The Grim Sleeper Investigation

13 Responses to “LAPD’s Latest Community Alert”

• 1 Troy McClure Says:
  December 20th, 2009 at: 1:32 am

  Hi new poster here. Great site. You should be commended for putting the time in to help catch this monster. Very informative and detailed. I read over the discussion. Lots of good theories as well.

  As for the aged composites, I think the ones on the left and the right are pretty good. Don’t see any resemblance in the middle picture. I also like the aged composite you did. Though there have been cases in the past with missing people or skulls found where forensic artists did a masterful job in creating how that person may look years later. It’s definitely not a blind guess. Hopefully the new pictures will lead to the suspect.

  A few other thoughts…

  -I don’t think the 1987 phone call to police reporting the body dumped was the GS. Though there’s definitely some questions as to how the caller saw so much but didn’t say what the driver looked like. I think he was probably just a local, may have lived in one of the houses on either side of the alleys. Could’ve been the GS though.

  -I suspect the authorities have given the surviving victim a copy of the recording and asked her if that was the man who abducted her. If she had said yes, I think they would’ve announced by now that the caller is the GS.

  -Speaking of the surviving victim, the article LAweekly did covering her story was great. Very scary. I’m surprised though that she can’t recall the house that the GS stopped by at after he picked her up. The trauma of what happened to her didn’t seem to affect her memory as she stated, in pretty good detail, what happened. Even if she wasn’t paying very much attention in the car, I would think she could re-trace to some degree where the man drove to, it likely wasn’t very far. And if she had the right street, it would eventually come back to her and she would recall the house. That could solve the case. Of course, I’m sure she has already tried hard to remember and just can’t. Can’t really blame her. It just is unfortunate cause, from reading the article, she remembers so much of what happened that night. I read a comment from someone else on the board that they thought it may have been the GS’s own home. Very possible. Either way, it’s a huge clue because I think once the victim got inside that car, I think the GS was planning to kill her. Then after the attack, he fortunately, did not. He probably didn’t mind showing her this home because he was planning to eliminate her.

  -If someone called the victim the well-known prostitute’s name on more than one occasion, she probably remembers the name and I wonder if they were able to find out who this woman was? She may have known the GS or he may have been a client.

  -I see you’re trying to re-create a model of the pinto the GS drove. One thing I’ll add is the white racing stripe, according to LAweekly articles, was on the hood of the car. It would be nice to get an accurate description of the interior. The LAweekly story says white diamond-patterned upholstery while other articles claim green interior or something.

  That’s it for now. Again, great job on this site!

• 2 GatorALLin Says:
  December 21st, 2009 at: 10:08 pm

  I have to agree with Troy that middle pic seems the odd one out. It would be interesting to see these 3 with hats, or bald, full facial hair and glasses just to see how much that could change them. I would love to hear if surviving victim gets chills from seeing any of these three? Cops should also include original 1988 sketch when they show 2009 versions! (add the pinto in also for the full combo).

• 3 GatorALLin Says:
  January 3rd, 2010 at: 2:38 am

  I am watching the AMW rerun of the GS case. I am guessing they will show the newly released pictures. EST 9 PM Fox 1/2/2010.

• 4 GatorALLin Says:
  January 3rd, 2010 at: 2:55 am

  Yes, of the 3 LAPD released drawings they showed the one to the far right at first…and the longest…then faded in to the one on the far right. They had a close up picture (not showing the gray hair or top of the pic). They never showed the middle pic on AMW. They did mention 500K reward (however, if I understand the reward it only really pays 200K for a single suspect/killer). They did mention the “green interior with tan seat covers” that I think was an error (I think should have been white diamond tux seats). They did show an orange 70’s pinto with white racing stripes.

• 5 GatorALLin Says:
  January 3rd, 2010 at: 3:10 am

  AMW “extended video with Jackie” http://www.amw.com/fugitives/case.cfm?id=60381 this link still details that the surviving victim states the pinto’s interior is white with diamond tux seats (matches her details in the LA weekly article also on pg2.) http://www.laweekly.com/2009-03-12/news/grim-sleeper-39-s-sole-survivor/2 I get the feeling AMW took the same info the LaWeekly put out with the drawings when detailing the pinto and did not listen to the surviving victim.

• 6 intuitive investigator Says:
  January 5th, 2010 at: 7:26 am

  Okay, so I have done a little research because this case caught my attention just recently. I believe gatorallin you really have done your homework on this case,good job. Maybe we can get this guy off the street. I agree about the Montreal article(which no one has even mentioned on any site). I am curious however what you were talking about as far as the surviving victim had said he called her Mary? Is that correct? Do you know how we had can get a list of members and people who were there the night at the church. I also found that the number that said Jose Sola is a college book at the University of Cleveland, Ohio( in speculation that this was his paper and not a number for something else like taxes, which is possible). One more question GatorAllin, who have they gotten DNA from at this point do you know? I have a few intuitive feelings but like something else to back it to be positive.

• 7 GatorALLin Says:
  January 6th, 2010 at: 1:03 am

  IntuInvest-Glad to see your post and interest in the case. I agree that the Montreal link was interesting and hope the LAPD looked into that lead. My gut says that one is still a long shot. On the ‘Mary’ name, I could not find where surviving victim names her (please post a link here if you can find one) but am also hopeful that LAPD would go to known lists of prostitutes at that time and see if she is still alive to show the newly released and old sketch and help ID the GS. Clearly that name mix-up was a clue and if there were 2 surviving victims you would have a ton of new clues to work from! The Church member namelist is something the LAPD has put real work into. They even exhumed the body of the pastor (doge van was listed in his name/ownership) to look at DNA, but found no match. I did see another video from the lead detective where they were trying to locate older church members to talk to (with no real success). I am not sure what to make of the Jose Sola detail, there were a few good ideas posted on this site already about that. On the DNA, I know they have a very detailed profile for GS, but no matches, they also looked for a possible family member match but that did not get any hits either. A .22 slug was matched to 8 of the victims and they have DNA on the others (some have both DNA + slug match). I am curious to find out if they were able to check for DNA matches from Databases outside of the USA as GS had some accent and blue van was found outside of USA later. I don’t think the DNA DB has all of the files uploaded that is should and that it is incomplete at best (imagine if they took DNA from everyone that went to jail like they do for fingerprints, they would likely have caught GS years ago for a smaller crime). They would have caught John F. Thomas earlier but forgot to get his DNA on file faster. I’m sure there are lots of other errors like this in the computer DNA System that result in senseless killings able to continue. I think they have DNA on almost all of the victims, but would need to research that in detail before I could post any detailed listing.

• 8 GatorALLin Says:
  January 6th, 2010 at: 1:09 am

  In my posting in #4 above, found an error I made. Where I said…”then faded in to the one on the far right” this should have been far LEFT. AMW did end the show with another shot of the image on the far Left. Also I emailed the AMW site about the contradiction of saying the Pinto had a “green interior and tan seat covers” yet their own website posted a video from surviving victim detailing it as white interior and diamond tux seats. They did at least email me back that they were looking into that possible error.

• 9 GatorALLin Says:
  January 6th, 2010 at: 5:51 am

  Just noticed from CNN that the AMW show that aired the GS case did catch the first killer they previewed. A viewer of the television show “America’s Most Wanted” recognized descriptions of Merhige and his car and called police. Officers responded to the tip late Saturday, surrounding a small motel in the Florida Keys and taking Merhige into custody. Sitton said the tip came in from a promotional announcement before the show aired, not the show itself. According to its Web site, “America’s Most Wanted” has helped find more than 1,050 fugitives and bring home more than 50 missing children in its 22 years on the air. Lets hope they got some new tips with the new pictures.

• 10 GatorALLin Says:
  January 8th, 2010 at: 7:51 pm

  slight correction on Post #7, ref#6 above: “9 of the 12 cases are linked by ballistics. We have DNA evidence linking 6 of the 12 cases together. We have cross-over on two or three of the cases, so we know it’s the same guy.” Detective Dennis Kilcoyne…

• 11 GatorALLin Says:
  January 10th, 2010 at: 3:42 am

  Post#7 (correction) .25 slug good info here: http://thegrimsleeper.com/mo/

• 12 WTF Says:
  February 26th, 2010 at: 3:25 am

  Today serial killer Rodney Alcala was finally convicted - he has spent 30 years locked up at tax payers’ expense. Imagine what the families of the victims have had to go through all those years?! Our legal system sucks. Yes, he was finally convicted, but it took decades.

  AND: this psychopath creep was on a cheesy dating game show on 9/13/1978, less than three months after murdering one of his victims! The woman on the dating show chose him! (Bachelor # 1). Oddly enough, she would have been 100 % safe going on this date (did they ever go on a date?) because serial killers never kill people they know.

  Watch here how totally creepy he is whenever he speaks:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpy5AZsEnLg&feature=player_embedded

  L.A. Times story from today:

  http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-alcala26-2010feb26,0,2983487.story

  But the Grim Sleeper is still free - let’s hope he gets caught and convicted like Rodney Alcala!

• 13 WTF Says:
  March 4th, 2010 at: 8:12 am

  Not sure if this KABC news interview with the survivor from May of 2009 video has been posted on this site? But just in case, here’s the link:

  http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/video?id=6812292

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