LA Grim Sleeper suspect had 4-decade arrest record

The 57-year-old man charged with 10 murders in the Los Angeles "Grim Sleeper" case was arrested at least 15 times over four decades and was in police custody many times after the killings began, probation and jail records show.

The arrests of Lonnie Franklin Jr. for crimes including burglary, car theft and assault were never considered serious enough to send him to state prison or to warrant his entry in the state's DNA database, according to a report in Saturday's Los Angeles Times.

Franklin was dubbed the Grim Sleeper after a string of murders of young black women had south Los Angeles on edge in the mid-1980s. Then the killings suddenly stopped, …