’Tales From the Grim Sleeper’ Verdict: Serial Killer Profiled In Documentary Convicted Of 10 Murders
Lonnie David Franklin, the so-called "Grim Sleeper" profiled in Nick Broomfield's recent documentary "Tales of the Grim Sleeper," was found guilty on Thursday of murdering 10 Southern California people (9 women and one teenage girl) over the span of three decades. As CNN notes, The conviction marks Franklin as one of the most prolific serial killers in California history. The verdict was issues after a two-day deliberation and a three-month trial that included the testimony of 61 witnesses. Franklin picked up the "Grim Sleeper" moniker because of the elongated gap between slayings (nearly 13 years), all of which occurred in and around Franklin's South Los Angeles home. CNN reports, "prosecutors portrayed Franklin as a sexual predator who killed his victims, then dumped their bodies like the trash he was paid to collect." The outlet also adds that "police linked Franklin to the crimes in 2010 using DNA...
- 5/6/2016
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
It seems with each passing year the flood of year end lists are published earlier and earlier, assuring that at least a handful of films deserving a place on any given list are missed due to a lack of time and opportunity. Even here at Ioncinema.com, posting my list after the calender year has actually closed, it feels a little premature writing up a list, knowing there are plenty of films that I’ve yet to see due to a lack of screenings nearby – Mr. Turner, Foxcatcher, Leviathan, Winter Sleep and Selma just to name a few. I should note that it seems there is a lack of international releases on this list as well, but rest assured, of the many I saw this year, most won’t reach a domestic release until sometime in 2015, so films like Christian Petzold’s Phoenix, Tsai Ming-liang’s Journey to the West,...
- 1/5/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Our Nyff coverage continues - here is Jason on the serial-killer documentary Tales of the Grim Sleeper.
As much as Tales of the Grim Sleeper is about telling the tales of the South Central Los Angeles based serial killer, who killed anywhere from ten to over a hundred women, presumed to be mostly drug addicts and prostitutes, over the course of twenty-plus years, Nick Broomfield's tremendously effective documentary slowly reveals itself to be more than these pieces - really its the very existence of these pieces, and the crew's ability to suss them out one after the other, that forms the true tale, which is one of a police department's indifference to the horrors being visited upon a poor, black community already destroyed by poverty, drugs and violence, and what those blind eyes have helped wreak.
Step back and look at what I just wrote to maybe assess some...
As much as Tales of the Grim Sleeper is about telling the tales of the South Central Los Angeles based serial killer, who killed anywhere from ten to over a hundred women, presumed to be mostly drug addicts and prostitutes, over the course of twenty-plus years, Nick Broomfield's tremendously effective documentary slowly reveals itself to be more than these pieces - really its the very existence of these pieces, and the crew's ability to suss them out one after the other, that forms the true tale, which is one of a police department's indifference to the horrors being visited upon a poor, black community already destroyed by poverty, drugs and violence, and what those blind eyes have helped wreak.
Step back and look at what I just wrote to maybe assess some...
- 10/8/2014
- by JA
- FilmExperience
In Broomfield We Trust: Docu-helmer Hits the Pavement on Decades Sprawling South Central Serial Murder Case
Harkening back to his fascination with the backwoods serial killer of his Aileen films while expanding upon the police corruption found within the Biggie & Tupac murder cases, Tales of the Grim Sleeper sees director Nick Broomfield enter into the poverty stricken war zone that is South Central, conducting his own thorough investigation of the politically repressed Grim Sleeper serial murders, all the while garnering the trust and respect of those closest to the killings, almost all of whom were never spoken to by detectives supposedly on the case. There are a great many themes and ideas that reoccur in Broomfield’s oeuvre – death, deception, systemic corruption, bureaucratic racism, cultures ravaged by destitution – and above all, empathy and trust (or lack of). Once again the provocateur brings these socially paramount discussions to the fore, this...
Harkening back to his fascination with the backwoods serial killer of his Aileen films while expanding upon the police corruption found within the Biggie & Tupac murder cases, Tales of the Grim Sleeper sees director Nick Broomfield enter into the poverty stricken war zone that is South Central, conducting his own thorough investigation of the politically repressed Grim Sleeper serial murders, all the while garnering the trust and respect of those closest to the killings, almost all of whom were never spoken to by detectives supposedly on the case. There are a great many themes and ideas that reoccur in Broomfield’s oeuvre – death, deception, systemic corruption, bureaucratic racism, cultures ravaged by destitution – and above all, empathy and trust (or lack of). Once again the provocateur brings these socially paramount discussions to the fore, this...
- 9/10/2014
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
I don't typically check out documentaries when I attend film festivals, but I think I might have to make an exception for Nick Broomfield's Tales of the Grim Sleeper at this year's Toronto Festival as the director of such docs as Aileen Wuornos: Portrait of a Serial Killer and Biggie and Tupac digs into the case of the notorious serial killer known as the "Grim Sleeper," who terrorized South Central Los Angeles over a span of twenty-five years. The nickname comes as a result of what appears to be a 14-year hiatus between his crimes, from 1988 to 2002. The doc is clearly meant to look into the fact the police have had Lonnie David Franklin Jr., 57, in custody for over four years now and there just may be more than a shadow of a doubt he did not do it. As the trailer notes, police officer Ricky Ross was,...
- 8/21/2014
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
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