Chester Turner

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Chester Dewayne Turner (born 1964 in Warren, Arkansas) is an accused serial killer. He has been charged with the murders of ten women in Los Angeles; if convicted of all ten slayings, he would be one of the most prolific serial murderers in the city’s history.

Turner moved to Los Angeles with his mother when he was 5 years old, after his parents separated. He attended public schools in Los Angeles but dropped out of high school. Working for Domino’s Pizza as a cook and delivery person as a young man, he lived with his mother until she moved to Utah. After that, he moved around to different shelters and missions.^[1] Turner was jailed seven times from 1995 to 2002, all for nonviolent offenses.

Turner has been connected, through DNA, to 13 murders that occurred in Los Angeles between 1987 and 1998. Eleven of these murders took place in a four-block-wide corridor that ran on either side of Figueroa Street between Gage Avenue and 108th Street.

The two murders outside of this corridor occurred in downtown Los Angeles:

• Paula Vance, 38, found at the rear of a vacant business.
• Mildred Beasley, 45, found strangled in some bushes on a street next to the Harbor Freeway.

The Vance murder was captured on videotape from a nearby surveillance camera, but the tape was of exceedingly poor quality and was unusable as evidence.^[2] The case went cold until 2001, when the Cold Case Unit began testing foreign DNA recovered from the Vance crime scene.

At that time, Turner was serving an eight-year sentence at a California state prison for sexually assaulting a 47-year-old woman in March 2002. Turner assaulted the victim for approximately two hours and threatened to kill her if she told the police. Upon his conviction, Turner was required to give a DNA sample to California’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS). In September 2003, based on that sample, Turner was identified as a match for DNA recovered from Vance and Beasley.

Detectives then began a careful examination of Turner’s background. Nine of the 11 unsolved murders were matched to Turner using DNA evidence:

• Diane Johnson, 21, found partially nude and strangled in March 1987 in a roadway construction area west of the Harbor Freeway.
• Annette Ernest, 26, found lying on a shoulder of a road in October 1987, partially nude and strangled.
• Anita Fishman, 31, strangled and left partially nude in a garage off Figueroa Street in January 1989.
• Regina Washington, 27, also found partially nude and strangled in a garage off Figueroa Street in September 1989. Washington was six months pregnant. The death of the fetus was attributed to the strangulation of the mother, and the baby girl’s death was ruled a homicide.
• Andrea Tripplett, 29, strangled, found partially nude behind a vacant building on Figueroa Street in April 1993.
• Desarae Jones, 29, found strangled next to a vacant residence in May 1993.
• Natalie Price, 31, found partially nude and strangled next to a vacant residence in February 1995.
• Brenda Bries, 37, strangled and left in a portable toilet in April 1998.

During the investigation of these cases, detectives also reviewed similar solved cases. In doing so, the detectives found that David Allen Jones, 28, had been convicted of three murders that occurred in the same area where Turner was known to be operating:

• Tammie Christmas, found strangled in September 1992 at the 97th Street Elementary School.
• Debra Williams, 32, found lying at the bottom of a stairwell that led to a campus boiler room in November 1992.
• Mary Edwards, 42, found inside a carport next to the 97th Street Elementary School in December 1992.

Jones, a mentally-disabled part-time janitor who can barely read and write, was questioned without an attorney and admitted using drugs with the victims in the areas where their bodies were found.^[3]

Rather than using these convictions as a basis for excluding Turner, the detectives revisited these “solved” murders and re-evaluated the physical evidence. The detectives found that Jones’ 1995 trial had relied upon other evidence, including Jones’ coerced statements to police, instead of DNA technology.^[4] At the detectives’ request, the LAPD Crime Laboratory processed the available evidence using the latest DNA applications.

It was discovered that Turner was responsible for two of the murders for which Jones had been convicted — those of Williams and Edwards.^[5] Although DNA analysis could not be used to reinvestigate the Christmas murder, prosecutors and police are confident that Jones is innocent of the Christmas murder and that Turner is the likely culprit.

During his trial, Jones had also been convicted of a rape unrelated to the murders. He had served out his sentence for the 2000 rape conviction. The new investigation revealed that the blood-typing evidence did not match the blood types found at the crimes for which he spent 11 years in prison, and he was exonerated as a murderer.^[2] Jones was released from prison March 4, 2004; he filed a lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles.^[3]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Los Angeles Times crime scene photos