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Serial Killer Chester Turner Has Been Linked to 14 Murders — Where Is He Now?
Turner was once considered L.A.'s "most prolific serial killer," but he wasn't the only one targeting upward of 100 Black women in the '80s and '90s.
Investigators in the City of Angels scrambled to find not one but several independent killers targeting Black women in the 1980s and 1990s, as detailed in a new true-crime special now available to watch on Oxygen.
Serial Killer Capital: Los Angeles gives audiences a front seat to an elusive killer known as the “Southside Slayer,” once believed to be a single killer strangling and shooting his victims in south central Los Angeles. Dozens of victims were primarily Black women who’d fallen prey to the city’s crack-cocaine epidemic and turned to sex work.
“Families were devastated — and frustrated — as the body count rose and the bloodshed wreaked havoc on their community. But the truly terrifying details of this story came to light when investigators discovered a horrifying truth: the Southside Slayer wasn’t one man, but four separate serial killers operating at the same time in the same place," per a series description.
One such perpetrator would be Chester Turner, 57, a former pizza delivery man and security guard at a local mission where he often stayed, according to the Los Angeles Daily News, convicted of raping and murdering 14 women.
Where is Chester Turner now?
Since 2002, Turner has been on “condemned” status at the Richard J. Donavan Correctional Facility in San Diego, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (C.D.C.R.). The status was once reserved for men who’d been sentenced to death row and housed at San Quentin State Prison. However, a 2016 ballot proposition (a.k.a. Prop 66) made it so condemned men could be held elsewhere in the state so long as necessary security was provided.
While Turner is still “condemned,” Gov. Gavin Newsom’s moratorium on the death penalty — instated in 2019 — makes it so a possible execution date will remain in limbo unless the executive order is lifted, according to C.D.C.R.
Condemned people in California are not subject to parole.
Turner’s prison has been shared by several infamous individuals over the years, including the Menéndez brothers, former Death Row Records C.E.O. Suge Knight, R.F.K. assassin Sirhan Sirhan, and Manson Family killer Charles “Tex” Watson.
What did Chester Turner do?
Turner was a person who raped and strangled no less than 14 women, most of whom were killed near Figueroa Street south of the 10 Freeway between 1987 and 1998, according to ABC Los Angeles affiliate KABC-TV. Most — if not, all — of the victims were Black women who found themselves involved in sex work.
As featured in Serial Killer Capital: Los Angeles, Turner was initially arrested in 2002 for raping a transient woman named Maria Martinez behind a dumpster, though Martinez survived the attack. The victim recognized the assailant from Midnight Mission, a homeless shelter where Turner worked and sometimes stayed in the men’s ward.
She reported her rape to the shelter’s authorities.
“Chester Turner was arrested, and charged, and convicted of raping Ms. Martinez,” Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Bobby Grace told Serial Killer Capital: Los Angeles, “Mr. Turner gave a DNA sample to the police and began serving time in state prison for the rape of Ms. Martinez.”
In the early 2000s, several officials within L.A.’s Robbery-Homicide division created the Cold Case Unit, tasked with looking back at the murders committed by the “Southside Slayer.” DNA from 14 of those cases would match the DNA submitted by Turner in connection to the Martinez rape conviction.
Detectives said he lived and moved around with his mother and typically found his victims within walking distance.
About Chester Turner’s Victims
Turner murdered 14 women in total, strangling them and leaving their bodies in various locations around the city, such as alleyways and behind businesses. Before the 2014 convictions and later confessions of serial killer Sam Little, Turner was widely considered to be L.A.’s “most prolific serial killer.”
One of his victims, 27-year-old Regina Washington, was six months pregnant when strangled to death in September 1989, her body discovered in a detached garage of a vacant home, the Los Angeles Times reported. Although Turner was initially convicted for the unborn child’s murder, the California Supreme Court reversed the decision in 2022 after a panel heard expert testimony concerning the guidelines of the fetus’s viability. The other 14 murder convictions, however, were upheld.
Turner’s other victims, according to KABC-TV, included Diane Johnson, 21; Annette Ernest, 26; Anita Fishman, 31; Desarae Jones, 29; Andrea Tripplett, 29; Debra Williams, 32; Mary Edwards, 42; Natalie Price, 31; Mildred Beasley, 45; Paula Vance, 41; Brenda Bries, 37; Cynthia Johnson, 30; and Elandra Bunn, 34.
Then, on June 14, 2024, DNA connected Turner to the 1998 murder of 21-year-old Itisha Camp, who was found fatally strangled by a scarf in Salt Lake City, Utah, according to CBS News. Like Turner’s other victims, Camp was reportedly involved in sex work and, according to KABC-TV, Turner had fled to Utah that year to avoid charges related to auto theft and drugs, thus violating his parole.
The Utah case against Turner is still pending.
Turner’s victims were lumped together with victims belonging to other L.A.-based serial killers who were eventually caught, including Louis Craine, Michael Hughes, and Lonnie Franklin, a.k.a. the Grim Sleeper.
According to the investigators featured in Serial Killer Capital: Los Angeles, the four serial killers combined might be responsible for the murders of up to 105 women.
Watch Serial Killer Capital: Los Angeles, now available to watch on Oxygen.
