Chester Dewayne Turner, 40, a convicted serial killer...

Chester Dewayne Turner, 40, a convicted serial killer, has been sentenced to death in Los Angeles. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge William Pounders upheld the sentence.
He was convicted for the murders of 10 women, and in the death of one of his victim's unborn child. The victims were: Paula Vance, 38, Brenda Bries, 37, Diane Johnson, 21, Annette Ernest, 26, Anita Fishman, 31, Regina Washington, 27 (Washington was six months pregnant. The death of the fetus was attributed to the strangulation of the mother, and it was ruled a homicide), Andrea Tripplett, 29, Desarae Jones, 29, Natalie Price, 31, Mildred Beasley, 45. All the murders occurred in Los Angeles between 1987 and 1998. Turner pleaded not guilty to all of the murders.
The cases went cold until 2001, when the Cold Case Unit began testing foreign DNA recovered from the Vance crime scene.
At that time, Turner was serving an eight-year sentence at a California state prison for sexually assaulting a woman in March 2002. Upon his conviction, Turner was required to give a DNA sample to California’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS). In September 2003, based on that sample, Turner was identified as a match for DNA recovered from Vance and Beasley.
Detectives then began a careful examination of Turner’s background. Nine of the 11 unsolved murders were matched to Turner using DNA evidence.
During the investigation of these cases, detectives also reviewed similar solved cases. In doing so, the detectives found that David Allen Jones had been convicted of three murders that occurred in the same area where Turner was known to be operating: Tammie Christmas, Debra Williams, 32, Mary Edwards, 42.
The LAPD Crime Laboratory processed the available evidence using the latest DNA applications. It was discovered that Turner was responsible for two of the murders for which Jones had been convicted — those of Williams and Edwards. Although DNA analysis could not be used to reinvestigate the Christmas murder, prosecutors and police are confident that Jones is innocent of the Christmas murder and that Turner is the likely culprit.
During his trial, Jones had also been convicted of a rape unrelated to the murders. He had served out his sentence for the 2000 rape conviction. The new investigation revealed that the blood-typing evidence did not match the blood types found at the crimes for which he spent 11 years in prison, and he was exonerated as a murderer. Jones was released from prison in March 2004, and has filed a lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles. Jones, 44, was released in 2004 after 11 years in prison and was awarded $720,000 in compensation.