09/02/2022
Preview of Episode 8, the Ronnie O'Neal case! Link in bio!
The Black Sheep Tribune
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True crime cases you may have never heard of, because every case matters.
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Welcome to The Black Sheep Tribune
Hello, my name is Taylor and I live in southwestern Missouri. I have created this blog to attempt to bring attention to true crime cases that, for one reason or another, do not gain the mainstream media’s ear. The posts on this blog will contain facts as well as my own opinions on aspects of the cases. I will always do my best to emphasize the difference between the two so that one does not end up being mistaken for the other. The basic idea for something like this blog originally came to me after watching "Tales of the Grim Sleeper" a documentary made in 2014 by filmmaker Nick Broomfield earlier this year. Later on, I’ll revisit and dedicate an entire post to the case that this documentary is focused around but for now I'll just give a quick synopsis of the most important facts. Broomfield’s documentary is about Lonnie David Franklin Jr. An African American serial killer active in southern Los Angeles from 1985-2007. Franklin killed anywhere between 10-25 African American women between the ages of fourteen and thirty-seven over a twenty-five-year span. It is rumored that the actual number of women he killed could be closer to 100. Before Franklin was arrested for his string of murders he accrued fifteen different felony charges including theft, assault, and battery. According to Broomfield’s documentary, even with these previous run-ins with the law somehow his DNA was never taken. And finally, what I think is the most infuriating and nonsensical detail of this entire case, LAPD knew that they had a serial killer in the area by 1987 when they found Franklin’s third victim, Barbara Ware. And yet, this information wasn’t released to the local press until August 27, 2008, by Christine Pelisek in her article “Grim Sleeper Returns: He’s murdering Angeleos As Cops Hunt His DNA” published by LA Weekly. That’s right, this information was held onto for twenty-one years while Franklin continued to hunt and kill women. There was also a composite sketch of the killer and a picture of the van he supposedly was driving that was not released for the same number of years. Most if not all of Franklin’s victims were African American women who were s*x workers and crack co***ne addicts. Or as I would call them, black sheep, people that are not accepted in the majority of our society. In my opinion, Franklin's victim pool likely was one of the main factors that enabled him to commit horrendous murders for so long. His victims were already criticized, marginalized, and tragically invisible when they were alive; so when they went missing or turned up dead their stories ended up just the same in the mainstream media. Near the end of Broomfield’s documentary, he interviews several surviving victims of Franklin. Many if not all of these victims did not include their names in these interviews as they, understandably, may have wanted to remain anonymous. One of the women interviewed was a dark-complected woman with short black curly hair springing from her head. After she describes the attack she suffered at the hands of Franklin she starts to question why he would have tried to kill her. As tears start to pool in her eyes she says “Yeah I was out there, but that doesn’t mean I’m nothing”. This was the moment that I knew I wanted to do something to help bring attention to this case and others like it. To call what happened to the women and their families at the hands of Lonnie Franklin in southern LA a tragedy would be a gross understatement. It appears to me that there are many reasons Franklin was not caught sooner but the saddest one to me is that these cases were simply not made a priority by any definition of the word. And whether that be because of the race of the victims, their addictions, their involvement in s*x work or any other aspect about them, for their cases to be handled this way is completely unacceptable. There is no reason that any person should be disregarded the way these women were when they go missing and especially not when their body is found. Although Franklin was eventually caught and some kind of justice was finally brought to the victim’s families, I think cases like this still need to be talked about so that hopefully one day cases will not be handled this way regardless of who the victim was. We need to learn from cases like this to save lives. Even if victims are involved in things that we just don’t like to talk about or pay attention to like prostitution or drugs it is not right to let things like this happen to them. At the end of the day they are people just like you and I. How would you feel if you or someone you love was murdered and this was the way the case was treated?
