TALES OF THE GRIM SLEEPER, PART 2: ACCESSORIES BEFORE THE FACT

Many different things contributed to Lonnie Franklin’s ability to get away with murdering dozens or hundreds of women over 25 years.  Even the fact that he appears to have begun killing in the 1980s explains his ability to avoid detection.

He started killing during the crack epidemic. Plenty of dead bodies among which to hide his dead bodies His being a loader at the dump, working for with the sanitation department, was also a contributing factor. Being a significant player in the underground economy of the hood, he had help --that supposedly didn’t know they were helping-- getting rid of evidence.  And because he was “the rich one” in the neighborhood, the one handing out little jobs here and there, it’s likely nobody wanted Lonnie Franklin to be “The Grim Sleeper” even though so many signs were there. 

REVIEW OF THE GRIM SLEEPER Part 1 http://thankherforsurviving.blogspot.com/2015/11/review-tales-of-grim-sleeper-part-1.html 






In addition to his legit jobs, Franklin fenced stolen goods, his specialty being cars and car parts. This made him the go-to-guy for whatever you might need -- so long as you asked no questions. Again, Franklin’s "business connections" made him the go-to-guy for a job.

One man admitted that he was hired to burn a blood soaked car for Franklin, thinking that he was being paid to burn the car as a part of Lonnie’s insurance scam business. Franklin paid a friend that had a (likely off the books) carpet cleaning business who clean the murder sites (van and mobile home) getting rid of one stain that was an oil like substance. But the friend knew it wasn’t oil.

The alternate economy of the inner city, mostly involving not so serious crime, enabled Franklin to get rid of bodies and blood. But it was the sexism and misogyny that enabled Franklin to lure his victims and kill them without anybody bothering to notice.

Lonnie Franklin was just one of a group of men that went out weekly (at least) to pick up hookers, and/or drug addicts to pose for pornographic pictures. The filmmaker that produced this documentary covered for these “men,” calling them a sort of amateur photography club.

To many people’s ears this photographing of naked women “just” sounds harmless “boys will be boys” stuff.  But these men weren’t perusing nude women paid to pose in magazines. These men were going out with Franklin to find desperate, drug addicted women to have sex with and take pictures of. Franklin was sticking thing in these women and actually torturing them. The pictures were a way of reliving the debasement of these women.

One of Lonnie’s “friends” said that they paid as little as $2 to get these desperate, drug addicted women to go with them. A “friend” said he routinely witnessed Franklin torturing these women—and talks about the women screaming as X, Y and Z was done to

them.

Remember Delashaun,  the son’s girlfriend?
She said that Franklin’s third phone was "for his hoes, his crackheads."  This indicates that Lonnie Franklin and his pornography “friends” were hunting women barely able to give consent to "sex " and pose for sexual photos - weekly or daily.

Round mounds of flesh at chest level with a nipple, round mounds of flesh above each thigh, and a wet hole. That's all these women were to these men. Franklin was just the one with that certain something where obsessive objectification leads to murder.

There’s a lot of video of these “men” saying Lonnie couldn’t have been involved because they don’t want to believe that one of their pack was capable of this.

One of these friends/photographers talk about how Franklin showed one of them the gun, the .25 used to kill some of the women. The same “friend” tells of how handcuffs fell out of Franklin’s car one day.  Another of Franklin’s friends was actually in the car when Franklin stopped, cut a woman off who was walking, got out of the car, grabbed her by the hair and started dragging her to the car with a glazed look in his eyes, before he sort of woke up and let her go. This "friend" only thought this was “weird.”

As the documentary goes on, it becomes clear that these same friends knew that Franklin hated the women he was picking up. They said Franklin learned to hate black, female drug abusers after his wife became hooked on crack. He really loved her until he hated her, they said. There’s actually video of two men giggling, one of them laughing about female drug users, ‘You get in his car you won’t get out.’

There were so many signs that this man was a deviant and a predator. But how do you recognize this if:



- you are a deviant and opportunistic predator yourself, or

- you pass off deviant and opportunistic predator behavior as “boys will be boys” or “just a horny old man, or

-  you pass judgment on "bitches and hoes," the women who deviate from upright, sexual pristine behavior, thinking they deserve whatever they get and never ever pass judgment on men who deviate from upright, pristine behavior.

The existence of Sylvia Franklin, Lonnie Franklin’s wife, was not shocking to me. 

Over the years, in the news, I’ve seen what seems like dozens of unaware white woman in the background whenever serial killers are arrested. I would say this is true to the tune of 95%. Why would occasional black serial killer be different?  Especially since some black women will do almost anything to be married and NOT BE identified as “the single black mother” that is “destroying the black community.”

Like anybody else however, I was wondering the church going Sylvia Franklin knew.

She had to have seen the pictures of dozens and dozens pornographic pictures of these women. Some of the face shots? The women look asleep or dead. Did she not recognize that some of them were women that went missing?  If she made it her business to stay away from the pictures she had to have seen women going down the narrow path to the back of the house where mobile home was, where her husband was killing the women.

Then again, maybe Sylvia wasn’t there too often. According to Delashaun, girlfriend of the killer's son, Sylvia lived elsewhere half the time.  Delashaun said,

“At the time I didn’t know they were having marital problems I didn’t know she actually had her own place But it made sense because she would not be there. And the there was times that she would be there.

How do you leave for days at a time?  And then you come back a day or two. And then you leave for days at a time.  Do  I’m assuming with her leaving for days at a time… is why he was doing what he was doing  Because there was there to tell him, or stay on him.  There was no woman there for him, so he would go elsewhere.”

If this isn’t the ultimate boys will be boys excuse, then what is it?


Are your keeping track of whose fault all this is? Let’s recap: 

1) Black women putting themselves in the NHI Category by becoming “hoes”

2)  White cops disregarding hoes combined with assuming all black women are hoes

3)   Lonnie Franklin’s ex-wife who made Franklin hate black women because she became a crack addict

4)    Sylvia Franklin, Lonnie Franklin’s current wife because *If she had been putting out, keeping her man sexually satisfied and at home, he wouldn’t been out there on the street looking for satisfaction (--which somehow involves Franklin having killed dozens if not 100s of black women?*)

There you have it. Black women are ultimately responsible for the deaths of all these black women. 

Initially, I wanted to say that this was the worst documentary I’ve ever seen. There’s rarely a name and relationship to the murderer printed on the screen. Details were not paid attention to. Depending on which section of the video you’re watching, the murders started in 1982 or 1985  and the police figured out there was a serial murderer on the loose in 1985, 1987, or  1988.  The thing that stopped this video from being the worst documentary I’ve ever seen was how informational was, especially in the last fifteen minutes or so.

 

At the end of "Tales Of The Grim Sleeper" you find out that more than one woman escaped "The Grim Sleeper"  At end of the documentary there were interviews with black women who escaped, women too terrified of white police ignoring them only to face repercussions in the black community --when the police habitually don't do anything anyway. 

So many people in that neighborhood knew he was torturing black women by my count. His opportunistic predator friends knew, the friends and employees on clean up duty (really) knew, and some of the victims that escaped knew too.  I estimate that a dozen people could stopped this man -- with or without the police.

One of the women that escaped cried, saying, “Yeah I was out there in the street…But I’m not nothing.”

Clearly, in that neighborhood, she’s wrong. She was, indeed, counted as nothing. Black women were counted as nothing for 25 years. If you watch the documentary, make sure you rewind that part where the predator-friends are laughing, "If you get in his car, you won't get out."

For so many years, so many of us have assumed that white people do 95% of serial killing and child molesting. What if it’s just that black women and black children matter so little that their deaths don’t make it onto police blotters or into FBI UCR data?  

After Watching “Tales Of The Grim Sleeper”  I’m still trying to figure out how we convince… 

1) white cops of their racism and sexism --the ones who ignored a serial killer for 25 years and don't even have the decency to be ashamed.

2) black men of their sexism --the ones who listen to the “bitches” and “hoes” in Ice Cube’s and Dr. Dre’s music and think that this does not contribute to black women being put into the NHI (No Humans Involved) category in EVERYBODY'S MIND when they are simply desperate

3) black women of their internalized sexism --the ones who think black women are responsible for the morality of the black community even one iota more than black men are

….so that they can know that they are all coming together to destroy black women, intentional or not.

#AllBlackLivesMatter


By the way, if you think there aren’t other Lonnie Franklin’s out there killing black women with impunity, you’re probably crazy.