A Los Angeles man was found guilty of murdering ten people in the decades-old "Grim Sleeper" case Thursday afternoon.
A jury found Lonnie Franklin Jr., 63, a former garbage collector who also worked as a mechanic for the Los Angeles Police Department, guilty of all ten slayings in Los Angeles County Superior Court after a two-month trial.
He was also found guilty of one count of attempted murder.
Franklin could face the death penalty in the case. He showed no emotion as the verdicts were read.
The killings from 1985 to 2007 were dubbed the work of the "Grim Sleeper" because of an apparent 14-year gap after one woman survived a gunshot to the chest in 1988.
The crimes went unsolved for decades and community members complained that police ignored the cases because the victims were black, poor and some were prostitutes and drug users.
Victims' bodies were discovered in alleys in a rough part of Los Angeles, hidden in trash bins or covered by mattresses or debris.
After months of testimony, a prosecutor said that the evidence overwhelmingly pointed to Franklin and spoke for the vulnerable victims he silenced as he spent years hiding in plain sight.
"How do we figure out what happened here? How do we know who committed these crimes?" Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman asked as she closed her case in Los Angeles Superior Court.
"Ten of the victims can't tell you themselves. The defendant took their voices when he brutally murdered them... The evidence in this case is the voice of the victims."
Defense lawyer Seymour Amster claimed in the long-running trial that a "mystery man," an unnamed nephew of Franklin, was the real killer.
"Each and every murder in this case could have been done by a mystery man with a mystery gun with mystery DNA," Amster said.
Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman shot back during her rebuttal that Amster had concocted an imaginary scenario at the last minute in the face of overwhelming evidence of guilt.
"The theory of the defense is basically the equivalent of the skies opening up, a space ship descending and murdering all these women," Silverman said as members in the audience snickered.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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