Chester Dewayne Turner has been convicted of murdering 14 women in Los Angeles between 1987 and 1998. Most of them were killed in South Los Angeles, along the Figueroa Street corridor where he lived, and the last two downtown, near Skid Row. Each woman had been sexually assaulted and strangled, according to the California Supreme Court. For years no one connected the deaths to each other or to him. He was a former pizza delivery driver who moved among family, shelters and jail cells, and he was identified only in 2003, when a DNA sample he had been required to give after a rape conviction was matched against evidence the police had kept for more than a decade.
The same review of old cases exposed a wrongful conviction. In 1995 a Los Angeles jury had convicted D.A.J., a janitor with an intellectual disability, in the deaths of women killed near an elementary school in 1992. DNA from two of those cases matched Turner, and D.A.J. was released in March 2004 after almost 11 years in prison. Turner was later tried and convicted of those two killings himself.
Turner was sentenced to death in 2007 for ten murders and again in 2014 for four more. In 2020 the California Supreme Court upheld the first judgment but reversed a separate conviction for the death of an unborn child, because the jury had heard inadmissible hearsay about whether the fetus could have survived. In June 2024 prosecutors in Salt Lake County, Utah, charged him with aggravated murder in the 1998 strangling of a young woman in Salt Lake City. That charge has not been tried.
Turner was born in Arkansas. His mother raised him alone from infancy, working full time while a friend looked after him, she told the jury at the penalty phase of his first trial. The family moved from Arkansas to California when he was four, by her account; the Associated Press, reporting in 2004, said he moved to Los Angeles with his mother at five. His father gave the family no money and no emotional support, she said, although Turner went to live with him in Arkansas for about a year before returning to Los Angeles.
She described him as a fun-loving child who struggled at school and often got into trouble. He dropped out of high school and worked as a pizza delivery driver. When he was 17 she made him leave home because of his drinking and drug use. She let him come back while he recovered from a gunshot wound, and during that time, she said, he treated her well, helping with her cleaning job and doing the cooking and cleaning at home. In 1991 she moved to Salt Lake City. Each summer Turner's younger brother stayed with him in California, and his mother testified that Turner took care of the boy and urged him to stay in school. Turner had four children, she said, who loved him, but he could not support them because he was so often in custody, and she helped raise them in Salt Lake City.
The Associated Press reported in 2004 that he had been imprisoned more than six times since leaving high school, mostly for nonviolent offenses such as theft, drug possession and parole violations. Christine Pelisek, a reporter for LA Weekly, said in a 2007 NPR interview that he had lived on West Century Boulevard, that he was known in the neighborhood as "Cisco," after a brand of wine cooler he drank, and that police had not suspected him for years because he was simply a familiar figure on the street.
From 1987 to 1996, according to the California Supreme Court, Turner lived at various addresses in the Figueroa corridor of South Los Angeles. In 1998 he was living at the Regal Hotel on Sixth Street downtown.
The killings took place during the crack cocaine epidemic. The Associated Press reported in 2014 that more than 100 women were killed in South Los Angeles in that era, and that many women had been pushed into prostitution to pay for their addictions. For a time the police attributed many of the deaths to a single unknown offender called the "Southside Slayer." Investigators later concluded that more than one man had been killing women in the same streets, and Turner became one of at least three men blamed for deaths once grouped under that name, along with Lonnie Franklin Jr. and Michael Hughes.
All of Turner's victims had histories of drug use, and all but one had cocaine in their systems when they died, the California Supreme Court wrote. Some were homeless, some were thought to be mentally ill, and some had been arrested for prostitution. The Associated Press described the area where most of the bodies were found as a 30-block stretch of South Los Angeles known for drugs, violence and prostitution. Turner lived within 30 blocks of each killing, City News Service reported.
Reliable sources say little about most of these women beyond their names, their ages and where they were found.
Diane Johnson was 21. She was found on March 9, 1987, in a construction area about six blocks from where Turner lived; the Los Angeles Police Department gave the location as 10217 South Grand Avenue. She had been strangled. She is the earliest of the women whose deaths he was convicted of causing.
Elandra Bunn was 33. She was killed on June 5, 1987, in the Figueroa corridor, less than three months after Diane Johnson, and her body was found in an alley near 88th Street and Figueroa. She was in the early stages of pregnancy, according to the court. Her death was used as evidence of an uncharged crime at the penalty phase of Turner's first trial and became one of the four counts at his second.
Annette Ernest was 26 and had two young children. She was found on October 29, 1987, three blocks from Turner's home, near Grand Avenue and 106th Street, and had been strangled. Her mother, Mildred White, had been friends for 30 years with Jerri Johnson, whose daughter, Andrea Tripplett, would be killed in 1993. "We never thought that it could be the same person," Mildred White told the Associated Press in 2004.
Anita Fishman was 31. A young boy found her on January 20, 1989, in an alley less than two blocks from Turner's home, at 9819 South Figueroa Street, police said. She had been strangled by hand. Her mother was among the relatives who testified about their loss at the penalty phase in 2007.
Regina Washington was 27 and was visibly pregnant. She was found on September 23, 1989, on a mattress in a burned-out garage about 14 blocks from Turner's home, at 8858 South Figueroa Street. A cable was around her neck, and she had died of ligature strangulation. Her unborn daughter, at 27 to 28 weeks of gestation according to the autopsy report described in the court's opinion, died from lack of oxygen. The Associated Press described Regina Washington as six and a half months pregnant and reported that she was strangled with an electrical cord behind a vacant house. Her daughter testified at the penalty phase.
Tammie Christmas was found strangled near the 97th Street Elementary School on September 30, 1992, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. She was one of the women whose deaths were charged to D.A.J. Her rape kit was among those destroyed before modern testing, and the Los Angeles Police Department said in 2004 that detectives were confident D.A.J. was innocent of her death and that Turner was the likely suspect. Turner has never been charged with her death.
Debra Williams was found on November 16, 1992, at the bottom of a stairwell at the 97th Street School. The police and the exoneration registry gave her age as 32; coverage of the 2014 trial gave it as 28 and spelled her first name Deborah. Her aunt, Verna Belvin, spoke at Turner's 2014 sentencing.
Mary Edwards was 42. She was found on December 16, 1992, in a carport outside a motel at 9714 South Figueroa Street, close to the same school.
Andrea Tripplett was 29. She grew up in South Los Angeles, graduated from Crenshaw High School and had a son of 10 and a daughter of 7, her mother, Jerri Johnson, a retired accountant, told NPR in 2007. She was about five and a half months pregnant. "We lived in an area that was drug infested, and she became a drug victim," her mother said. She was found on April 2, 1993, behind an abandoned house about two blocks from her own home, at 7812 South Figueroa Street, and had been strangled by hand. Her mother raised her granddaughter after her death. "He'll never be able to do this to someone else's child," Jerri Johnson said when Turner was identified.
Deserae Jones, whose name also appears as Desarae, was 29. She sometimes went by the name Tracy Williams, according to the court. She was found on May 16, 1993, in the trash-filled yard of a burned and boarded-up house at 6821 South Estrella Avenue, within 30 blocks of Turner's address, and had been strangled by hand. Her mother testified at the penalty phase.
Natalie Price was found on February 12, 1995, beside an empty house at 532 West 80th Street, about five blocks from Turner's home, where people gathered to smoke drugs. She had been strangled and struck on the head. The court gave her age as 39; the police and later news reports gave it as 31. Her daughter testified at the penalty phase.
Mildred Beasley was 45. She disappeared while she was on her way to her sister's house, the court wrote. Her body was found on November 6, 1996, on a trash-strewn embankment along the 110 Freeway, about 18 blocks from Turner's home; police gave the address as 9611 South Broadway. Her brother, Robert Williams, was in court when the first verdicts were read in 2007 and called his five sisters to tell them. "I've spent nine years waiting," he said. "This is the happiest day in a long time."
Cynthia Annette Johnson was 30. She was killed on February 22, 1997, in Watts. Her sister, Gwendolyn Cameron, spoke at Turner's 2014 sentencing. "What he took from our family can never be replaced," she said.
Paula Vance was homeless and suffered from mental illness, according to the court, and she was the only one of the women without cocaine in her system. She was found on February 3, 1998, beside an abandoned building near Sixth and Hope Streets downtown, at 630 West Sixth Street. The court gave her age as 41; the police and the Associated Press gave it as 38.
Brenda Bries was 37. She was found on April 6, 1998, in a portable toilet at South Gladys Avenue and Fifth Street, near Skid Row, about 50 yards from the hotel where Turner was living. She had been strangled with a fabric cord.
The California Supreme Court described the pattern in the ten cases tried in 2007. Each woman had been sexually assaulted and strangled, by hand or with a ligature. Most were found outdoors or in abandoned places: a construction site, alleys, a burned-out garage, the yards of empty houses, a freeway embankment, a portable toilet. Eight of the ten tried in 2007 died in South Los Angeles, close to where Turner lived, and two downtown. No one saw any of the killings.
The four women in the 2014 trial were choked to death, mostly by hand, the Associated Press reported. Prosecutor Robert Grace told the court that Turner had left a dozen children without their mothers.
One killing was recorded. A security camera at the scene of Paula Vance's death in February 1998 filmed her entering an alley with a man, who grabbed her around the neck until she fell, the California Supreme Court wrote. The Associated Press, describing the footage as played at trial, said it showed her being thrown to the ground and, about 15 minutes later, a man walking away. The images were grainy, and the face of the man could not be seen. The police said in 2004 that the video had been too poor to identify a suspect.
Between the killings Turner was repeatedly in custody. In March 1997, police officers went to his motel room to question him about a possible parole violation, according to evidence summarized by the California Supreme Court. He refused a weapons check and ran, dragging officers 10 to 20 yards along a hallway and into the parking lot, kicked one officer and tried to grab an officer's gun. A police dog found him near a woodpile, and he hit the dog with a fiberglass sink. He kept fighting after being struck by six beanbag rounds before officers took him into custody.
In October 1996 a 22-year-old woman walking alone downtown after midnight was grabbed by a man who tried to pull her into an alley. She screamed and fought, and he ran when a patrol car passed. She identified Turner that night and again in court. This incident was also presented at the penalty phase.
In 1998, according to prosecutors in Utah, Turner was on parole in California for auto theft and drug sales and left for Utah without permission. His mother had been living in Salt Lake City since 1991. A Salt Lake City police report from 1998 lists him as the victim of an assault there. That period is the basis of a later charge in Utah.
In March 2002 Turner raped a homeless woman behind a shelter on Skid Row, according to the California Supreme Court. The Los Angeles Police Department said the woman was 47 and that he had threatened to kill her if she reported the attack. She went to the police. Turner pleaded no contest to rape by force or fear and to unlawful penetration and was sentenced to eight years in state prison. He served the sentence at the Sierra Conservation Center, near Stockton.
DNA from a cheek swab taken from him in July 2002 matched the evidence collected from the woman, the court wrote. A profile from a blood sample taken after his conviction was later compared with unsolved cases, and the sample he gave as part of his plea was entered in law enforcement databases, the court and the Associated Press reported.
The Los Angeles Police Department's cold case homicide unit reopened Paula Vance's case in 2001 and used DNA left on her body to rule out suspects, the department said. The unit had six detectives and a backlog of thousands of unsolved killings, the Associated Press reported. Detective Cliff Shepard had joined it in 2001. He submitted DNA from a victim's body to the database, and on September 8, 2003, detectives learned that Turner's profile matched both the Vance case and a 1996 killing.
Shepard and his partner, Detective Jose Ramirez, then compared Turner's profile with evidence kept from other unsolved killings of women in South Los Angeles. On October 23, 2004, the department announced that DNA linked Turner to 13 killings between 1987 and 1998 and called him "the most prolific serial killer ever identified in the history of the City of Los Angeles." Chief William J. Bratton said he might be linked to as many as a dozen more. Bratton cited the case in promoting Proposition 69, a measure on the November 2004 ballot to expand DNA collection to people arrested for felonies, the Associated Press reported.
The district attorney's office then charged Turner with the murders of ten women. Spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said he might be charged later in the deaths for which D.A.J. had been convicted. Prosecutors had not yet decided whether to seek the death penalty.
The cold case review also reopened a 1995 conviction. Between September and December 1992, four women were found dead near the 97th Street Elementary School in South Los Angeles. In late December 1992 police arrested D.A.J., then 32, a janitor who lived in the area, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. Detectives questioned him about the killings, took him to each scene, and he eventually confessed to all four. He had an intellectual disability, the registry records. He maintained his innocence but gave conflicting accounts of what he had done.
There were no eyewitnesses. Hair comparisons did not match him. The rape kits from all four women contained material from a person with type A blood; D.A.J. had type O. The jury heard this. In April 1995, a Los Angeles County Superior Court jury convicted him of the rape and murder of Mary Edwards and of manslaughter in the deaths of Tammie Christmas and Debra Williams, the registry records. He was acquitted in the fourth death, of a woman who had been beaten rather than strangled. He was sentenced to 36 years to life.
In 2002 the Post Conviction Assistance Center was appointed to represent him under California's new law allowing DNA testing after conviction. Two of the four rape kits had been destroyed. The surviving evidence from the Williams and Edwards cases was tested, excluded D.A.J. and matched Turner. On March 4, 2004, D.A.J.'s convictions were vacated, the charges were dismissed and he was released. His lawyer at the center was Gigi Gordon. Prosecutors later concluded that his confessions had been coerced by police, the Associated Press reported in 2014.
On October 4, 2006, the Los Angeles City Council approved a settlement of 720,000 dollars on his claim against the city. "It was a long time coming," said his lawyer, Glen E. Tucker. He also received 74,600 dollars in state compensation, the registry records.
At a preliminary hearing on the ten murder charges, Carl Matthies of the police department's scientific investigation division testified that Turner's DNA matched evidence from all ten women, and he put the chance that another person had the same genetic profile at one in one quintillion. The deputy medical examiner Lisa Scheinin testified that all ten women had been strangled and that nine had cocaine in their systems. Turner's lawyer, John Tyre, argued that the DNA did not prove murder. "If it is his DNA it indicates he had sex with these women some time prior to them dying," he said. Superior Court Judge William R. Pounders ruled that there was enough evidence to send the case to trial.
In 2006, while he was awaiting trial in the county jail, Turner confronted the only female deputy in his area, who had placed him on lockdown, and told another inmate that he would kill her if he was found guilty, according to evidence presented later at the penalty phase.
Turner was tried before Judge Pounders in Los Angeles County Superior Court in 2007, in case BA273283. He faced ten counts of first-degree murder and a count of murder for the death of Regina Washington's unborn daughter. Prosecutors could not charge him in the death of Andrea Tripplett's fetus, because under California law at the time a fetus at five and a half months was not considered viable, the Associated Press reported.
The case rested on DNA. The police laboratory put the random match probability at one in one quintillion, and Cellmark, a private laboratory, at one in 6.725 quintillion for the Black population group, both using 13 genetic markers, the California Supreme Court recorded. The prosecution also showed the jury the video of Paula Vance's death.
The defense called its own laboratory, Technical Associates, which used a less powerful test of the male-specific Y chromosome. Its criminalist preferred to say that Turner "could not be excluded" as the source, because other men could share parts of the same profile. The laboratory found DNA consistent with Turner in every victim it tested, and no profile other than his repeated from one victim to another. A defense expert testified that the presence of Turner's DNA did not prove he was the last man with a woman before her death. The defense position, as his lawyer had put it at the preliminary hearing, was that DNA showed sex, not murder. At his second trial his lawyers acknowledged that he had paid women for sex with drugs but denied that he was a killer.
The jury of six men and six women began deliberating on April 26, 2007. On April 30 it found Turner guilty of ten counts of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder, for the death of the fetus. It also found true the special circumstances of multiple murder and of murder committed during a rape, the latter for the killing of Paula Vance. Turner showed no reaction. Only a few relatives were present, because there had been little notice of the verdict, but Mildred Beasley's brother was there.
At the penalty phase the prosecution presented the killing of Elandra Bunn, the 1996 attack downtown, the 1997 struggle with officers, the 2002 rape and the threat against the jail deputy. DNA from a bloody tissue found a few feet from Elandra Bunn's body, kept after her rape kit was destroyed in 1996, matched Turner with a random match probability of one in one quintillion, the court recorded. Relatives of Annette Ernest, Andrea Tripplett, Anita Fishman, Deserae Jones and Mildred Beasley, Regina Washington's daughter and Natalie Price's daughter testified about the women they had lost. The defense called his mother.
Jerri Johnson told NPR that after Turner's photograph appeared in the newspaper in 2004, her son and nephew recognized him as a man who had attended the repast dinner in her backyard after Andrea's funeral. "He was just somebody in the community with no one to suspect him," she said.
The jury could choose only death or life in prison without parole. In May 2007 it recommended death. At the sentencing hearing in July 2007, set for July 10, and after several victims' relatives spoke, Judge Pounders agreed with the jury and sentenced Turner to death. Turner declined to make a statement. "I don't think any jury would arrive at a different conclusion," the judge said. He also said the evidence was overwhelming. "This was not a difficult matter to try. The evidence basically was DNA," he said, according to City News Service. Turner also received a term of 15 years to life for the fetal murder count. He was sent to death row at San Quentin State Prison.
On February 1, 2011, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office charged Turner, then on death row, with four more murders: Elandra Bunn on June 5, 1987, Debra Williams on November 16, 1992, Mary Edwards on December 16, 1992, and Cynthia Annette Johnson on February 22, 1997. The complaint alleged special circumstances of multiple murder and murder during a rape or attempted rape. Two of the four were deaths for which D.A.J. had been convicted in 1995. Turner was returned from San Quentin in March 2011.
On June 9, 2011, he pleaded not guilty. Deputy District Attorney Robert Grace said the public and the families had a right to know whether Turner had killed the four women. His lawyer, Kieran Patrick Brown, asked the court to have deputies use larger handcuffs, saying the ones on Turner cut into his wrists. Before trial, prosecutors offered him life without parole on the four counts; he turned it down, the Associated Press reported.
The case was tried before Judge Robert J. Perry in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The prosecutors were Deputy District Attorneys Beth Silverman and Robert Grace; the defense lawyers were Kieran Patrick Brown and Jonathan Roberts. The Police Department's Robbery-Homicide Division had investigated the cases.
On June 19, 2014, after deliberating for less than a day, the jury found Turner guilty of four counts of first-degree murder and found true special allegations that made him eligible for the death penalty, the district attorney's office said. The special circumstances were multiple murder and a prior murder conviction, the Beverly Press reported. On June 26, 2014, after deliberating for less than a day and a half, the jury recommended death.
On August 1, 2014, Judge Perry denied a defense motion for a new trial and sentenced Turner to death on each of the four counts. He called the evidence "compelling" and the DNA "irrefutable," said that Turner had "hunted women in the inner city," and called him a danger to society. "It is the order of this court that you should suffer the death penalty," the judge said.
Gwendolyn Cameron, Cynthia Johnson's sister, said it was judgment day. "The sooner they execute him, the better we'll all be," she said. Verna Belvin, Debra Williams' aunt, said she had to forgive him. Silverman said Turner had never taken responsibility for any of the killings. "Those are four lives," she said. Brown said his client denied to that day that he had killed anyone. As he was led out, Turner said, "I'll be back."
A death sentence in California is appealed automatically to the state Supreme Court. Lawyers were scheduled to argue Turner's appeal from the 2007 judgment, People v. Turner, case S154459, on September 2, 2020, by video or teleconference, City News Service reported. On November 30, 2020, the court issued its decision, written by Justice Corrigan and joined by Chief Justice Cantil-Sakauye, Justices Liu, Cuéllar, Kruger and Groban, and Presiding Justice Gilbert of the Court of Appeal, sitting by assignment.
The court rejected Turner's challenge to the DNA statistics. Following its 2008 decision in People v. Nelson, it held that a random match probability calculated by the standard product rule is relevant in a case that begins with a database "cold hit," that no special hearing on its scientific acceptance was required, and that the figures were properly admitted and were substantial evidence of guilt. It upheld the trial court's removal of a prospective juror and a prospective alternate juror whose answers showed they were unlikely to vote for death. It upheld the exclusion of defense evidence comparing a partial shoe print on Regina Washington's shirt with the shoes of another man, because the print could not be matched to anyone and the comparison would have been misleading. It found the jury instruction on fetal viability correct.
One claim succeeded. To prove the murder of Regina Washington's fetus, the prosecution had to show the fetus was viable, that is, able to survive outside the womb. Dr. Lisa Scheinin, who had not performed the autopsy, told the jury the fetus's weight and gestational age, taking them from an autopsy report written by another medical examiner, and presented them as true in support of her opinion that the fetus was viable. The report itself was never offered in evidence. The Attorney General conceded that her testimony on those points was hearsay, and no exception, such as the rule for business or official records, had been shown on the record. The court held that admitting it was error under its 2016 decision in People v. Sanchez, which bars an expert from relating case-specific hearsay to a jury as true, and under state hearsay law.
The error was not harmless. Apart from the expert, the only evidence of viability came from Regina Washington's daughter, which the court found insufficient. "An expert's opinion is only as strong as its factual basis," the court wrote. Because the improper hearsay supplied the entire basis for the opinion, it was reasonably probable the verdict on that count would have been different without it. Having reversed on state-law grounds, the court did not decide Turner's federal confrontation claim.
The court did not agree that the error undermined the death sentence. "In view of the substantial aggravating facts of both the charged and uncharged crimes, it is not reasonably possible the jury would have reached a different penalty verdict absent the error," it wrote, and any federal constitutional error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt as to penalty. Its disposition reads: "The second degree fetal murder conviction is reversed. In all other respects, the judgment is affirmed."
The ten first-degree murder convictions and the death sentence from 2007 therefore stand. The automatic appeal from the 2014 judgment is separate. City News Service reported in June 2024 that it was still pending.
On September 24, 1998, three teenagers walking through a business parking lot in Salt Lake City found the body of Itisha Camp at the bottom of a cement stairwell behind a business at 165 East 900 South, and flagged down a police officer. A scarf was around her neck. The medical examiner found that she had been strangled and ruled her death a homicide. Detectives in 1998 learned that she used drugs and worked as a street prostitute, and that she had last been home on September 23. She had been in Salt Lake City for only two or three weeks, according to the Utah Department of Public Safety. Her age has been reported as 21 and as 22.
The case stayed open for more than 25 years. Salt Lake City police entered it in Utah's cold case database on April 28, 2019. A DNA profile from the evidence had been developed by 2013 but never reached the national database; Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill said that someone "did not check the right box." When the profile was finally entered in CODIS, the FBI's national DNA index, it matched Turner. According to the charging papers, DNA from her clothing and body matched him, and his DNA was also found on the scarf. Investigators served a search warrant on Turner at San Quentin, collected cheek swabs and sent them to the Utah State Crime Lab, which reported a match.
On June 14, 2024, Gill's office announced that it had charged Turner in Utah's Third District Court with one count of aggravated murder, a first-degree felony, and asked for a no-bail warrant. The aggravating allegation is that he had previously been convicted of aggravated murder, murder or a violent felony. The investigating detective was Kory Olsen of the Salt Lake City Police Department, and the case was assigned to Deputy District Attorney John Ham. "It must have been profoundly difficult for Ms. Camp's family and loved ones over the last 25 years," Gill said, adding that he hoped the charge would bring some relief to them and to the community. "All persons accused of wrongdoing are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law," his office said.
CBS Los Angeles reported that it appeared to be the first murder charge Turner had faced outside California. At the time it was not clear whether or when he would be brought to Utah, and Gill said he did not know how long that would take. As of October 21, 2026, no extradition, court appearance or plea in the Utah case had been reported. Turner is accused, not convicted, in Itisha Camp's death and is presumed innocent of that charge.
Turner was reported in June 2024 to be on death row in California, at the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, serving his 2007 and 2014 death sentences. Governor Gavin Newsom imposed a moratorium on executions in California in 2019. His lawyers said in 2007 that the automatic appeal could take up to two decades, NPR reported. As of October 21, 2026, no decision in the second appeal, change in his custody or development in Utah had been reported.
Proven by final judgment: the first-degree murders of Diane Johnson, Annette Ernest, Anita Fishman, Regina Washington, Andrea Tripplett, Deserae Jones, Natalie Price, Mildred Beasley, Paula Vance and Brenda Bries (2007 verdict, affirmed 2020).
Convicted, appeal reported pending as of June 2024: the first-degree murders of Elandra Bunn, Debra Williams, Mary Edwards and Cynthia Annette Johnson (2014 verdict).
Reversed: the second-degree murder of Regina Washington's unborn daughter. The California Supreme Court reversed that conviction in 2020 because the viability evidence rested on inadmissible hearsay. It did not find that the fetus was not viable; it found that the jury should not have heard the evidence on which the viability opinion was built.
Charged, not tried: the death of Itisha Camp in Salt Lake City in 1998. Turner is presumed innocent of that charge.
Linked by police, never charged: the death of Tammie Christmas in 1992, for which D.A.J. had been convicted of manslaughter. No DNA from her case could be tested. Police said in 2004 that Turner was the likely suspect. Chief Bratton's 2004 statement that Turner might be linked to as many as a dozen more killings has not been reported to have led to further charges.
Accounts differ on several details: the ages of Natalie Price (39 in the court opinion, 31 in police and news reports), Paula Vance (41 in the court opinion, 38 in police and news reports), Debra Williams (32 in police and registry records, 28 in 2014 coverage) and Itisha Camp (21 or 22); the spellings Deserae or Desarae, Debra or Deborah, and Beasley or Beasely; how Regina Washington was found (a cable around her neck in a burned-out garage, in the court opinion, against an electrical cord behind a vacant house, in Associated Press reports); and the age at which Turner moved to California (four, by his mother's testimony; five, in a 2004 Associated Press report). His lawyer said in 2014 that Turner still denied killing anyone.
Born in Arkansas; moves to California with his mother as a young child.
March 9, 1987: Diane Johnson, 21, is found strangled in South Los Angeles.
June 5, 1987: Elandra Bunn, 33, is killed in the Figueroa corridor.
October 29, 1987: Annette Ernest, 26, is found.
January 20, 1989: Anita Fishman, 31, is found.
September 23, 1989: Regina Washington, 27, who was pregnant, is found.
1991: Turner's mother moves to Salt Lake City.
September to December 1992: four women are found dead near the 97th Street Elementary School, among them Tammie Christmas (September 30), Debra Williams (November 16) and Mary Edwards (December 16).
Late December 1992: D.A.J. is arrested and questioned.
April 2, 1993: Andrea Tripplett, 29, is found.
May 16, 1993: Deserae Jones, 29, is found.
February 12, 1995: Natalie Price is found.
April 1995: D.A.J. is convicted and later sentenced to 36 years to life.
October 1996: a woman downtown fights off an attacker she identifies as Turner.
November 6, 1996: Mildred Beasley, 45, is found beside the 110 Freeway.
February 22, 1997: Cynthia Annette Johnson, 30, is killed in Watts.
March 1997: Turner fights officers during a parole inquiry.
February 3, 1998: Paula Vance is strangled downtown; a security camera records the attack.
April 6, 1998: Brenda Bries, 37, is found near Skid Row.
1998: Turner, on parole, leaves California for Utah.
September 24, 1998: Itisha Camp is found dead in Salt Lake City (Turner charged in 2024; not tried).
2001: the LAPD cold case unit reopens the Vance case.
March 2002: Turner rapes a woman on Skid Row; he pleads no contest and is sentenced to eight years.
September 8, 2003: detectives learn his DNA matches the Vance case and a 1996 killing.
March 4, 2004: D.A.J. is released and the charges against him dismissed.
October 23, 2004: the LAPD announces DNA links between Turner and 13 killings; he is then charged with ten murders.
October 4, 2006: Los Angeles approves a 720,000 dollar settlement with D.A.J.
April 30, 2007: a jury convicts Turner of ten first-degree murders and one count of second-degree murder of a fetus.
May 2007: the jury recommends death.
July 2007: Judge William R. Pounders sentences him to death (hearing set for July 10).
February 1, 2011: charged with four more murders; returned from San Quentin in March.
June 9, 2011: pleads not guilty.
June 19, 2014: convicted of four first-degree murders.
June 26, 2014: the jury recommends death.
August 1, 2014: Judge Robert J. Perry sentences him to death on the four counts.
September 2, 2020: oral argument in the California Supreme Court.
November 30, 2020: the court reverses the fetal murder conviction and affirms the rest of the 2007 judgment.
June 14, 2024: Salt Lake County charges him with aggravated murder in the death of Itisha Camp.
October 21, 2026: no reported trial or plea in Utah and no reported decision in the 2014 appeal.