by DrakeS » Tue Jul 20, 2010 4:28 am
LA Weekly's Christine Pelisek got hesitant detectives to drop the veil of secrecy in the serial-killing case and alerted South L.A. to a menace in the community.
July 14, 2010|James Rainey
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Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times
How deep did reporter Christine Pelisek get into the Grim Sleeper serial killer case?
So deep that the victims' families demanded she sit in on one mass meeting with police. So deep that people she had never met delivered hunches and, in one case, a napkin smeared with a semen sample. So deep that the mystery figure killing young black women in South Los Angeles seemed to pop up everywhere, even in her dreams.
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When police finally identified and arrested Lonnie David Franklin Jr. last week in connection with a string of 10 killings dating to the 1980s, the credit went largely to an innovation that allowed criminals to be tracked through their relatives' DNA.
But that the terrible, slow-motion slaughter even became known to the public owes to the obsessive reporting of Pelisek, a star investigative reporter for the LA Weekly.
An inherently inquisitive Canadian with a knack for winning the trust of people unlike herself, Pelisek pushed to get authorities to tell her about their suspicion that the killings of seven young women in the 1980s might be connected to a skein of new deaths that began in 2002.
The reporter battled and succeeded in getting hesitant Los Angeles police investigators to drop the veil of secrecy around their work and acknowledge their hunt for a suspect Pelisek described as "a monstrous phoenix." Her resulting story in summer 2008 spread the word to poor and working-class residents of South L.A. about the menace lingering in their community.
"From the day she called to say 'I want to talk to you about your daughter' until today, she has been there all the way," said Laverne Peters, whose 25-year-old daughter, Janecia, was one of the last of those killed allegedly by Franklin, a backyard mechanic. "She made sure people knew. She made sure they stayed in the limelight."
Pelisek grew up around Ottawa, the granddaughter of a reporter. "I think I was born being nosy," she said. "I had to know everybody's business."
After college she covered hockey for a couple of small papers. She moved to Japan, where she freelanced and taught English. About a decade ago, a trip to L.A. got her interested in the city. She landed a job as a researcher at the Weekly.