Tales of the Grim Sleeper

You have to watch anything by Nick Broomfield with a grain of salt, never forget that this is the guy who made 'BIGGIE & TUPAC (2004)' which made almost everyone think that Suge Knight was the guy who had Tupac killed.

Which is something that today most people have changed their minds about, and people from said documentary have since come out with stories of manipulative tactics he uses to get to people to more or less say what he want them to.

Anyway he does what he usually does here, takes a camera team around the areas that were affected and start looking for people to interview on the spot.

Runs across some people that knew the 'grim sleeper' or just knew of him and asks them questions. With a lot of driving around and discussions that stray far away from the actual documentary subject at times.

One thing that struck me as weird was how many people that actually did know him (yes he actually eventually found some that did) would initially start off as saying how he seemed normal and was a good guy and then mention things about him that would suggest otherwise.

Like the ex girlfriend of Lonnie's son who initially said that 'Lonnie and his wife seemed like a normal couple, whatever I wanted I could depend on him to fix' to 3 minutes later be talking about how she could sense that he was listening to her and his son having sex and how he was a perv etc etc.

And his best buddies who'd swear that he was a good guy and that they couldn't believe the charges towards him to eventually started talking about how he'd torture prostitutes with vivid descriptions.

Like okay, do you have any sort of concept of what a 'good guy' and a 'normal' guy is or did you just change your story because Nick Broomfield wanted something juicy to put in his film and he was offering you extra money for it?

So yeah it's hard not to put on a suspicious eye here, I'm not saying that the man accused of being the 'grim sleeper' is innocent I don't think he is, but it's hard to know for sure when things get fishy like that. It is possible I suppose that even if they did get paid more for juicy stories (and Broomfield is known for paying the people he interviews) that those stories still are true.

Goes on a little too long as well.

But still decent enough to watch once.

Don't waste 2 hours of your life on this documentary. Watch the first 10 minutes and that's all you need. This could have been edited down to a 20 minute special. Waste of liffffeeee ... like a lot of the people they interviewed.

This is the story of a man who has possibly murdered over 100 women, killed over a 25 year span, people who knew him liked him and yet I found myself staring at my phone the whole time. I should have read a few more reviews before I watched, there are a few who state how the director has a history of basically coercing people into giving not false but altered statements. I don't think these people are lying, it just feels forced and awkward, not a good interview process.

It's a crazy story, one that everyone should hear but I do wish someone else would give this story a shot, I feel there needs to be more news details, police accounts, more interviews from the Black coalition that was heavily involved and just overall better editing. It's not a waste of time because it's a powerful story but it's so horribly told I can't recommend it.

I would like to know why some of the members of the community, who were so articulate and vocal about the LAPD and their lack of interest in this case, were not just as vocal towards some of the men we met in their own community, who clearly had associated and collaborated with Lonnie and treated vulnerable women like garbage. I feel the community where Lonnie lived should have taken some of the responsibility too. How can so many women go missing? What does that say about the community? What does this say about how these "friends" of Lonnie feel about the women in their community? It's not just police gross incompetence, it's members of a community that appeared to look the other way or ignore what was happening right under their own noses and not just about the murders either.

In July 2010, Los Angeles Police arrested a man on suspicion of murder, yet to date he has languished in gaol without being tried. How come? Lonnie Franklin Junior is a suspected serial killer. He is accused of the murder of a woman in August 1985. Victim number 9 - the only known survivor - was shot in November 1988.

It was not until March 2002 that another accredited victim was found. That near fourteen year hiatus led to the perpetrator being dubbed The Grim Sleeper. Although Franklin is charged with only ten murders and one attempted murder, he is suspected of committing many more. The evidence against him, which includes DNA, looks compelling, but at the moment his lawyers are playing what some might consider an obscene game to delay the inevitable. One of their tactics was to challenge the admissibility of a DNA sample as the fruit of the poisonous tree.

This documentary does not deal with the legal case against Franklin so much as the lives of those who knew him. Interviewer Nick Broomfield is shown around the area by a former prostitute, and meets a wide variety of people, including Franklin's son, who unlike his father is not even superficially a nice person.

All but one of Franklin's alleged victims were black, and all were apparently women a long way down the food chain. This and other factors like the failure of the police to warn that a serial killer was at large has led to the usual claims about race.

This is a long documentary, but one you can watch or simply listen to while multitasking. Doubtless there will be others about this case after Franklin's trial and likely conviction. As things stand, that should begin next month, but don't count on it