Cops Narrowly Missed 'Grim Sleeper' Twice

The alleged serial killer known as the Grim Sleeper could have been stopped two years earlier if the police had collected his DNA. Lonnie David Franklin should have been added to a DNA database under a 2004 law called Proposition 69, finds the LA Times. He wasn't—apparently because it took the cops too long to get organized. "If only,” laments the mother of one of the victims. “Her life could have been possibly saved.”

Tragically, it wasn't the only time investigators narrowly missed Franklin. In 1988, the LAPD staked out a house just three doors down from the suspected killers' home, reports LA Weekly. "We were very close," says one of the detectives on the case. "But not close enough." Click here for more on the case.
(More Lonnie David Franklin Jr. stories.)