A person Los Angeles prosecutors as soon as described as one of many metropolis’s most prolific serial killers has been charged with one other slaying: a lady in Utah within the late Nineteen Nineties.
Utah authorities on Friday introduced the submitting of an aggravated homicide cost towards Chester Turner within the killing of 22-year-old Itisha Camp in Salt Lake Metropolis, the place Turner had moved after absconding from parole in California.
Turner is on dying row within the San Quentin Rehabilitation Heart after being convicted of killing 14 girls within the Nineteen Eighties and ‘90s alongside the Figueroa Hall, an space then infamous for intercourse work, drug crimes and violence. Most of his victims had been raped and strangled.
“It should have been profoundly tough for Ms. Camp’s household and family members during the last 25 years, not understanding if the suspect in her homicide was nonetheless out within the public,” Salt Lake County Dist. Atty. Sim Gill mentioned in a assertion. “We hope the submitting of this cost brings some aid to Ms. Camp’s family members and our whole group, understanding that the defendant is already behind bars.”
Gill mentioned the case was solved due to the diligence of Salt Lake police chilly case investigators.
Camp’s physique was discovered by three youngsters in a stairwell behind a enterprise south of the town’s downtown in September 1998. She had a shawl round her neck, and an post-mortem revealed she had been strangled. Investigators additionally found proof that she could have been sexually assaulted.
DNA from the headscarf was uploaded into CODIS — the FBI’s nationwide Mixed DNA Index System — which led investigators to Turner, in accordance with authorities.
In accordance with a submit on the Utah Division of Public Security’s web site, Camp had been within the metropolis for less than two or three weeks earlier than her physique was discovered. She had supported herself by doing intercourse work within the South State Road space, the submit mentioned.
Detectives later realized that Turner had moved to Utah from California the identical yr, in violation of his parole. The investigation turned up a police report from an assault in Salt Lake Metropolis in 1998, wherein Turner was listed as a sufferer.
Turner, a one-time pizza deliveryman, was one among a minimum of 5 serial killers who preyed on victims in South L.A. within the Nineteen Eighties and ‘90s, across the peak of the town’s crack-cocaine epidemic.
Police initially suspected others in three killings of which Turner was finally convicted. They charged and convicted a part-time janitor within the 1992 slayings of Mary Edwards and Deborah Williams. That man spent 11 years behind bars earlier than DNA checks exonerated him and implicated Turner in 2004.
One other man was charged in reference to the dying of Cynthia Annette Johnson, who was killed in 1997. The case towards the person was later dropped, and Turner was convicted of her homicide.
