Cold Case Files - The Grim Sleeper Part 1

Episode Date: April 4, 2023

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. Check out our great sponsors! Nutrafol: Grow thicker, healthier hair by going to Nutrafol.com and use code FILES to save $10 off your first month’s subscription! Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 29 million drivers who trust Progressive!

The following episode contains intensely disturbing accounts of violence. 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. When you're eight, nine, it's hard to go to an adult. Like, can you tell me what happened to my mom? He prayed at night, trolling the streets of South Central L.A. for victims, and it's believed there were many.

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 tells me, my sister is dead. I said, what happened to her? What are you talking about? He's nicknamed the grim sleeper because the killing suddenly stopped as if he was asleep. for 13 years. He murdered black women who were involved

in prostitution or illegal drugs. He was called the grim sleeper. He prayed on the weak and druggies. He prayed on prostitute women. When I saw

the way she was portrayed, I was so angry that she was listed as some type of a prostitute. If they wanted to catch him, the police could have called him. It was like, we don't matter. Black folks don't matter.

When I was, He was taking pictures. You never think you'll be one of the victims of a serial killer. We were left behind because we were drug addicts. It's January 2006 in Los Angeles, California. Christine Pellasek is the author of The Grim Sleeper, The Lost Women of South Central. The winter of 2006, I was covering crime for the L.A. 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 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 women were African American, and many of them were sex workers. And 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 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. Pamela Brooks is a survivor of the Grim Sleeper.

We all knew that it was someone out there killing women. At that time, he wasn't really. called the grim sleep. He would just call the man-killing prostitutes. So now we're going to go back. I'm going to take it back. Cliff Shepard is a former LAPD detective. 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-fueled drug wars ravaged 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, at 2514 West Vernon Avenue. There's a body found underneath a mattress in an alleyway, and she had a piece of cloth stuffed down her throat. She's been shot at least once. No casings were found at the scene. I found out my mom was killed when I was like eight years old. My name is Rochelle Johnson and I'm Henrietta Wright's daughter. A mother of five children, Henrietta Wright, was called Cody by family and friends, including her niece, Irene Ephraim.

She was a darn good mom. Rochelle Johnson is Henrietta Wright's daughter. Growing up, I was told my mom was very outgoing, ambitious. 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. Growing up, we were very, very, very. Family Oriented, we took holiday series, birthday series, so that was just, like, the best thing. We did things as a family. It was a village raised in 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 arson destroys her home, Henrietta Cody Wright spirals downward. 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 they 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 day after that, we went to identify the body. Oh, wow. They say it's Cody's, but 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 finds that Wright was sexually assaulted, then killed by a bullet, fired from a 25-caliber pistol. No casings were found at the same. So she was most likely shot somewhere else and then dumped in this out-of-the-way place. I'm trying to look for any witnesses that could provide us information.

Can't find anyone. That was one of the frustrating parts about this. Pretty much a dead end. We was always under the impression that some guy killed Cody because she stole his drugs. For years. That's what we believe. Then, five months later, there was another very similar murder. Yeah, I like to quote, a murder or a dead body or something.

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And when I saw Thrive Market had their seasonal sour snowflake flavor, the kids reacted as if Santa came early. And there's heart behind it all. Through their Thrive Gives program, every membership purchased sponsors a membership for a low-income family, teacher, veteran, or first responder, because access to healthy groceries shouldn't be a privilege. Thrive Market has made my life easier, and it can do the same for you. Go to thrivemarket.com slash cold case to get 30% off your first order plus a free $60 gift. 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. 9-1-1 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 description of the man. The caller just kind of laughs as says, I can't see them as too dark. Okay, what's your name? What's your name?

Oh, I don't stand to knock there. I know too many people. Okay, then, bye-bye. All right. Officers responded. It's pitch black out there. The officers with their flashlights, they walk part way down in the alley.

And as they're coming back, they realize there's a pile of debris. And they can see legs sticking out. we found our body when they removed the gas tank they discovered that she had been shot

by a small caliber firearm investigators used fingerprints to identify the victim as Barbara Ware the coroner is needed to determine her cause of death Diana Ware is Barbara's stepmother

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 Henrietta Wright, Barbara had fallen victim to the streets and drug addiction. At first, I think they believed it was maybe a drug deal gone bad type situation. When she was taken to the coroner'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. But the problem is it does not identify the murderer using this gun. The caller provides a license number of the van that was allegedly seen. They conducted a DMV check. It came back to a van from a church in South Los Angeles called the Cosmopol. 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. You know, did anyone use the van? And I said, yeah, we use it. We were dropping off other 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 the serial murder out there. By the mid-1980s, the crack epidemic in South Central

intensified an already strained relationship between the community and police. Families of the slain women were worried this 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. 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. 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. There were a lot of press conferences

about serial killers in white areas, but there was very 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. didn't know was that since 1985, the LAPD was 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. They discover those bullets matched 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-caliber 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 a cool spring evening, three months after Barbara Ware's murder. Bernita Sparks' body is found in a dumpster down around 94th Street and Western. The location is to the rear of a church. Bernita Sparks has well been shot in the chest with a 25 caliber. Like the other victims, she had also been sexually assaulted.

Her body has been redressed and she was also struck over the head. The police, I 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 so-side slayer. During that time, we were getting a lot of negative press

because there were so many murders and no suspects were being developed. The big task force assigned two detectives to the 25 caliber killings. killings. They would get the call. They'd see that it was a 25 caliber and would go investigate. But 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 police she and Wright brought two men to a hotel. Dennis Pinky Pinkney was with Shelly.

and Jimmy let loose, Spencer was with Wright. Sheldie 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 and on the ground and then let loose shooting her. Police searched Jimmy Spencer's home and find a 25 caliber pistol. Oh my God, is this the 25 caliber pistol? Is this the guy? Is the movie business

in peril? We've all heard that before. I'm veteran producer Todd Garner, host of the producer's guide podcast. Some of my credits include con air, anger management, triple X, 13-930, and the Mortal Kombat franchise. I'm here to address the biggest burning questions facing Hollywood today. Is the next big strike on the horizon? Will studio consolidation affect industry jobs? Are we getting closer to AI generated features? Is there a real? Is there a a real difference between movies and content anymore. Some of my past guests include Adam Sandler, Reva Wilson, Jeff Probst, Eli Roth, Ed Helms, and Kevin James.

Join me on the front lines every Thursday. Get new audio or video episodes of the producer's guide wherever you get your podcasts. 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. For three years, police have been searching for the Southside Slayer,

a man who'd murdered five African-American women with the same 25-caliber gun. Finally, investigators believe they have the killer. They end up arresting Jimmy Spencer and charging him with the murder of Henrietta Wright. But then, another body is found in South Central, 14 months later. 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 a 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. penetrate the clothing, and she's placed by a wall with her purse in the alleyway. The victim was found three and a half blocks from where the killer left Bernita Sparks' body 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 and 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. Another woman murdered and her body dumped in an alley. But Mary is found on November 1, 1987, almost a year after Jimmy Spencer was jailed. Even with his arrest, those murders didn't stop. They kept going. The police have the wrong men. The case against Pinckney and Spencer is dropped.

The two are released and the task force is back to square one. The killings continued on after that. Anitria Washington is a survivor of the grim sleeper. I grew up in L.A. And I've lived here most of my life. In the 80s, and I was living the best. life. You go to these parties and you get to associate with a 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. It looked like the exact, the exact one. It looked like the exact replica of the hot wheel car. And I was looking at it. The owner of the penthouse started hollered, yo, you like my car, he drove up. And I was like, yeah, I was mine in 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 boogie was backyard boogie. 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 in the car, and the driver asks 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 the car away from where Enitria wants to go. And then he starts calling her 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.

Okay, it's time to get out this car. So I reached for the handle, and he shot me in my chest, point blank. He said, 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 were down. And this man was on top of me taking pictures. I heard about these black women getting killed at the time in South Central.

I was scared, but you never think you'll be one of the victims of a serial killer. And when I woke up, there's this camera flashing. 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 in the orange pinto, leaving Enitria to die. 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 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. And he looked and he saw that the panties were hanging off. 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 room doctors operate on Anitria for hours and remove a 25-caliber slug from her chest. When I woke up, I had a collapsed 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, Black. He looked like a guy who just came out of Circuit City. He had a polo shirt and some khakis on. Problem was, other than the car, there's nothing really unique about the mat.

Enitria tells investigators she has no idea why he shot her. I was still in the hospital room and the detectives said, we got the bullet and I'm like, okay. What investigators do not tell Enitria is that the bullet 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 help identify him.

Using DMV records, investigators track down and question the owners of every Orange Pinto in Los Angeles. We had stakeouts in the area. looking for anybody driving in Orange Pinto. All of them were eliminated. None of them were the right one. When I finally got up the hospital, the detectives asked me if I would go with them

to go check over where I was, take them through it. Enitria shows detectives the route her assailant took the night of the shooting. And I remembered the house and, you know, where I was. The police learned that the house was owned by the house 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. 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 Othus 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 was she shot but she almost died after Anitaia Washington is shot in November of 1988, the four-year string of 25-caliber murders comes to a halt. We had a quiet spell after Anitra. Maybe he grew out of it, you know? A lot of, you know, 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. There 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 rickie ross rickie ross was a los angeles county deputy sheriff he was in the car with this young girl young prostitute 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 9-millimeter pistol. They checked the gun, and they asked him if he was involved in any of these 9-millimeter murders. He denied it. But 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 9-millimeter 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, caliber gun. All this made it seem that he was likely the 25 caliber murderer. As the trial against Ricky Ross for the three 9mm murders is set to begin opening arguments,

a new report torpedoes the prosecution's case. The firearms expert that Ricky Ross's team had used came to the conclusion that the 9mm 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 9mm 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 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 passes and the cases go 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. I was suddenly dawned on me who it was. And I was like, oh my God, oh my God. And I knew it was him. We will conclude the case of the Grim Sleeper in part two next week.