Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder - Ep. 13 | 3 Serial Killers Caught Too Late...

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

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Crime, conspiracy, serial killers, and murder, all things that I love to consume, and I know you do too, you sick-minded, beautiful, intellectual freak. And today we're doing just that, but we're not just talking about one serial killer. No, we're not talking about two serial killers. No, no, no, no, nay, nay, we're talking about thrice serial killers, okay? Three serial killers that were active for years and years and not caught until decades. later and the way they were caught is absolutely insane. So let's unbuckle your seat bouts go Mach 5 down the highway, slam on the brakes and bust through this windshield

into these three serial killer cases together. So just imagine you're living in a neighborhood where for decades the most terrifying secrets are buried just beneath the surface. Ordinary people going about their lives completely unaware that among them lurks a predator. A killer who slips through the cracks evading just for years. And then one day, a knock at the door shatters the illusion. This is the story of three serial killers who believed they got away with murder. Until decades later, they were finally caught.

And we're going to be starting off with the Bear Brooks murders. It was November 1985, and it was a cold and quiet morning in Allentown, New Hampshire. The forest floor was blanketed with a mix of fallen leaves and frost. And the only sound a hunter in the forest could hear was the crunch of his boots. as he walked deeper and deeper into the Bear Brook State Park. And he was a seasoned hunter who knew these woods extremely well. But as he ventured more into a remote area of the park, something very unusual caught his attention.

A rusted 55 gallon metal barrel lying on its side, partially hidden by overgrown brush. And at first, Jim just thought it was discarded junk because he did come across that in the forest before. But curiosity would tug at him and he would go look and see what it was. And as he walked up to the barrel, a extremely foul smell hit him in the face.

He described it as sharp and acrid. His heart would start pounding in his chest as he moved closer and closer to the barrel. And as soon as he got over to the barrel, he would peer over into it and inside he would see the remains of a woman. The woman was possibly in her mid-twenties and there would also be the remains

of a young girl as well, likely between the ages of nine and ten. Their bodies were severely decomposed, reduced to little more than just bones, and they would also be wrapped up in plastic. Jim would stumble back with his mind completely racing, not believing what he just came across. But this was fortunately and unfortunately a tragic mishap. Bones don't just put themselves in random barrels, so this was clearly a murder. Or should I say, murders. So completely shaken, the hunter scrambled out of the woods and raced to report his gruesome discovery to the authorities.

And the small town of Allen's town was soon buzzing with the shocking news. Local law enforcement led by the Allens Town Police Department arrived at the scene soon after. Coordering off the area as investigators started to comb through the site, hoping that they'd find a clue that might lead them to the identities of the victims or the persons responsible for this extremely heinous act. But the bodies have been in those barrels for an extremely long time, years even they assumed, given that the fact that they were bones by the time that they found them. And they estimated the times of death between 1977 and 1985,

which was the year the barrel was discovered. And with the bodies in the barrel was no personal belongings, so they basically had no clues to indicate who they were. So the initial investigation hit a wall almost immediately. Having at that time two victims and just a manner in which they were killed, the blunt trauma side of it, it just, yeah, it was very abnormal for New Hampshire. And investigative capabilities were drastically different during these days. Fingerprint comparisons and the beginnings of DNA testing started in the mid-1980s,

but it was nowhere near what would develop in the coming decades. So they were very limited at this time in terms of getting DNA. And without names, there was no missing persons reports to match them to, so there was no leads to follow. So the victims were nameless and the killer was obviously nowhere to be found. And the case would soon grew completely cold and it would be a haunted, mystery that lingered in the back of detective's minds. This discovery would remain an open wound for 15 years to come. The bodies would be buried in St. John Baptist Cemetery with a donated headstone reading, here lies the mortal remains known only to God of women age 22 to 33 and girl child

age 8 to 10. Their slain bodies were found on November 10th, 1985 in Bear Brook State Park. May their souls find peace in God's loving care. It's so heartbreaking. But it's okay. We're going to get to the of it. So years and years would go on and this case would remain cold. But in 2000, something else would happen. So in May 2000, Detective John Cody, a seasoned officer with the New Hampshire State Police, found himself drawn back to Bear Brook State Park. Cody had joined the force years after the first barrel was discovered. And the case had always troubled him after the case went cold. Something about it felt extremely unfinished. And he couldn't really shake that feeling that there was something more to find. After all, who murders two people and leaves them in a barrel in the

middle of the fucking state park? A piece of shit, that's who. So on that spring day, Cody returned to the park, retracing the steps of the original investigation. And the park was just as dense and foreboding as it was 15 years prior. And as he was walking through the park, he kind of moved through the underbrush and he spotted something. A second barrel. Early similar to the first, hidden in the same isolated area as the first one. So Cody's, breath would catch in his throat as he approached the second barrel. His instincts telling him this is what he had been looking for and with a sense of dread he would walk up to the barrel and he would find exactly what he feared. Two more sets of

remains. Both young girls and both in similar state of decomposition as the first victims and Cody would know pretty much instantly that these murders were connected. So the same person had done this so now there were four victims and not two making it a serial killing. And the discovery of finding the second barrel obviously reignited the investigation, finding this killer. But obviously the sense of frustration remained because they didn't know who these girls were either because they weren't found with any items either and they were in the same decomposition, so they were basically just skeletal remains.

Although it was 2000, so technology had improved some. So Cody and his colleagues worked tirelessly, reexamining old leads, interviewing potential witnesses, and cross-referencing missing persons reports from across the country. But nothing matched. And with frustrations climbing due to no answers being found, perhaps the most frustrating thing is that the second barrel, which was so close to the first one, wasn't found in the 1985 investigation, which is just like, walk 10 feet that way. There's a whole barrel over there.

Like I just, it didn't really make, I don't know, it just didn't really make any sense to me. We're not done with this obviously yet, but it's just like, how a fuck they'll walk that up? And like I said, quite literally, this was very close to Bear Brook Gardens, a mobile home park and judging between the length of the trailers, the distance between the barrels was literally five to six trailers long, which is about four to 500 feet by estimates, which isn't that much, okay? I grew up in a trailer. Not in a trailer, but like we went camping in a trailer and I don't know how long that shit.

It's not long, okay? Takes about 10 seconds to walk the length of a trailer. Not 10 seconds, five seconds maybe. I don't know. Either way, I'm just frustrated. So as the investigation stagnated, a shadowy figure moved. in and out of law enforcement's periphery. A man who went by many names,

but none of them his own. Terry Petter Rasmussen, I don't know if I'm saying that right, but honestly, don't really give a shit because he is the piece of shit we're talking about today, was born in Denver, Colorado. And by the 1970s, he had become a drifter, using a string of aliases to avoid detection, such as Bob Evans, Curtis Mayo Kimble,

Gordon Jensen, and Larry Vanner. What the, if you can make up your own name, Why are you coming up with these lame ass? I guess, I don't know, maybe that's the point is that they're not very memorable, but they're stupid, like you. Not you, not you, I'm talking about Russ, Ress Muson, or whatever the fuck, his name is it, blah. But alas, he was a chameleon, able to slip through the cracks of society

leaving devastation in his wake. And in the late 1970s, Rasmussen began a relationship with Marlees Elizabeth Honeychurch. I love the name Honeychurch, that's so cute. A young mother from California, and Marlees had two. daughters, Marie Elizabeth Vaughan and Sarah Lynn McWaters. And in November 1978, Marlees and her daughters vanished without a trace after spending

Thanksgiving with her family. And unbeknownst to them, this would be the last time they ever saw her alive. Rasmussen had taken Marlise and her daughters to New Hampshire and no one knows precisely what happened during this time, but what was very clear was that Rasmussen murdered all three of them, stuffing their bodies into barrels and leaving them in the woods in Bear Brook State Park. But Rasmussen wouldn't stop there. That just wasn't enough for this garbage piece of shit.

It's... He would move on drifting across the country, leaving a trail of absolute destruction. And by 1981, he was living in Manchester, New Hampshire, where he started dating another woman. Denise Bowden, who also had a young daughter named Dawn. And shortly after Thanksgiving, that year, Denise disappeared.

This guy's got a weird, fucking thing for Thanksgiving. I don't fucking know. But Rasmussen would keep her daughter, raising her under yet another alias, which was Gordon Jensen. And in 1986, Ress Mousson abandoned Dawn at a trailer park, but this guy's just the biggest piece of shit. In California, telling the neighbors that he couldn't care for her anymore. Though he was later arrested for child abandonment in 1989, but he would get on parole in 1990 less than a year later and he would be on the run again, again changing his name and alias. And by 2022, Rest Muson had found another woman, Yunsun Jun. And I'm sorry if I'm not saying that correctly. I think I am. I've said it a few times and I, if I'm saying that wrong, I'm really,

really sorry. And Yunsun would go missing later that year. And he would be arrested for the murder of Yunsun Jun in 2003 after her body was found dismembered and buried in their home in Richmond, California. And this is the first time that one of his heinous crimes would actually be connected to him. Rasmussen, now known as Larry Vanner, was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison in 2003. And he would never confess to any other crimes and took many of his dark, dark secrets to his stupid fucking grave when he died of natural causes in prison in 2010. Which brings us to 2010's DNA breakthrough. So for decades, the Bear Brook murders remained. unsolved. The victims unidentified and it wasn't until the 2010s that forensic genealogy

began to emerge as a powerful new tool in criminal investigations, that the case finally started to crack. So authorities would obviously revisit the Bearberg case using DNA technology to try and identify the victims. And the results were shocking to say the least. The DNA testing would link the women and two girls to be Marlis Honeychurch and her two daughters, Marie who was eight years old and Sarah who was 11 months old and in 2016 they were also able to identify a family member for the fourth body the middle child and Terry Russ Musson is actually this little girl's biological father so her biological father murdered her and then stuck her in a barrel I just can't I just don't understand how people are this evil I just I don't know but investigators now had a name and with it it's horrific history

began to emerge. 2016, in addition to being the year that the middle child was identified as Terry's daughter, strangely was also the year that the police revealed that Russ Musson's former girlfriend, Denise Bowden, is considered missing. A staggering 35 years later after she was last seen. What? And she hasn't been seen since, and authorities naturally believe that she was likely killed between New Hampshire and California by Terry.

So luckily, they found that Terry. was the person that was behind these murders. And I guarantee several more, uh, knowing his backstory. It's kind of shameful and sucks that it took them so long to find that second barrel as well, but what a horrific, horrific way to go and what an actual piece of shit. But yeah, who's to say how many other victims that are out there and what other secrets did he bring to his grave? So the case may be solved now, but the world may never know the full scope of rest

musson's dark past. But that concludes our bare brook murder case, so let's go on to the Golden State Killer. In a quiet suburban sprawl in Sacramento, California in 1976, the residents of Rancho Cordova were blissfully unaware that a predator was lurking in their midst. And the area was a picture of middle-class serenity, tidy lawns, friendly neighbors, and a sense of security that was to be shattered by a series of crimes so brutal and so chilling that they would forever change this community. And things would begin relatively tame compared to what they would eventually become.

In 1973, burglaries and thefts began to become relatively common occurrences in Vesalia. I don't know if I'm saying that right. Homes were broken into with startling frequency, leading to the person perpetrating these crimes being dubbed the Vesela Ransacker, but this wasn't a... your average burglarer because things of value weren't necessarily the target.

He would rather target empty homes and rather than plunder them for valuables, he would gather women's underwear and scatter it around on beds and on the floor and even meticulously arrange it into creating patterns. Sounds like my ex. I'm just kidding. That's a joke. So he would steal items that didn't necessarily have monetary value, but they obviously had sentimental value to the victims such as class. glass rings, wedding rings, or other personal items.

And his calling card was to steal one earring of a pair of the victims to discover later, which is so psychologically fucked up. And these crimes would escalate over time with also firearms and ammunition being stolen, sparking the worry that this individual may become violent over time. And these fears would be realized when the ransacker, otherwise a creep or a peeping Tom, would commit crimes that would earn him. a new nickname. And meticulous planning would become a key element in the serial burglar's crimes. He would know the layout of the houses and exactly where the victims slept. And the first break-ins

were mere burglaries, but then the crimes escalated. As these crimes seemed sexually motivated in nature from the rating of women's underwear would become assaults. So on June 18th, 1976 in Rancho Cordova. A woman was awakened in the dead of night by a masked man standing over her bed. Fucking terrifying. He was holding a flashlight in one hand and the beam completely blinded her and he would be holding a knife in the other. And the intruder later dubbed the East Area Rapist, bound the woman and her husband with shoelaces, ransacked the house for valuables and then in his most terrifying act, he assaulted the woman repeatedly while her husband lay helplessly. nearby. And this would become his modus operandi, or MO. The East Area Rapist was meticulous, often breaking into homes days before his attack to prepare for removing screens from windows, leaving ligatures under cushions, or unlocking doors to ensure easy entry when he did want to attack.

And he would even call his victims before and after attacks to taunt them with chilling words that would haunt them for the rest of their lives. It was like a fucking horror movie. So for over two years, the East Area rapist terrorized the suburbs of Sacramento, striking complete fear into the hearts of residents. And he was ruthless, often targeting couples and forcing the men to lie face down while he was brutalizing the women. And something extremely strange was that he would stack plates on top of the men's backs that were lying down so he could hear them if they started to move.

And he would tell the men that he would kill them both if he did. attacks were calculated and cold and his identity was a shadow that slipped through the fingers of law enforcement time and time again. And by 1979, the East Area rapist seemed to vanish out of thin air, leaving Sacramento in a state of uneasy relief, basically. But he hadn't stopped. He simply just moved south. And in Southern California, a new reign of terror would begin yet again. But with a different name. On October 1st, 1979, Dr. Robert O'Brien, Dr. Robert O'Reck. and Dr. Deborah Manning were found brutally murdered in home in Galletta near Santa Barbara. They had been bound with ligatures just like the other victims from the East Area Rapist,

but this time he had escalated. He actually shot both of them this time. And the killer's methodical nature was evident in this crime. There was no sign of a struggle and he had taken his time just as he did during the rapes in Sacramento. And this would mark the beginning of the original Nightstalker, a moniker later replaced by a more infamous name, the Golden State Killer. And the attacks were no longer just grapes. They were murders. So between 1979 and 1981, the original Nightstalker committed 10 known murders across Southern California. One of the most horrific cases happening on March 13, 1980. In Ventura, Lyman and Charlene Smith would be found bludgeoned in their home. The killer would use a log from

the fireplace as the murder weapon, and like his previous victims, they would also be bound. The crime was completely shocking in its brutality and the police were completely at a loss. The pattern was familiar, but the escalation of the murdered was something that they weren't prepared for. And in July, 1981, the final known victims of the original Nightstalker were Keith and Patrice Harrington, a young couple living in Dana Point, and their bodies would be discovered by Keith's father, who had come to check on them after they missed a family event. And they too had been bludgeoned to death in their bed. The killer would leave behind no fingerprints, no clues,

just a trail of terror. And throughout the 1980s to 1990s, the crimes of the East Derry Rapist and the original Nightstalker would haunt law enforcement because it started to basically go cold. Detectives in northern and southern California would struggle to find leads. They had composite sketches, descriptions from survivors,

and even a few recordings of the taunting phone calls. But nothing led to a suspect. The killer at this point was basically a ghost. But in 2016, a new hope would emerge. So 40 years after the first, attack, the investigation took a groundbreaking turn. The advent of DNA technology linked to the crimes across California, proving that the East Area rapist and the original Nightstalker were one in the same person.

A serial killer, a rapist, a burglarer who had evaded capture for decades. But while the DNA linked to the crimes, the killer still remained unknown. Until a novel idea was proposed. Investigators would turn to forensic genealogy, a method that uses DNA to track down family members and eventually identify a suspect. So they would upload the killer's DNA to an open source genealogy website, hoping for a match. So it was a long shot, but it was the only shot they had at the time. And on April 21st, 2018, after months of investigation, law enforcement descended onto

a quiet suburban neighborhood in Citrus Heights, California. Their target was a 72-year-old man named Joseph James DeAngelo, a former police officer who had lived a seemingly normal life. But the DNA didn't lie. Joseph DiAngelo was the Golden State killer. And DiAngelo had lived in the shadows, hiding in plain sight for decades. He had been a police officer during the time

of the East Area rapist attacks, using his knowledge of law enforcement to evade capture, which totally makes sense. And after being fired from the force in 1979 for shoplifting, what? You could evade capture from graping people, but not from stealing sunglasses from Walmart? What kind of criminal art?

He continued his reign of terror in Southern California. He was meticulous, cunning, and patient. And when the killing stopped in the mid-1980s, he just faded into obscurity, living out his days as a family man, a father, even a grandfather. But the monster within clearly never went away. When investigators closed in on DiAngelo, he offered no resistance.

He was quickly taken into custody, and the man who had terrorized Southern and Northern California for so many years was finally unmasked. And in the following days after his arrest, the public would learn of his dual life that he lived, a life filled with unspeakable violence hidden beneath a facade of normalcy. And in June 2020, Joseph James DeAngelo, the Golden State Killer, appeared in court to face charges against him. He would plead guilty to 13 counts of murder and numerous other crimes, sparing him from the death penalty, but ensuring that he would spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole.

At the time of judgment and sentence, you'll receive 11 consecutive life without the possibility of parole sentences with 15 concurrent life sentences. Additional time, as stated, for the weapon enhancements will be imposed as mandated by law. You will not be considered for any other sentence. You understand, sir? Yes. I hope you're fucking rotting in there, bitch. And during sentencing, survivors and family members of the victim were able to confront the man who had brought such suffering in. into their lives. DeAngelo once feared a predator

and now just an old, rotting, disgusting man sat silently as they recounted their stories. And throughout the statements, he would just remain silent. No apologies or explanations. Just sitting there staring, just 30 yards staring at these people, like a fucking idiot.

And in August 2020, he would be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He would die behind bars. The same fate he had sentenced so many of his victims too, in their first. final moments. And Joseph had a whole last family during all of these crimes. He would have a wife named Sharon Marie Huddle. He would have three daughters all born after his murder spree. It was honestly fucking crazy that after committing all of these crimes, he was just ready to

settle down and have a family like he did nothing wrong. But luckily, the capture of Joseph DeAngelo brought a sense of closure to those in southern and northern California and especially to the families of the victims. And that brings us to our third. and final serial killer, which is the grim sleeper. Los Angeles in the 1980s was a city caught in a storm of violence. The streets of South Central were rife with crime and poverty and the devastating effects of the crack cocaine epidemic. And in this chaotic environment, a predator emerged.

One who would come to be known as the Grim Sleeper. He was a killer who stalked the most vulnerable, striking with a terrifying regularity before disappearing into the shadows, only to return it years later to continue his brutal spree. And this story begins on August 10th, 1985. Everything bad happens in the 80s. Everything bad, everything terrible happened. Well, 60s, 70s, 80s.

Bad time to be alive, all right, bad time. The summer heat would bore down on South Central Los Angeles, and the city's underbelly was just teeming with danger. And on that night, Deborah Jackson, a 29-year-old cocktail waitress, was walking home from work when she had encountered a man who offered her a ride. Never take that ride.

Do not, do not take that ride with a stranger, okay? No hitchhiking. Got it, got it, got it, no hitchhiking. And Deborah would obviously not know that this would be her last night alive. Her body would be found the next day in an alley in South Central. Discarded like trash. And the photo is like absolutely heartbreaking, I'm not gonna show it, but it's just awful.

She had been shot three times in the chest by a 25 caliber gun, a small but very deadly weapon. And the killer would wrap her body in a trash bag before dumping her, quite literally treating her like trash. And at the time, her murder was just one more tragedy in the city plagued by violence. And it didn't really receive much attention at all from authorities. But for the man who would become known as the Grim Sleeper, this was just the beginning of his killing sprees and would continue his sick and twisted killings. In the next few years, saw a chilling pattern start to emerge. The Grim Sleeper hunted his victims with a cold and calculated persistent.

He targeted women, many of whom were sex workers or women that were struggling with addiction. Women's society had largely forgotten about or didn't really even care about, which is awful. He would lure them into his car often under the guise of offering them a small amount of money for services or just in general to help them out. And once they were inside, he would strike. Shooting them with the 25 caliber handgun before dumping their bodies in alleyways and behind buildings, wrapped up in trash bags and discarded like objects. But one of the most haunting aspects of his killings was that he didn't actually kill them immediately. He would take his time, oftentimes sedually assaulting them before delivering the fatal shots. And as if he were mocking authorities, he would take photographs of the victims capturing their last moments alive.

It would be a sick trophy for his crimes. And by 1988, eight women would be murdered by the grim sleeper at this point. And the LAPD, the Los Angeles Police Department, had started to notice a pattern. Only eight. It took you eight to notice a pattern. Wow. Great job. But resources would be stretched thin because the city was in a gripe of the crack epidemic at this point and murders were rampant. So, you know, I'll give them that. There was a lot of murdering going on at this point. But the grim sleeper had a specific MO that seems pretty fucking obvious to me. So tensions between the community and law enforcement grew rampantly. With many members in the community feeling that the

LAPD didn't really care because the victims were black women living in poverty. And then in 1988, just as suddenly as the murders had started, the murders had stopped. And the killer had completely vanished, just leaving behind a trail of unsolved murders and a community living in complete fear. And for over a decade, the grim sleeper seemed to disappear. The murders completely stopped and the case went completely cold. The LAPD basically had nothing to go off of, no witnesses, no fingerprints, no evidence basically, just a handful of bullets and a pattern of violence. But the LAPD hadn't forgotten about the grim sleeper,

they continued to investigate it, quietly piecing together what little evidence that they had. Meanwhile, the killer lived a seemingly ordinary life. Lonnie David Franklin Jr., the man who had later been unmasked as the grim sleeper, blended in perfectly with the South Central neighborhood. He was a former sanitation worker and mechanic for the LAPD. It's always in the cops, it's always know,

They always know the cops. They love knowing the cops. Known in the community as friendly, helpful man that helped fix cars and socialized with his neighbors. He was a husband, a father, a man who hosted barbecues and helped friends with their vehicles. No one would have suspected that this ordinary man was hiding a monstrous secret. And in 2002, after a 14-year hiatus, the grim sleeper would return to the streets of Los Angeles. His first known victim during the spree was Princess Berthalmew, an 18-year-old girl whose body was found in an alley on March 19th, 2002. And she had been strangled, which was a departure from his usual method of shooting his victims. But the signature of the trash bag and the location indicated that the killer had returned.

And over the next five years, the Grim Sleeper would claim at least three more victims. Each of them killed in a very similar fashion. Strangled, shot, and discarded in a garland. And the police were aware that the killer had possibly returned, but again, they had very little evidence to go off of. And the murders were happening so sporadically, and the killer was careful leaving behind almost no trace, so it was very hard for the police to piece this together. But in 2007, the LAPD got a break in the case. A survivor would come forward, a nature of Washington, a woman who had been attacked by the grim sleeper back in 1988, but had miraculously survived. I'm looking out the window everywhere else.

I was not paying him a bit of attention. He said something and I realized, I said, ooh, he's talking to me. As soon as I turned, it went off. And I said, you shot me? Washington had been walking to a friend's house when she accepted a ride from a man in a rust-colored Ford Pinto. The man would shoot her in the chest

and sedually assault her and would also take pictures of her before pushing her out of the car. Assuming that she was dead, but no, she's a fucking badass and she lived. And now she could provide a description to police of who the attacker was and the vehicle. Armed with this new information, the LAPD would launch and renew this investigation. They would revisit old evidence, re-examine the murders, and begin to consider the possibility that the grim sleeper was not a new killer. But the same one from the 1980s. And one of the key breakthroughs was when the LAPD used familial DNA.

a technique that compares DNA from crime scenes to DNA from a relative of the suspect. And in 2010, investigators would match DNA from the crime scenes to a man named Christopher Franklin, who had been arrested for unrelated crimes. And Christopher, obviously, wasn't the grim sleeper. But his DNA was close enough to suggest that a male relative was. So the police would quickly zero in on Christopher's father, which was Lonnie Franklin Jr., who lived in Cell Central, right where the murders had taken place. And they would begin to surveil Franklin, gathering evidence that would eventually link him to the crimes.

Detectives would retrieve a discarded pizza crust from Franklin's trash and would test that for DNA, which I think is really ironic and hilarious that he was arrested for something that he put in the trash like he treated those poor, innocent women, because he is a piece of trash. He is a piece of trash. You're a piece of trash. Franklin, you're a... Anyway. And on July 7th, 2010, the Elginst, the LAPD finally moved in on Franklin and he would be arrested in his home, where investigators would find a trove of evidence, hundreds, hundreds of photos of women, some of whom were never identified, unfortunately, and items belonging to the victims. Franklin had kept these macabre souvenirs in his fucking home, trophies of his brutal crimes. So when he was doing barbecues and fixing

people's vehicles, these trophies would just be sitting in his house. And that is so... disgusting to me. So the LAPD would then interrogate Lonnie Franklin Jr., where he continued to act ignorant to the entire process. Unsure why he was there. He didn't know any of the victims. And he even played dumb to the nickname they gave him, the Reaper. And he continues to play dumb through the whole interview process,

where he begins to get silent, and detectives realize he's beginning to understand that he's been caught. Give me an explanation. I have no explanation. and just give you for something I didn't do. So you're just saying you just got to run a bad luck? No, I'm not saying I had to run bad nothing.

I don't know these people. You know what the news calls you? You tell me what the news calls you. I know damn well, you know. I mean, you watch the news at night. You watch TV on occasion. I don't talk about some guy on the news. What do they call them?

What was it? The Reaper? The what? The Reaper? The Grim Reaper? The Grim Sleeper. Okay. I know it was something like that.

Yeah, I saw it on TV. I look at TV. Well, of course you do. I got TV in every room. Oh, there you go. All right. Yeah, it is. I don't know what else to say.

It's all going through his head right now, man. He's just looking at his future. Thinking of his past and what has he done? Guess is he wants an attorney now, so. So Lonnie Franklin Jr. would be charged with 10 counts of murder and one count of attempted murder. And during the trial, the prosecutor, the prosecution painted a chilling picture of a man who prayed on vulnerable women for decades, only to disappear into the fabric of everyday life. And the evidence was absolutely overwhelming.

The DNA, the photographs, the testimonies of survivors, and the jury found Franklin guilty on all counts, thank God. And on June 16, Lonnie Franklin Jr. was sentenced to death for his crimes. The man who alluded justice for so long, who had brought so much pain and fear to the streets of South Central, was finally held accountable. And the news of the death of Lonnie Franklin Jr. could hopefully give the victims of the family's closure for the passing of their killer. Franklin died on what was California's death row at San Quentin State Prison, cause unknown, though there were no signs of trauma. With a moratorium on executions in California, it was unclear if the death sentence would ever have been carried out. In conclusion, for decades, these killers led double lives, maintaining their veneer.

of normalcy while their heinous crimes remained unsolved. Take Joseph James DeAngelo, the Golden State Killer for example. After his brutal reign of terror, he quietly lived out his life as a husband, father, and grandfather, even working as a mechanic. His ability to evade capture for so long allowed him to settle down into a routine, almost as if his crimes were another phase of his life. It was just a phase. Similar to Terry Rasmussen, Rasmussen, I don't give a fuck. The man behind the the bare brick murders, managed to drift across the country with various aliases, starting new relationships. And the decades he spent undetected allowed him to continue his crimes, moving from state to state and leaving destruction in his wake.

And Lonnie Franklin Jr., the grim sleeper, almost exemplifies this disturbing truth. After his initial spree in the 1980s, he went dormant for over a decade, living as a trusted neighbor and father during this time continuing to blend in and hiding behind the guise of an ordinary life. all while knowing that he had taken the lives of so many innocent women. These men show that getting away with murder for decades can often mean living out the rest of one's life, relatively undisturbed. While they may have looked over their shoulders, the lack of immediate consequences allowed them to integrate back into society. And their monstrous acts hidden behind the facade of normalcy. It was only when modern forensic techniques finally caught up with them that their hidden lives became exposed. But by then, they had lived years, even decades,

with the freedom their victims never had. And we recently covered the Zodiac Killer. If you haven't watched that video, go check it out here. It was a really interesting case, obviously not completely solved at this point, but I feel like we're really closing in on that. I say we isn't, it's me, it's not. But, you know, I'm interested to see where that goes.

But these killers, including the Zodiac Killer, illustrate how someone can commit horrific acts and seemingly just blend back into society, escaping justice for years. And their stories highlight the distillery disturbing reality of that. Until caught, these individuals might live among us. And it's a haunting reminder that evil can lurk in plain sight, even in our neighborhoods where we call home. So, be safe out there. All right. Again, I do these videos because I just want to, I just want to put

in that little paranoia in the back of your head. All right. I don't you be scared all the time. But there's, there's freaks out there, man. There's creep freaks. Keep safe. Keep you safe. Keep your kids safe if you have kids, keep your family safe, all that, you know. But I hope you enjoyed this three-part series. I know it was a bit longer, but I really enjoy deep diving on these cases. I love the fact that these guys got caught and that, are they all dead? I can't remember now. Pretty sure they're all dead pretty much. Either way, they're going to die behind bars and they're rotting, which is awesome. But until then, I will see your beautiful face in the next video. All right. Bye. Bye.