[music playing] NARRATOR: In February 1998,
the murder of 41-year-old Paula Vance was captured
on CCTV in downtown Los Angeles, California. The grainy footage made it
difficult to identify Paula's killer, but the detectives
watching the murder play out before their eyes
knew they were seeing a serial killer in action. CLIFF SHEPARD: When
we saw the tape, we both exclaimed
at the same time. This isn't his first time. But we didn't have
any other murders at that time in that area to
blame on this unknown person. NARRATOR: It would take another
five years before the killer was unveiled as 37-year-old
Chester Turner, the 6 foot 2, 250 pound murderer had strangled
14 women to death across an 11 year reign of terror. BOBBY GRACE: I tried to
get the jurors to imagine how long Chester
Turner's hands were on the throats of these women
and what they went through to see kind of the reflection
of their eyes in his eyes as he's choking the
life out of them. It's a horrible,
horrible way to die. NARRATOR: DNA would
lead to the downfall of the prolific killer,
who was sentenced to death for his savage crimes. GEOFFREY WANSELL: He
was ruthless, merciless, he was a killing machine. He targeted the most
vulnerable people in society and treated them like
nothing more than rubbish, detritus to be chucked away. NARRATOR: With his reign
of terror finally over, Chester Turner had been
unmasked as one of the world's most evil killers. [music playing] In April 2007,
40-year-old Chester Turner was found guilty of the murder
of 10 women across Los Angeles and sentenced to death. A second trial,
seven years later, found him guilty
of another four. He strangled the lives out
of all 14 of his victims, but he's never spoken
about their deaths. LAPD Homicide
detective Cliff Shepard worked on the cold case unit
that would eventually uncover Turner's murderous career. CLIFF SHEPARD: There were just
victims of opportunity for him. He came across them. They approached them. I think especially in
Paula Vance's case, we have that on tape. The two of them are talking. They're face to face when
he suddenly attacks her. Did he do that
with all the women? Probably. But we don't have anybody
surviving to tell us. NARRATOR: Turner never
confessed to his crimes, even in the face of
overwhelming scientific evidence against him, which
suggests there could be many more victims out there. Prosecutor Bobby
Grace helped to put the serial killer behind bars. BOBBY GRACE: There
have been other cases that I've done that have
gotten more media attention, but no other case that
tugged at my emotions more than this case
beacuse there were so many stories of the women
who had lost their lives and how it had
affected the victims. That's something that will
stay with you forever. And you really can't shake it. NARRATOR: This
killer's story begins on the 5th of November, 1966. Chester Dewayne Turner was
born in Warren, Arkansas. When he was just four years
old, his parents split up and his mother moved
him to California. BOBBY GRACE: Chester Turner
had a fairly normal background. He grew up here in
the Los Angeles area, attended Los Angeles
area schools. Per his mother, he had no
violence in his childhood, no child abuse. CLIFF SHEPARD: He
had a half brother. Mom owned a house around
Century and Hoover. Chester grew up in the area,
attended school in the area. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Turner was
known as Chester the molester at school because he used
to act very inappropriately with his female classmates. He just used to
go and grab them. So from a very early age, he
feels this sense of entitlement to do what he wants with
women, to just go and take what he feels entitled to from them. NARRATOR: Growing up
in south Los Angeles led to a tough
existence for Turner, who, at 6 foot 2 and 250
pounds, was an imposing figure. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: During
Turner's adult life there was quite a
lot of turbulence. He moved from job to job. He ended up having
four children. He was in and out of prison. CLIFF SHEPARD: Chester
started dealing drugs. He admitted to that. There's a scar on the
right side of his face that he claims some other
young men attacked him to rob him and he put up a fight. He's a big kid. And they cut him
across his face. NARRATOR: Turner
often found himself on the wrong side of the law. While on parole for a
minor offense in LA, he headed to Salt
Lake City in Utah, where his mother now lived. But trouble seemed to
follow him wherever he went. GEOFFREY WANSELL: He
had a violent temper. A man who-- you didn't know
it, he would never show it-- but was always
somehow on the edge. And it was not difficult
to get him to ignite. CLIFF SHEPARD: In
Salt Lake City he had an incident
with another girl that he became involved with. Chester and his wife separated. The other girl had a little bit
of a relationship with Chester until one night Chester became
angry with her and slapped her. With that, the woman
who phoned the police. Police responded, found out
Chester was on parole from Los Angeles, that there was a parole
violation, and arrested him, and sent him back
to Los Angeles. NARRATOR: Turner
couldn't financially support his children. And when he wasn't in
prison, he would struggle to find a roof over his head. CLIFF SHEPARD: He's on his own. He's separated from
his wife and kids. He's separated from his
mom and a half brother. They were in Salt Lake City. So he was now left up to
finding a place to live. And he ended up in
some Los Angeles missions, downtown Los Angeles. NARRATOR: Turner's misdemeanors
were mainly nonviolent. Theft and drug related
convictions led to most of his prison stays. But there was, sometimes, a
sexual element to his crimes. CLIFF SHEPARD: It
appears that one day he was walking
down the street, and there is the area he lived. And he exposed himself
to people at a bus stop. Police responded. He was arrested. The jail released him. He went out. He did the same thing
and got arrested again-- twice in a day. You know, I don't know
what's going through his head at that point. If it was drugs, he's becoming
a sexual deviant, I don't know. NARRATOR: While appearing on
the surface to be a small time criminal, Chester Turner was to
evolve into one of Los Angeles' most prolific serial killers. By 1998, he'd raped and
murdered at least 14 women. But the police were
none the wiser. However, in March 2002 after
encountering 47-year-old Maria Martinez, Turner
would make a mistake that changed everything. BOBBY GRACE: She was homeless. And she lived in one of the
downtown homeless shelters. And she was well known to
the security guards and some of the other people who
lived in and around the Skid Row area of Los Angeles. CLIFF SHEPARD: When
Chester was homeless he was staying in a mission
downtown, apparently Maria knew who he was. Because he worked security
at the mission's too. One night Maria is walking
around downtown Los Angeles in the evening
and she saw Chester. Chester called her
to him and asked her for a cigarette and a light. She was reluctant but
she approached him. And as soon as she did,
it was like a trap. He grabbed her, picked her up,
pulled her behind a parking lot behind some dumpsters and
sexually assaulted her. NARRATOR: Unlike his previous
victims, for some reason, Turner let Maria live and
even accompanied her back to the homeless mission. But Maria wanted to make
an impromptu stop en route. CLIFF SHEPARD: Maria started
walking towards the police station, Chester next door. They got to the front
of the police station, and he told her, you
don't tell the police where I will kill you. NARRATOR: Terrified,
Maria, instead, went back to the
mission, while Turner disappeared into the night. CLIFF SHEPARD:
There she showered and broke down, and told
one of the counselors what happened to her. The counselor notified police. Police responded,
interviewed her. We got information
about Chester. They tracked Chester
down at another mission and located him hiding
in the bathroom. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: This really
trips him up because she's somebody that he knows. She's someone from
the neighborhood. She can identify him. And I think at
this point in time, he is feeling
absolutely untouchable. He feels that he can go and do
whatever he wants to this woman and get away with it. But fortunately,
that wasn't the case. Because he thought,
there's no way that she's going to report this. That's how arrogant he was. NARRATOR: Turner was
promptly arrested on the 16th of March, 2002. He was found guilty
of sexual assault and sentenced to
eight years in prison. While behind bars, his
cheeks were swabbed as part of a new statewide legislation. BOBBY GRACE: In the state
of California at that time, there was a new law that had
been passed that if you were convicted of a felony offense-- and a felony is anything that
you can go to state prison for-- you have to give a DNA sample. And so as part of
his conviction, Chester Turner had
to provide a DNA sample, which was
then turned over to California's DNA database. So that, actually, is really
the beginning of the story to this particular case. NARRATOR: The authorities
didn't know it yet, but they had just
imprisoned one of the most dangerous men in Los Angeles. The DNA evidence collected from
Chester Turner's mouth swab would soon reveal a
history of murder that would shock the entire city. In March, 2002, 35
year old Chester Turner had been jailed for the rape
of 47-year-old Maria Martinez in downtown Los Angeles. Authorities had no
idea they'd actually captured an active serial killer
who'd begun attacking women over a decade beforehand,
during a turbulent time across the city. CLIFF SHEPARD: In the
early '90s, LA city and LA county were experiencing
about 1,000 murders each year. I mean, that's
three people a day. That's a lot of murders. That's a lot of information,
a lot of violent people out there. At that time, rocking
cocaine was coming into being and rock cocaine was
very popular with people, with both drug dealers,
gang members, and users. It was easily obtainable
and highly addictive. BOBBY GRACE: And one of the
major problems with crack cocaine was that
it was mainly sold on the streets openly, almost
brazenly, in many parts of south Los Angeles. And it contributed to a
lot of other violence, including robberies,
shootings, other incidents. Because the drug use was
so prevalent at that time. NARRATOR: Despite the
alarming number of murders, coverage in the media
was next to nothing. GEOFFREY WANSELL: The truth
must be that many of the victims were rather disregarded. They were absolutely on the
very fringes of society, homeless or addicted. Some were sex workers-- not all. But they were
people who were not valued by society, and
certainly not by white society in Los Angeles at that time. BOBBY GRACE: If this had
happened in Beverly Hills, if it happened in
west Los Angeles, it would have been national
or international news. Because it was Black
women in south central, people could ignore it or
chalk it up to the lifestyle that these women
led that, you know, is a ready-made explanation
as to why they died. It actually got
little to no coverage in the major media publications
and broadcast news at the time. GEOFFREY WANSELL:
This is horrifying. But in the background
of Los Angeles, the south side of Los
Angeles at that time, sadly, it's not uncommon. These people are, or are
regarded, as disposable. They are somehow not
very significant. That is what makes it
truly horrifying for me. NARRATOR: It was
around this time that LAPD Homicide
detective Cliff Shepard was concerned at how
quickly the murder rate had spiraled out of control. CLIFF SHEPARD: I was aware that
we had many unsolved murders of women in south Los Angeles,
women whose bodies were found in alleyways, abandoned
buildings, and parkways in the street. That was an epidemic. NARRATOR: One such victim
was 41-year-old Paula Vance. CLIFF SHEPARD: In
February of '98 I was working central homicide. That's downtown Los Angeles. My partner, Jay Moberly, and I
were working one morning when we received a
notification of a woman's body being found behind
the University Club at 6th Street and Hope. That's right near the
main library downtown. NARRATOR: It was
clear that Paula had been strangled to death. And the downtown CCTV network
had captured her murder. CLIFF SHEPARD: On that tape,
you could see the deceased and a man walking to the rear
of the building at about 6:00, 6:30 in the evening before. They're having a conversation,
when suddenly the man makes like a wrestling move,
throws his arm around her, and suddenly he's on top of her. And he takes her
down to the ground. And for the next 20 minutes,
you can see him assault her. BOBBY GRACE: And you can see
her, from the camera footage, trying to struggle. And then he's able to put all
of his full weight on her. He's much bigger than her. I believe that she was
5 foot tall or less. Then you can't see
her move anymore. And it's apparent that she's-- she's no longer living. He is still attempting what
appears to be a sexual assault. And then he gets up casually
and leaves her for dead. CLIFF SHEPARD: When
we saw the tape, both exclaimed at the same time. This isn't his first time. But we didn't have
any other murders at that time in that area
to blame on this person, that unknown person. NARRATOR: The
footage was shocking, and the quality of the
images made identifying Paula's killer near impossible. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: The
footage was very grainy. But it showed her, basically,
being dragged away. This is really, really
chilling footage. We have got a front row seat to
the murder of this poor woman. CLIFF SHEPARD: You don't get
a great image of the man. I mean, you can see he's big. You can see that
he's a male Black. Appears to have a shaved head. He was wearing a unique jacket
that had a design on the back. We were able to
determine that it was a Buffalo Bills logo that
was on the back of that jacket. So for days, my partner and I
would be out in the evenings looking for somebody, anybody,
wearing that jacket that sort of fit the man's description. We got nowhere with that. NARRATOR: Sadly,
Paula Vance became just another number in the
tally of unsolved murders across Los Angeles. Three years after her death,
an improvement in technology led to a new investigation. CLIFF SHEPARD: In 2001, Los
Angeles Police Department started a cold case unit. I was able to get into
that along with five other detectives, because of
the advances in DNA, ballistics, fingerprints, and other things. We had around 9,000
unsolved murders between 1960 and the present. The thought was that we could
solve many of these cases by using the technology that
we had, especially with DNA. There was the emphasis. BOBBY GRACE: Because the
majority of these women were sexually assaulted in
addition to being killed, the Los Angeles Police
Department, at that time, would do what it's known as
a sexual assault kit, where forensic analysts would
take samples of places from the crime scene
and, most importantly, from the victim's
body in an effort to try to get forensic
material that could be used later to try to
identify the person who was involved in a crime. NARRATOR: Investigators
from the cold case unit were particularly
interested in a number of unsolved murders,
which had all occurred within a small
radius of each other. BOBBY GRACE: The murders
were confined to an area that we call the Figueroa
corridor in south Los Angeles. There's a major street in the
city of Los Angeles called Figueroa Street that stretches
all the way from downtown Los Angeles up
through the harbor, which is about 30 miles. But that particular area
was also significant because it cuts
right through what is known as south central LA. That area was the ground 0 for
the crack cocaine epidemic. CLIFF SHEPARD: A lot
of women are addicted. And they're looking for cocaine. They're using cocaine. They're easy victims. He would probably approach them,
show them some rock cocaine and they go, OK, let's go. And then he would kill them. BOBBY GRACE: Even
though you were able to to get crack
cocaine very openly, most people would
not smoke it right on the open in the
street, where they could get arrested by police. So it was going to be usually
in some secluded area. Unfortunately, the
Figueroa corridor created the perfect area where
you could do this kind of thing and not be easily seen. And so he, for lack
of a better word, he had the perfect hunting
ground and the circumstances surrounding it to get away
with doing what he was doing. NARRATOR: Detectives
wondered if the murders might be linked to one perpetrator. But it was a victim from
outside the Figueroa corridor that would provide
the breakthrough in the case. BOBBY GRACE: The unit,
inexplicably out of the blue, got a DNA hit on
the case of Paula Vance, which was
the murder that was captured on Closed Circuit TV. CLIFF SHEPARD: So when we were
notified that we had a suspect, I needed to know who he
was and his background. NARRATOR: The DNA belonged
to a convicted felon-- a man whose sample had
been taken and added to the statewide database
when he was in prison for sexual assault in 2002-- 35-year-old Chester Turner. Turner's DNA also linked
him to one of the victims from within the
Figueroa corridor. 45-year-old Mildred Beasley had
been murdered in November 1996, over a year before Paula Vance. CLIFF SHEPARD: We began
in November, 2001. I think it was finally
in September of 2003 we received an
answer that Chester was a suspect in the
Paula Vance murder and the Mildred Beasley murder. That started looking at
Chester for other murders. Knowing that he lived
in south Los Angeles, that we had a lot of
unsolved murders down there, now we had to find
those murders. NARRATOR: Investigators
found themselves in uncharted territory. They had a murderer who
was already behind bars. Instead of hunting
the killer, they were hunting for his victims. And it would become
apparent that Chester Turner was one of
the most prolific killers in Los Angeles history. In September 2003, Chester
Turner had been identified as the killer of two women-- Paula Vance and Mildred Beasley. The 35-year-old
convict was already serving time for sexual
assault, and detectives from a cold case unit
were just beginning to learn about his crimes. CLIFF SHEPARD: With Chester,
because of where he lived, we focused on south Los Angeles. We came up with
probably about 30 victims in the area
between southeast division and 77th division. ELIZABETH YARDLEY:
Turner very deliberately chose his hunting ground
as his own neighborhood. Because this was the place
where he felt powerful. He felt confident. He knew the streets. He knew the people who
were on the streets. And by killing on
his own patch, he is minimizing the risk to himself. There's quite a
lot that he feels in control of in this area. And he gets away with it
time and time and time again. So he feels very territorial
over this particular area. NARRATOR: Turner
had begun killing over 16 years previously. In March 1987, he took the life
of 21-year-old Diane Johnson, with his bare hands. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Diane
Johnson is the first known victim of Turner. And she was found
on a construction site around about six
blocks from where she lived. And there some drag marks
that led to the site where her body had
been deposited. She'd been strangled. And she was naked
from the waist down. She's just discarded on
this construction site. And that is quite
revealing in terms of how Turner sees his victims. He's had his fun with them. He's just going to discard them. It's like a predator
with a carcass. NARRATOR: By
September 1989, Turner had claimed a fifth victim. The prolific killer murdered
27-year-old Regina Washington in a garage on Figueroa Street. CLIFF SHEPARD: She had
been strangled, murdered. But on top of that,
the suspect had tied a TV cable around her neck. And she was suspended off
the ground by a few inches because of the cable. I'm looking at the photographs
of the crime scene, and this guy-- he's got some real anger. I mean, you sexually
assaulted this woman and you strangled her. And then you're sending
more message that, you know, you really hated her. Was it just her? Was it all women? And showing how
violent you can be. ELIZABETH YARDLEY:
She was strangled with an electrical
cord and her body was found in an abandoned premises. Again, we've got this idea
of the victim as just trash to be discarded. NARRATOR: The post
mortem confirm what detectives could see for
themselves at the crime scene-- Regina Washington was
six months pregnant. CLIFF SHEPARD: When we first
filed charges against Chester for that murder, we argued
that the fetus was viable and should be counted
as another victim. We included it with the charges. GEOFFREY WANSELL:
It's wickedness at the highest level-- a pregnant mother trying to
eke out a living, partly trying to get straight for her baby. It's it's a heartless act,
which marks Turner out as a man of very significant wickedness. NARRATOR: As Turner's DNA
continued to be discovered on the historic murder
victims, detectives came up with a potential
modus operandi. It's believed Turner would
lure his vulnerable victims with a promise of drugs. CLIFF SHEPARD: You
look at the murders that Chester Turner committed,
I mean, they're all-female. And many of them had been
using cocaine, which makes them extremely vulnerable. They're very easy victims. Their guard's down. And they have this desire
to just obtain more drugs. And they don't care
how they get it. So anybody that approaches them,
offering them money or drugs, they will probably go with them. ELIZABETH YARDLEY:
There are a lot of people who found
themselves on LA's Skid Row down on their luck. They were runaways,
they were throwaways. And I think this kind of area
was very attractive for Turner. Because it's full of people
who are off the social radar anyway. They are the missing missing. These are people that you can
attack, that you can kill. And nobody's really going to
care very much about them. GEOFFREY WANSELL: It's
sometimes hard not to feel sorry for them, to be honest. But Turner didn't
feel like that. He saw them as his victim pool. They were people
he could prey upon. NARRATOR: Another of
Turner's signatures was the way in which
he left his victims. BOBBY GRACE: Chester Turner
would rape his victims and then leave them
partially undressed. So in most cases, the victims
were left with their pants down. Or if they had a
dress, the dress would be pulled up, which was
a telltale sign that there was some sexual assault. But he also brazenly left
them in areas where they wouldn't necessarily
be found right away, but it wasn't-- he wasn't, like,
trying to hide the fact that he was trying to kill these women. NARRATOR: His eighth victim was
29-year-old Andrea Triplett. Turner murdered
Andrea in April, 1993. Once again, her body was
discovered on Figueroa Street. She'd been strangled to death. CLIFF SHEPARD:
Most of his victims were manually strangled. He had one or two of the victims
he used a ligature, article of clothing or something. But most of them
he used his hands. You're talking to
the guy face to face, you're having a conversation. Suddenly, he takes you down
and you're on the ground and he's striking
you and choking you. I don't think anybody
was prepared for that. BOBBY GRACE: And that
fit right into the size and strength of Chester Turner. Because you could easily
see, because of his size and strength, that
he could easily strangle someone to death. And that those people
would not be able to fight back significantly against him. Because he would be able to
physically overpower them but still have the strength
to strangle someone to death with his bare hands. NARRATOR: In a brazen
display of cold-heartedness, Turner attended the
wake for Andrea Triplett just days after he'd
squeezed the life out of her. GEOFFREY WANSELL: Not
a sign in Turner's mind of remorse, guilt.
I mean, it requires a most disgraceful attitude. One might almost call
it inhuman, to insert yourself into the wake. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: And
this tells us about quite a sadistic side of him. It's not enough for him
to kill these women. He's almost got to
go and rub it in, in terms of going and liaising
with their families afterwards. This guy is really
unsavory, indeed. GEOFFREY WANSELL: But
it's also indicative, so often is the case,
that serial killers love to revisit their crimes. They like to find out
what they've done. They like to go back
to the crime scene. They like to take trophies. They like to take
pleasure in it. And here, Chester Turner
is demonstrating precisely those classic characteristics. He's inserting himself into
the agony of the family and friends of Andrea Triplett. NARRATOR: In total, Chester
Turner's DNA linked him to 10 murders between 1987 and 1998. Detectives interviewed
the killer, but he had no
intention of helping them with their investigation. CLIFF SHEPARD: He's
handcuffed at a table, and we're talking to him. We're not telling them
everything just yet. We want to feel him out. And I said, you
know, there's been women who've been murdered. And your name is coming up. And you could see in
his face, suddenly his jaw started trembling. So he knows he's
been caught now. And he knows he's in
really deep trouble and what could happen to him. But then suddenly, it was,
I didn't murder nobody. BOBBY GRACE: Chester
Turner told the police that he did not kill
any of these women, and that he just had sexual
relations with a lot of women. And it's just a
coincidence that his DNA was found with 10 women who
ended up strangled to death. It was just a
tragic coincidence. CLIFF SHEPARD: So at
that point, I figured that we may never get
him to admit to anything, anything about the murders-- and no matter how much evidence
we tell him that we have, or even show him that we have. NARRATOR: Investigators
would have to the science do the talking. It would take five years to
collate all their findings. And a trial date was set
for the spring of 2007. But Chester Turner wasn't going
to go down without a fight. In April 2007,
40-year-old Chester Turner was on trial for the
murder of 10 women across Los Angeles, California. DNA had linked the convicted
sex offender to all 10 victims. It would be the job of
prosecutor, Bobby Grace, to convince a jury that Turner
was undoubtedly a killer, in spite of his
egotistical demeanor. BOBBY GRACE: Chester Turner
was a fairly smug individual. He would sit in court
and kind of sneer and laugh, act as if he
would be incredulous at some of the evidence
that was presented. But he, very
definitely, very cold, very callous individual
throughout the proceedings. And he did not take
the witness stand. NARRATOR: Five years had
passed since Turner's original interrogation
by detectives, but his story hadn't
changed one bit. He continued to deny that
he was responsible for any of the 10 murders. GEOFFREY WANSELL:
Turner's defense in court was that yes, he'd had
sex with all these women. Well, he couldn't really
argue that he hadn't. Because his DNA was
all over the bodies. But he'd left them
before they died. They were alive when he left. I mean, beyond belief
by way of a defense. But put yourself in the seat
of the defense attorney. He's got nothing else. There's nothing else to possibly
explain these dreadful series of killings. NARRATOR: As well as the
undisputable scientific evidence, Bobby Grace relied
heavily on the CCTV evidence that captured Turner
murdering 41-year-old Paula Vance in February 1998. BOBBY GRACE: There are
absolutely no witnesses to any of these murders. And that's why the Paula
Vance case was so important. Because that allowed
me to argue to the jury that Chester Turner would kill
his victims in the manner that was depicted in the closed
circuit video, but also was important to
counter any argument that the women wanted to
have sex with Chester Turner. His gratification seems
to come from violence. And so sex and violence
are synonymous for him. NARRATOR: If the science
alone wasn't evidence enough of Turner's guilt, Bobby wanted
to make sure the jury could picture the terrifying ordeal
that each and every woman was put through. BOBBY GRACE: I tried to
get the jurors to imagine how long Chester
Turner's hands were on the throats of these women
and what they went through, to see kind of the reflection
of their eyes in his eyes as he's choking the
life out of them. There's a horrible,
horrible way to die, and then probably the most
personable way that you could kill somebody is to
strangle them to death and looking them in the
face as you strangle them. It's just horrifying, but
something that we had to convey to the jury for them to
understand the manner in which he killed these women. NARRATOR: On the 30th of
April, 2007, after three days of deliberations,
the jury had reached a unanimous verdict. BOBBY GRACE: As
a juror, you just have to believe in science. And if you believe
in the science, then there wasn't really
much of a conclusion to draw but that he was the
person that was guilty. NARRATOR: Chester
Turner was found guilty on 10 counts of murder
and sentenced to death. An 11th guilty
verdict for the murder of the unborn baby
of Regina Washington was overturned in 2020. CLIFF SHEPARD: It's
sort of sobering when you're listening
to the verdicts and then to the sentence. That's what you hear
is, we find him guilty, we sentence him to death. We find him guilty, we
sentence him to death. It's impressive, when you
have that many victims. NARRATOR: For a
man who'd refused to talk about the murders and
had remained silent for years, Turner still wanted to
have the final word. BOBBY GRACE: Chester Turner,
after he was convicted and was being led
away, he turned around and mouthed something. Some people have said that
he said, I'll be back. That was in reference
to me, I'm not sure. I tend not to worry
about stuff like that. ELIZABETH YARDLEY:
By saying that, he is suggesting
that he knows more, that there is more to come,
that there is a next chapter. And I think he enjoys having
that control over people. He enjoys having that
kind of suspense. And he's created this drama in
the courtroom by saying that. NARRATOR: With Turner
safely behind bars for the rest of his
life, the cold case unit continued to try and uncover
more potential victims of the serial killer. CLIFF SHEPARD: When I
was doing my research, I'm looking at the
unsolved murders that Chester could
be responsible for. So I'm looking for females
who were found strangled in south Los Angeles
in abandoned locations, out of the view locations. I came across some murders
where an arrest had been made, and the person was convicted. NARRATOR: David Alan Jones,
an intellectually disabled janitor, had been questioned
without an attorney, in jail for nine
years, for the murder of three women who'd
now been linked by DNA to Chester Turner. BOBBY GRACE: Fortunately
for David Alan Jones, the DNA evidence connecting
Chester Turner exonerated him. And he was released
for being wrongfully convicted of a murder
that he didn't commit. NARRATOR: Chester Turner had
once claimed, "I'll be back." And his prophecy
proved to be correct. In June 2014, the
47-year-old killer was found guilty of a
further four murders and was once again
sentenced to death. BOBBY GRACE: Chester Turner
never took the stand. He never put himself
in a position where he could be questioned,
even in the first trial or the second trial, which
strategically would have been a big mistake because then
we could have asked him point blank, how is it that
you were able to have sex with all these women
and they ended up dead. ELIZABETH YARDLEY:
Turner is somebody who is never going to talk
about his motive, I think. That's always something that
he will keep to himself. But to me, it is quite obvious. He killed these women because
he felt entitled to do so. He felt that he had
the right to end their lives because he saw them
as people who had no value. He saw them as people
who would not be missed. And he thought that
this was something he could get away with. NARRATOR: Chester Turner's
never given an explanation as to why he killed 14 women. The grieving loved
ones of his victims may never get the closure
they so desperately need. BOBBY GRACE: Many of
these women had daughters. And you know, by the time
this case went to trial, some of those daughters
had children of their own. So these women who were killed,
they actually had grandchildren who they had never met. CLIFF SHEPARD: A
murder destroys a lot of people, not just the victim. Their families, it just leaves-- I keep saying-- it leaves
a big hole in their life that they can't fill. They'll never be able
to talk with that person again, have
celebrations with them. That person will
never be able to have a family of their own, so a
lot of destruction that's done. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: There wasn't
a massive amount of media attention on these cases. And I think to
understand this, we need to look at the concept
of ideal victimhood. So sometimes when people
become the victims of murder, we're very quick to empathize
and to sympathize with them, and to say isn't that terrible
that it happened to them. They are completely innocent. They they really
didn't see this coming. This is an awful thing. But when other people become
the victims of murder, we're not quite as sympathetic. And very often, when people
are involved in sex work, when people have drug
dependency issues, we have a tendency to victim
blame and to say well, if you wouldn't have
been doing that, you wouldn't have
become a victim. And I think that is
very much the case here. And I think there's also
a sense in which there is some racism around this case,
because many of the victims were Black. BOBBY GRACE: I think that this
whole George Floyd moment has kind of really crystallized
kind of what I thought about the case way
back then, in that Black Lives aren't mattered--
particularly Black women. The circumstances
surrounding that still exist here in America. And that we haven't really had
the progress that many of us would have hoped for. And that there's so
much more work to do. NARRATOR: There are still scores
of unsolved murders in and around the Figueroa corridor. There may be many more
victims of Chester Turner. But the evidence to prove
it no longer exists. BOBBY GRACE: Many of the sexual
assault kits that were taken from some of these
80 plus women, they were inadvertently
destroyed by LAPD. And so we know for a fact that
there were several women who are part of these 80 women
who were strangled to death and sexually assaulted. And that fits the MO
of Chester Turner. But we'll never be able
to prove whether or not he was the perpetrator,
because we no longer have the sexual assault kits. NARRATOR: California haven't
executed anyone since 2006, but Chester Turner
remains on death row. There's no doubt the
killer will remain locked up for the rest
of his life, whenever or however that comes. GEOFFREY WANSELL:
He was remorseless. That's what it's
hard to understand. He was a killing machine. He didn't stop. He was driven by lust. He was driven by
the desire to kill. And that's what
makes him incredibly difficult to understand. And for most ordinary,
civilized, human beings, he doesn't fit in CLIFF SHEPARD: Look
at the body count and the number of
years he operated. He has no compassion
for anyone else. It's him. It's all, you know, narcissism. This is about him. NARRATOR: Chester Turner was a
ruthless and brutal murderer. He took the lives of 14
women and has never explained what drove him to do it. The fear in his victim's
eyes as his hands squeezed their lives away will,
hopefully, forever haunt him. He is undoubtedly one of the
world's most evil killers. [music playing]
