The Los Angeles Times looks back on a troubling 10-year stretch, from 1984 to 1993, when more than 100 women were victims of a number of serial killers working in South L.A. and surrounding neighborhoods. The paper says, “During the years in which they were active, the South Los Angeles killers never earned the noir nicknames of the region’s other infamous killers – the Night Stalker, the Hillside Strangler. Those other crimes were notorious sagas that gained national attention and had parts of the metropolis in a state of panic. By contrast, few people in South L.A., including parents of victims, were even aware of a serial killer operating in their neighborhood – much less five or more.”
The Times continued, “While the more publicized cases had distinctive hallmarks, in South L.A. there were so many people being killed, almost all of them from the margins of society, that it was difficult for neighbors or police to pinpoint any patterns. The rapes and murders of dozens of young women were, effectively, lost in the crime wave.”