Sometimes, when I think there is potential for different formats to say different things about a particular story, I go ahead and shoot them both and see where things fall as the piece moves along.  For the Grim Sleeper work, there was a strong thematic reason to shoot Polaroids: the alleged killer catalogued hundreds of women using a Polaroid camera.  Many of those women were among the dead who turned up discarded in alleys over the killer’s three-decade murder spree.  The original post –complete with the digital format the magazine ultimately went with –is available here: http://luceoimages.com/2012/01/grim-sleeper-for-time-magazine-part-i/  If you’re unfamiliar with the story, you can get a little more background by reading it.  Captions for each image appear in sequence below each picture.

Pictured Above: Lonnie Franklin’s house in South Los Angeles.  Police allege that Franklin is responsible for a string of murders of mostly young women over a thirty year span of time.  Franklin was linked to the crimes through familial DNA, a controversial and new forensics technique that allows investigators to search for partial DNA matches rather than direct ones.  After Franklin’s arrest, police discovered a trove of Polaroid photographs of victims they believe Franklin killed.

The alley where 15 year-old Princess Berthomieux’s body was discovered.  She had been strangled and discarded in the shrubs and was discovered by passersby several days after being killed.  Berthomieux is believed to be one of Franklin’s later victims, having been killed sometime in early March of 2001.  The alley is just blocks from Franklin’s home in South Los Angeles.  

A discarded doll rests among debris in an alley where Debra Jackson’s body was discovered in 1985.  Jackson is the Grim Sleeper’s first known victim; she was shot three times in the chest.  Three years passed in the wake of her murder before ballistics results indicated that a larger string of murders was occurring.  

Grafitti marks he exact spot in the alley where Barbara Ware’s body was discovered in 1987.  Police allege that Franklin called 911 himself to report the body being dumped.  The caller explains that someone “threw her out … the only thing that’s hanging out of ‘dis … like he threw a gas tank on top of her and, uh … and, uh only thing you can see out is her feet.”  Ware was discovered sandwiched among auto parts, brush, and trash.  

Flowers mark the approximate spot where 18 year-old Alicia Alexander’s body was discovered in September of 1988.  Alexander is thought to be Franklin’s eigth victim, however police are unable to affix a precise count and believe that other victims may be buried along with the city’s trash in one of Los Angeles’ dumps.  Several women in Franklin’s Polaroid collection have yet to be identified or located; Franklin worked as a trash collector in these very same alleys during the 1980s.  

Detective Dennis Kilcoyne and Jill Spriggs.  Kilcoyne took on the role of Lead Detective on the Grim Sleeper case and is credited with cracking the investigation after it remained unsolved for decades.  Spriggs is the chief of the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Forensic Services.  She oversees the laboratory which helped match Franklin to the Grim Sleeper murders using familial DNA.  

Sometimes, when I think there is potential for different formats to say different things about a particular story, I go ahead and shoot them both and see where things fall as the piece moves along.  For the Grim Sleeper work, there was a strong thematic reason to shoot Polaroids: the alleged killer catalogued hundreds ...