A man described by prosecutors as the city’s most prolific serial killer deserves the death penalty for the murders of 10 women and a fetus in the 1980s and 1990s, a jury said Tuesday.
A judge will consider the jury’s recommendation and impose a sentence for Chester Turner at a July 10 hearing.
Turner, 40, was convicted last month of the serial killings and special circumstances of multiple murder and murder committed during rape.
During the penalty phase, jurors had only two choices: death or life in prison without parole.
The former pizza delivery man is already serving an eight-year prison sentence for the 2002 rape of a woman near downtown. His DNA in that case linked him to the serial killings, which spanned from 1987 to 1998.
Eight of the killings occurred close to where Turner lived in South Los Angeles, in neighborhoods ravaged by a crack cocaine epidemic and rife with prostitution.
One victim was found slumped over a portable toilet, another in front of a crack house. Two victims were killed downtown.
Andrea Tripplett, 29, was 5½ months pregnant when she was strangled in April 1993. Turner was convicted of second-degree murder in the death of the fetus.