US 'Grim Sleeper' serial killer sentenced to death

Lonnie David Franklin Jr killed nine women and a 15-year-old girl between 1985 and 2007 in Los Angeles, before dumping their bodies, often in alleyways.

The sentence against the 63-year-old was decided by a jury after Franklin was convicted last month.

He is to be formally sentenced at a later hearing.

“Franklin stalked vulnerable young black women before shooting or strangling them,”prosecutors said.

According to the BBC, he began by targeting drug addicts during the crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles.

He was also convicted of the attempted murder of an 11th victim who survived being shot, raped and pushed out of a car in 1988, reports say.

Franklin was caught after detectives began working on the final 2007 killing when DNA from his son, who was in prison, showed similarities to genetic evidence found on some of the victims. According to the BBC, a detective posing as an employee in a pizza parlour later collected DNA from Franklin, which when tested, connected him to evidence found on several of the bodies.