The Southside Slayer

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It was easy to get lost.
In the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties in

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Los Angeles, the city was rife
with turmoil, and entire neighborhoods sunk deep

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into decrepit disrepair from the ongoing crack
epidemic. Crime rates and hopelessness were high,

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higher than residents had ever seen them
before. For many, the future

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looked bleak. It was a little
surprised to find women as so haunted and

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murdered, especially in neighborhoods that were
known to harbor drug dealers and desperate,

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oftentimes homeless sex workers. Case after
case of murdered women piled up high on

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top of detective's desks, usually only
to be filed away and forgotten about when

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the next one came in. But
some of that changed in nineteen ninety eight

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when forty one year old Paula Vance
was killed. Unlike many of the women

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who'd come before her, Paula's brutal
assault and death by strangulation were all caught

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on security camera. Unfortunately, her
assailants remained a blurry, shadowy figure in

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the footage. Detective Cliff Shepherd was
put on the case, a case that

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would make a lasting impression on him, but with only a little amount of

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DNA evidence and unclear images to go
on, he had very little to work

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with. In two thousand and one, when he transferred to the LAPD's new

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cold case unit, he carried with
him the images of Paula's final mons moments

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and his heart and mind right up
to the lapse. Within the department.

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It took a while for the case
to gain some traction, but DNA evidence

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collected from Paula's scene came back with
the match for two other incidents. Mildred

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Beasley had been a forty five year
old homemaker on her way home to see

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some friends in nineteen ninety six when
she was assaulted and strangled. Her body

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had been left behind in some bushes
on the side of a freeway. The

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other match, however, came back
from a far more recent case. In

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two thousand and two, forty seven
year old Maria Martinez, who sold cigarettes

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outside a homeless shelter, was approached
by a man. He asked her for

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a lighter for his crack pipe before
dragging her to a deserted parking lot.

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There, he assaulted her for over
two hours. His victim managed to escape

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once but was caught, but when
she escaped again, she managed to break

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away and get to the police.
She led them right back to the homeless

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shelter, where the police found her
assailant hiding fully clothed inside the showers.

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His name was Chester Turner. Chester
had been born in Arkansas in nineteen sixty

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six, but had moved to Los
Angeles with his mother when he was five

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after his parents' divorce. Like so
many others around him, Chester Turner fell

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through the cracks. He lived with
his mother, going from her house her

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father's house, in prison for petty
crimes of theft and drug possession until his

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mother left town for Utah. After
that, Chester went from unreliable and unstable

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homes back to prison and onto homeless
shelters or skid row. He'd once managed

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to find work at a Domino's pizza, but by two thousand and two he'd

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mainly worked as a security guard for
the homeless shelter he was currently hiding in.

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When the police found him in the
showers that day, he was a

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burly six foot two man with scars
across his face. He pled guilty to

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the charge of rape, the first
violent crime that would go on his already

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lengthy record and would be followed by
many many more. It was his DNA

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that matched to the one found at
Paula Vance's scene and told the investigators that

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there could be more of Chester's victims
hiding within their system. They tested everything

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they could, dragging more results out
of the already backlog labs of the LAPD

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Still on the case, Detective Cliff
Sheppard talked about the chilling year that followed

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one that he later said seemed to
get a new hit every month. Chester

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was linked to the murders of ten
women and an additional four that would come

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up as testing continued. Many of
these women were assaulted and strangled during the

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initial weeks that Chester would be released
from prison after serving his sentences for petty

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crimes, usually after he'd been released
early. His first set of victims came

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from nineteen eighty seven and nineteen eighty
nine. In nineteen eighty seven, motorists

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along Harbor Freeway spotted the body of
twenty one year old Diane Johnson on the

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side of the road. She was
partially nude, had been assaulted and then

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strangled. After Diane was thirty three
year old Alandra Joyce Bunn She'd been badly

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beaten, suffered lacerations to her face
and neck, and had bloody eyes.

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She was found partially nude on top
of a pile of trash. Next was

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twenty six year old Annette Ernest.
She was also found partially nude and strangled,

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then dumped on a dirt shoulder of
Grand Avenue. From there. There

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were no matches to Chester Turner's DNA
from nineteen eighty eight, but the killings

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began again in nineteen eighty nine.
In January of that year, the body

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of thirty one year old Anita Fishman
Bryer was discovered outside of a garage off

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Figueroa Street. She'd struggled with drug
addictions and homelessness, making her an easy

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target for a man who by that
point had become used to stalking the streets.

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Later that year, the partially nude
body of twenty seven year old Regina

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Nadine Washington was discovered inside a garage
of that very same Figaroa Street. Like

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many of the others, she'd been
assaulted and strangled, but Regina's case came

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with some new chilling circumstances. Regina
had been six months pregnant at the time

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of her murder, her baby,
later referred to as Baby Washington, had

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died inside the womb, a direct
result of the death of its mother.

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The authorities believed that Regina's homicide was
not one murder but two, and added

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the death of Baby Washington to Chester
Turner's growing list of charges. Only a

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month later, twenty five year old
Desiree Lame Jones was found in the backyard

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of a vacant residence on Estrella Avenue. She'd also struggled with drug addictions,

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but was described by those close to
her as smart, outgoing, and funny.

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She worked at a home for the
elderly. Nineteen ninety five saw the

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final spree of assaults and killings.
Thirty one year old Natalie Jon Price had

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briefly left her friend's house to look
for a jacket she'd lost earlier that day.

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She never returned, and was instead
found near a vacant residence on Vermont

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Knowles after she'd been strangled to death. The next year, forty five year

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old Mildred Williams Beasley was killed after
her husband dropped her off to visit friends.

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She left behind a teenage son.
In nineteen ninety seven, it was

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thirty one year old Cynthia Johnson.
She was found strangled to death in Green

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Meadows, and her murder was followed
a year later by the woman who,

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in many ways was the key to
untangling this long chain of assault and brutal

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killings. In nineteen ninety eight,
thirty eight year old Paula Donnell Vance was

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found behind a local business. Almost
unbelievably, a total of five security cameras

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called portions of her final moments between
them, but never a clear image of

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the man who'd killed her. Camera
that managed to capture a lot of the

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assault in great detail would have clearly
shown her killer's face, but cut away

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only moments before he came in to
frame. Paula was, in many ways

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Chester's perfect victim. She'd suffered from
mental illness and was homeless. She went

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from place to place, sleeping wherever
she could find a place to lay her

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head, and didn't have anyone watching
out for her until detective Cliff Shepherd saw

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the footage of her murder. After
that, Chester temporarily got away with one

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more murder, the murder of thirty
nine year old Brenda Bryce. She was

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found strangled to death in a porta
potty, only fifty yards away from the

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hotel that Chester was living in at
the time. DNA evidence named Chester as

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the culprit, and he was taken
to court for her murder. He was

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serving eight years in the Sierra Conservation
Center for the rape of Maria Martinez when

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Chester Turner was charged with ten counts
of murder. He pleaded not guilty and

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was taken to court while four more
charges of murder came in. Chester now

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faced one trial of ten murders in
an additional four, but he maintained his

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innocence. His defense argued that Chester
had known and had been in contact with

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the victims because he sold them drugs, His DNA had been left on them

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and at the scenes because many of
these women had offered to pay for their

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drugs with sexual favors instead of money. The courts disagreed and found Chester guilty

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at his first trial. He was
then sentenced to death for his crimes.

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He was found guilty again at the
second trial, taking his official charges up

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to eleven counts of murder. He
received another death sentence. A lengthy and

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difficult journey of appeals began after that, coming all the way up to twenty

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twenty, where the courts reviewed his
sentences. His conviction for the murder of

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baby Washington was overturned, but his
sentence for the murder of his other fourteen

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victims was upheld. He currently sits
on death row in San Quentin State Prison

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awaiting his execution. That's ten minute
Murder for today brief and bingeable true crime.

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I'm Joe. I'm the host,
and thank you for taking the time

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to listen to ten minute Murder.
If you'd like to get in touch with

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me, you can do that Joe
at ten minute Murder dot com. You

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can also go to the website there
and find everything you need to know about

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the show, places to listen,
social media links. All that stuff is

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at ten minute Murder dot com.
And an email from one of you listening.

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Hello Joe. My name is Roxanne, but I usually go by Rocks.

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I'm wondering. You've done this podcast
for a while now and I love

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it, but other times when you're
like I just don't have the energy for

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this today, or struggle with self
doubt. I know it's a strange question,

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but I'm just curious. Rocks and
Charlotte, thank you Rocks for the

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email and the answer is, yeah, I'm a normal human being. There

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are absolutely days when I don't want
to do the podcast. That's mostly because

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the topic is so heavy that I
need a little mental vacation from time to

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time, and the self doubt.
Absolutely you're listening to a guy that can't

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spell restaurants without the aid of spell
check. I'm pretty self deprecating anyway,

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So on those days when I'm struggling
a bit mentally, I do wonder why

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many of you choose to listen to
this dummy talk about true crime, and

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not that you ask, but let
me give you a huge reason why I

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actually do this podcast. I do
it because, in my weird way,

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this is how I can shine a
spotlight on the mental health crisis that exists

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not just here in America but all
over the place. For so many years,

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the stigma of being mentally unwell was
kind of a taboo subject. If

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it was bad enough, your family
would PLoP you into a special home or

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a hospital so that they didn't have
to deal with you. They were embarrassed

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by you. So if you were
a person that tiptoes the line of being

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mentally unwell, you kept that stuff
inside. You kept it to yourself until

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one day you might crack. What's
going on with mental health crisis today.

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It's not perfect, but I believe
it's getting better. And if you're listening

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to me right now and you know
that you're struggling with your mental health and

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it's unchecked, I hope that you
will seek help. So, if you've

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noticed an underlying theme to most of
these episodes of ten Minute Murder, it's

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mental illness or being raised by abusive
or absent parents or guardians. And thanks

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for coming to my Ted Talk.
That's it. That's your episode for today.

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If you're off to binge Moore,
go right ahead, and thanks for

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listening to ten Minute Murder