are worried that the case would never be solved. The detectives would come by periodically. They would ask my husband questions, but they didn't tell us anything else. No leads, nothing. We just wanted to be treated like, like we matter.

We moved out of Los Angeles about a year or so after Barbara was murdered. We just wanted to get out of the area, but we didn't hear anything else, nothing else about Barbara being murdered. We didn't think they'd ever find out whatever happened. If they wanted to catch him, the police could have called him. They thought of us as just crackheads, but we still was humans. We were being hunted. It's now February, 1987, one month after Barbara Ware's murder. There were a lot of press conferences about serial killers in white areas, but there was very very, very important.

little about the serial killers focusing on black women. A lot of the family members thought that the police and people just didn't care. What most people of South Central L.A. don't know is that since 1985, the LAPD is operating a secret task force, looking into the murders of more than 25 young African-American women. We obviously knew we had a big problem. I mean, women were being murdered, and we're not solving them. But then our firearms unit started comparing bullets recovered from the bodies of Henrietta Wright and Barbara Ware. The ballistics experts discovered that those slugs matched the bullets recovered from two other

murder victims. There was a murder on January 15, 1984. Her name was Sharon Alice Dismukee. Then Deborah Jackson was found murdered in August of 1985 in an alleyway in South Los Angeles. They realized that the same 25-calibre gun that was used to kill Deborah was also used to kill Sharon. By the fourth murder, we know we have a serial murderer who's using the same firearm. We don't know when they will murder again. The answer comes soon enough. On the evening of April 16, 1987, just three months after Barbara Ware's murder.

26-year-old Bernita Spark's body is found in a dumpster behind a church near 94th Street and Western. She has been shot in the chest with a 25 caliber, and like the other victims, she's also been sexually assaulted. Her body has been redressed, and she was also struck over the head. The police realize now that, you know, this killer is speeding up. The murders are happening a lot closer together. The newspapers and media sort of calling him, the so-called suicide slayer. The media coverage is critical of the LAPD because there have been so many murders and no suspects developed. The task force assigns two detectives to the 25-caliber killings.

Once they get a call and see that there has been a 25 caliber involved, they go to investigate and check for any possible links. It's slow-paced, but the detectives soon get a break. A tip from a woman named Shelly Brown. She was arrested for a robbery, and she said that she knew information about the murder of Henrietta Wright. Brown tells the police that she and Henrietta Cody Wright had brought two men back to a hotel just before the murder.

Brown was with a man named Dennis Pinky Pinkney, and Cody was with Jimmy Let Loose Spencer. She had said that she heard this fighting go on in the next room, and the next thing she knew, Pinky went running out, and then she said by the time she got into the alleyway, she saw Pinky holding down Henrietta on the ground, and then let loose shooting. detective searched Jimmy Spencer's home and find a 25 caliber pistol.

Oh my God, is this the 25 caliber pistol? Is this the guy? When we talk to some of the family members, they're always hopeful and what's new. We want to be able to say, here, we've got the answer for you now. Here's the murderer. He did it, and we can prove it. It's October 29, 1986. two months after Cody Wright's murder,

and Detective Shepard hopes that he can finally provide the answers the victim's family needs. For three years, the LAPD has been searching for the South Side Slayer, a man who'd murdered at least five African-American women with the same 25-caliber gun, and the investigators believe they have caught the killer. They end up arresting Jimmy Spencer and charging him with the murder of Henrietta Wright.

But a little over a year later on November 1, 1987, another body is found in South Central. When Jimmy was in jail, there was another victim. I mean, it was unbelievable. Mary Lowe is found dead in an alleyway, and her body was found by a father and his son who were walking in the area. She's been shot in the chest. It appears she's been also redressed because the bullet did not penetrate the clothing, and she's placed by a wall with her purse in the alleyway. 26-year-old Mary Lowe is found three and a half blocks from where the killer had dumped Bernita Sparks' body just six months earlier.

Mary was a popular teenager, and she was also a really good dancer. She danced for American bandstand and Soul Train. Mary Lowe was at a club of sorts, around 92nd Street in Western. She was last seen leaving there, walking northbound on Western alone. And the next morning, her body is found in an alleyway not far from the bar where she was. Women continued to be found murdered in the area. Despite Jimmy Spencer being behind bars for Henrietta Cody Wright's murder, The police have the wrong man.

The case against Pinkney and Spencer is dropped, and they are released, so the task force is back to square one. The killings continued on after that. It's around 8 p.m. on November 19, 1988, and 30-year-old mother of two, Anita Tria, Washington, is making her way home from work. I grew up in L.A. I've lived here most of my life.

In the 80s, and I was living the best life. You would go to these parties and you get to associate with few new stars, you know, and it was fun. But, you know, it was too good to be true. I should have known better. I was working as a physician assistant, and I had just gotten off work. So I was walking home to get changed to go to this party with my play sister, Linda Hoover. I walked past the liquor store and saw this car, this orange pinto. They looked like the exact replica of the hot wheel car.

The owner of the penthouse started hollered, yo, you like my car, he drove up. And I was like, yeah, I was in my own your car. Then he goes, oh, where are you going? I said, I'm going to a party later on. He said, well, can I go to the party? And I was like, yeah, anybody can go to the party because the backyard buggy was backyard buggy.

So I said, okay, let me change clothes, and I'll let you take me over to my friend's house. I changed clothes. It was still light. It wasn't dark yet. Anitria gets into the orange pinto and the driver asks for her name. So we're driving. I said, you're going right here.

That's where she lived. He makes a left turn. And I'm like, uh, no. He pulls in front this house and he said, I'll be right back. I heard him talking to somebody. I didn't see the person. And I'm like, okay, if another person gets in this car, I'm getting out this car. But he got in by itself.

Then we're driving. The man drives a woman. away from where Anitaria wants to go and randomly starts referring to her as Brenda. The black girl came out real tough. And I said, that's not my name. I don't even know you. Why are you

calling me somebody else? And he says, why are you dogging me out? I didn't answer him. And everything just went quiet. And I'm like, okay, it's time to get out this car. So I reached for the handles. And he shot me in my chest, point blank.

He said, bitch, I'll shoot you again if you touch that door. Now I'm losing where I'm at and I passed out. And when I woke up, it was dark. My clothes are down. And this man was on top of me taking pictures. It's been two hours since

Anita Trio Washington was abducted by a stranger driving an orange pinto. She's been shot in the chest at point-blank range and sexually assaulted. I heard about these black women getting killed at the time in South Central. I was

But you never think you'll be one of the victims of a serial killer. And when I woke up, there's this camera flash. Oh, he raped me. I was pushing him off of me trying to get out the car. As I opened the door, he pushed me out the door at the same time. And I remember rolling in the street and laying there. I have blood all on my shirt in the front of my chest. I couldn't believe I was shot.

Her attacker speeds off into the night, leaving Anitria to die in the street. but she doesn't give up easily. It was dark, and I was bleeding, but I was thinking, okay, I need to go to my friend Linda's. I'm walking toward her house, leaving a trail of blood. I had walked a mile. She got a porch light on.

So I'm bamming on the doors. Then I realized, oh, she went to the party. While I'm there laying on her porch, Linda pulls up, her and her husband. I was like, call 911. When the police and everybody came, I overheard these cops. I was talking smack, you know. Why should we help her? This black girl, you know.

I got to be a hooker because I had a short skirt on. I was going to a backyard buggy. Of course I was cute. Then he looked and he saw that the panties were hanging off. They were torn. And then he goes, oh my gosh, she's raped. You got to get a rape thing. They finally got out in the ambulance and take me to the hospital.

Emergency surgery is performed on Enitria for hours. To remove a 25 caliber slug, from her chest. When I woke up, I had a collapse lung. The next thing I know, these detectives walk in on me. They brought in a sketch artist, and they said, can you describe him?

He was a little short guy. Like, he looked like a guy who just came out of Circuit City. He had a polo shirt and some khakis on. A composite sketch of the man is drawn up. But aside from his car, there's nothing unique about the suspect. Anitria tells investigators,

she has no idea why she was shot. I was still in the hospital room and the detectives said, we got the bullet and I'm like, okay. The investigators don't tell Anitria that the slug taken from her body matches the 25 caliber slugs taken from nine previous victims.

Anitra, this is our first known surviving victim. That was a big break. We need all the help that we can get. And there's a possibility that she could have. help identify him. Using DMV records, investigators tracked down and question the owners of every Orange Pinto in Los Angeles. We had stakeouts in the area looking for anybody driving an Orange Pinto.

All of them were eliminated. None of them were the right one. When I finally got out the hospital, the detectives asked me if I would go with them to go check over where I was, take them through it. Anitria shows the detectives the route her assailant took the night of the shooting. I remember the house and, you know, where I was. The police learned that the house was owned by a guy named Othus White, and they got a search warrant, and there was.

They found a 25-caliber pistol. And so they thought, oh, my God, this is it. This is the murder weapon. And I said, thank you, Father God. I really thought they caught the guy. It's February 3, 1989. Three months after Anitria, Washington, was almost killed by a suspected serial killer. Anitria ended up taking the detectives to this house owned by a guy named Othus White.

It was kind of the local party house. You know, a lot of people would go there and hang out and drink beer. The detectives got a search warrant for the house. Officers recovered a 25 automatic. And so they tested it, and it was not the weapon that was used to shoot Anitria and kill the other nine women. Anitria said that the attacker was in his 30s, and Osses White was around late 70s, so he was too old to be the killer. Anitria just wanted to find out who did this. She was having this really good life, and then all of a sudden, not only he was,

was she shot, but she almost died. After Anitria is shot in November, 1988, the four-year string of 25-caliber murders comes to a halt. We had a quiet spell after Anitria.

Maybe he grew out of it, you know? A lot of serial killers, once they start getting older, they stop. Did he change his ammo? Maybe he's not using the 25-caliber firearm anymore. If you're familiar with Los Angeles, one of the main thoroughfares is the Harbor Freeway. It runs north

and south to the ocean, passing through South Los Angeles. They were women who were found murdered alongside the freeway. A month before, Anitra survived an attack. There had been three victims who had been murdered with a 9mm firearm. One night, while an officer was on patrol with his partner, they see a car stopped alongside the Harbor Freeway. When they stopped the driver, he identified himself as Ricky Ross. Ricky Ross is an L.A. County Deputy Sheriff. He is in the car with a young sex worker. The officers asked the deputy if he had a firearm. He said, yes, I do. It's in the trunk of my car. They look in Ricky Ross's trunk, and they find a 9mm pistol.

They checked the gun and they asked him if he was involved in any of these 9mm murders. He denied it. Then he admitted that he also owned a 25 automatic. Do we finally have the guy? When they conducted the search of Ricky Ross's house, they recovered a holster for a 25 automatic, but no gun. Our firearms unit examined a 9mm pistol that was in his possession, identified. that gun as being used in three murders.

So he was booked for those murders. Finding Ricky in the car with the woman, with the pistol that was in the truck of the car, tying him to the 9mm murders and the knowledge that he owned a 25-calibre gun. All this made it seem that he was likely the 25-caliber murderer. As the trial against Ricky Ross, for the three nine-millimeter murders

is set to begin with opening statements. A new report torpedoes the state's case. The firearms expert that Ricky Ross's team had used came to the conclusion that the 9-millimeter that was recovered from Ricky Ross was not the firearm that was used to murder those three women. The DA's office hires two outside ballistics experts.

They conclude that it was unlikely that the 9-millimeter gun was used in the murders. So if it wasn't used to murder those three women, kind of puts doubt into the 25 automatic, which we never found. Ricky Ross had nothing to do with the murders. We're back of square zero.

Typically, the first 48 hours are the best time to work the murder. The problem is the most recent murder gets the most attention. Over time, they're pushed further and further back. Less and less is done, and the case will likely be forgotten about. With the volume of murders that Ellie was experiencing during that next two decades, in the 90s, we hit over 1,000 murders a year.

They were overwhelmed. It was very frustrating for, like, a lot of the detectives. They were so busy handling so many murders. The 25-caliber cases just sort of disappeared from, you know, everybody's, you know, view, really. Tips dry up. and by 1989, the Southside Slayer Task Force disbands. Time ticks on, and the case goes cold. At first, when the case went cold, I was scared,

but I was trying to get on with my life. A year later, I noticed that this guy was on the bus with me all the time, but he would never get off where I got off. And I was like, well, don't pay no attention to it. Just, you know, mind your business. all of a sudden it dawned on me who it was. And I was like, oh, my God, oh my God. And I knew it was him.

Join us next week for part two of The Grim Sleeper. Cold Case Files is hosted by Paula Barrows. It's produced by the Law and Crime Network and written by Eileen McFarlane and Emily G. Thompson. Our composer is Blake Maples. For A&E, our senior producer is John Thrasher and our supervising producer is McCamee Lynn. Our executive producers are Jesse Katz, Maite Cueva, and Peter Tarshis.

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