This Tubi Original comes from director Victoria Drew (Love You to Death: Mommy’s Missing) and writer Savannah Lucas (Viewer Discretion Advised: The Story of OnlyFans and Courtney Clenney, Scariest Monsters In the World) and is all about Lonnie David Franklin Jr., known as the Grim Sleeper because, unlike many serial killers, he took a break from killing for 14 years before starting again. He was convicted for the murders of nine women and one teenage girl.

His crimes may have started in 1974 when he was in the Army. A 17-year-old girl in West Germany was assaulted by Franklin and two other soldiers while he took photos. After she told him she wanted to see him again, he gave her his phone number, which is how he was caught.

The Grim Sleeper’s crimes were a big deal in the 1980s when he was known as the Southside Slayer and committed the Strawberry Murders, which was a code word for sex workers who did hard drugs. The killer only came for black women in South Central Los Angeles, and the police may not have warned them enough of the danger. By 1987, when the case went cold, the Los Angeles Police Department. They believed that there could be as many as four serial killers committing these crimes.

Today, it’s believed that some clients of these sex workers could have killed these women unrelated to the overall crimes. At the same time, serial killer Louis Craine committed at least two of the murders, and Daniel Lee Siebert, Chester Turner, Ivan Hill and Michael Hughes killed one victim. Yet seven victims were all killed with a .25 caliber gun, and the murderer was never found.

In 2007, Janecia Peters’ murder — and the DNA analysis that didn’t exist in the past — led to evidence in at least eleven unsolved murders. LA Weekly reporter Christine Pelisek reported on this case extensively and even interviewed the sole survivor, Enietra Washington, who described Franklin, who was on unsupervised probation and didn’t have to add his DNA to the national database.

How did they catch him? He did this by getting his saliva off the pizza crust where he worked. When they searched his home, they immediately found over 180 photos of victims — some unknown — were found. By the end of the searches, 1,000 or more photos and several hundred hours of videos of his victims were found.

This Tubi Original may not tell true crime fans anything new, but it certainly will get you started if you don’t know the entire story. What’s crazy is that there are so many murders — including the crimes of the Belize Ripper — that Franklin may have been responsible for. He died in prison in 2020 with no signs of trauma.

You can watch this on Tubi.