The serial killer known as the “Grim Sleeper” was sentenced to death by the Los Angeles County Superior Court on Wednesday. His real name is Lonnie David Franklin Jr, now 63. His story plays like a horror movie.

Franklin used to work as a garbage collector in Los Angeles, where he killed at least 10 young women in the span of 22 years, from 1985 to 2007. He got his nickname because he seemed to be inactive between 1988 and 2002. But detectives believe he might have killed many more women within those years, and maybe wasn’t inactive at all.

Franklin faced the court on Wednesday morning with many family members of his victims present. He was convicted earlier this year of killing ten women. Investigators said he repeatedly denied killing anyone, and he didn’t utter a word at the trial. His defense lawyers suggested the real killer was someone else, and asked for his life to be spared.

The "Grim Sleeper" Lonnie David Franklin Jr. is sentenced to death after killing 10 women in South LA from 1985-2007 pic.twitter.com/8RfDRIEYrG

— AJ+ (@ajplus) August 10, 2016

Some people in the community say the “Grim Sleeper” was probably able to carry on his horrible killings for so long because he targeted poor, black women who were either drug addicts or prostitutes. Such women were not always reported missing, and were not high priorities for police.

In most of the murders, Franklin shot them and then left them in the trash or along the road. But one of his shooting victims managed to get away, and her statement, combined with DNA and ballistic evidence, led to Franklin’s conviction.

Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman described Franklin in her brief as “a psychopathic, sadistic serial killer who takes joy in inflicting pain on women and killing them.”

The mother of one victim said in court that he took her daughter’s life and put her in a trash bag. She hoped life in jail would become his trash bag, she said. But Judge Kathleen Kennedy gave him the death penalty, saying, “This is not a sentence of vengeance.” She added: “It’s justice.”

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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The year 2015 will be marked by many advances for the transgender community, both in the media (hello Caitlyn Jenner) and in legislatures across the United States and the world. All in all, 2015 was a year when transgender rights came further into the forefront of our daily lives and vocabulary. But there was a dark side to 2015 as well. Somehow, even though trans rights were gaining ground, it was still the year with the most trans murders on record. Read on to learn about the transgender murder crisis in 2015.

Why Are Trans People Getting Murdered?

Many of the trans people who were murdered in 2015 were victims of hate crimes. Even worse, the majority were perpetrated against transgender women of color.

Hate crimes, specifically those against people identifying with a certain gender, have occurred for years. But these crimes came into the spotlight in 2009 when Congress passed the Matthew Shepard Act, which added gender identity to the list of possible motivations for hate crimes. The act also requires the FBI to track statistics on gender identity-motivated hate crimes, but those statistics rely on voluntary reporting from law enforcement agencies and many believe that they are grossly underestimated. These crimes may be undercounted because police officers may not report the murders of trans people as hate crimes–or treat these murders like hate crimes–because their gender is often misidentified.

Who are the victims?

Some of the victims, such as Mercedes Williamson and Keyshia Blige, were killed by strangers in the typical sense of a hate crime–people who didn’t want someone different, or outside of their norm, in their community. There is also a subset of these murders that were committed by loved ones. Around half of the transgender murders in 2015 were committed by people who knew their victims. Two examples include Yazmin Vash Payne, who was killed by her boyfriend after an argument, and Bri Golec, who was stabbed to death by her father.

How Many Trans Murders Were There in 2015?

According to the Human Rights campaign, there were at least 21 murders specifically of trans individuals in the United States in the first 10 months of 2015. But these are only the murders that were reported and identified by that group, and only includes part of the year. Other counts put that statistic higher, but the fact of the matter is that based on the available data, we do not know how many trans murders occured. Even then, the 21 identified by the Human Rights campaign marks a notable increase from previous years. In 2013, there were at least 19 murders of trans people and in 2014, there were at least 13.

The true number is almost certainly higher. There have been many articles in the last couple of months detailing the attacks and profiling the victims of these attacks, which flips the normal crime story on its head (since most crime stories talk only about the perpetrator rather than the victims). These profiles and articles were mainly released before November 20, which is the Transgender Day of Remembrance in the United States. There were also protests surrounding the Day of Remembrance where people lay in the streets, feigning death in order to draw attention to this seemingly invisible problem.

Official hate crime statistics from the FBI for the 2015 calendar year won’t be released until later in the year, but that only includes incidents identified as hate crimes and are widely regarded as an undercount of the actual number.

Why the FBI Stats are Lacking

According to the hate crime statistics released by the FBI last November for the 2014 calendar year, there were only 109 gender-identity motivated hate crimes, of which only 23 fit into the FBI’s violent crime category. However, the FBI’s hate crime numbers are thought to be considerably lower than the actual number of offenses. This is because the statistics are voluntarily submitted by law enforcement agencies, many of which reported zero hate crimes in 2014. The Human Rights Campaign even identified crimes that should have been considered hate crimes but were not appropriately reported. In fact, the FBI’s 2014 statistics indicate that of the 4,048 total hate crimes classified as “crimes against persons,” only four were murders, and that includes all potential bias motivations, not just gender identity.

While each jurisdiction has its own reasons for the differing data submissions to the FBI, problems with the statistics could be due to the fact that these crimes may look like accidents. Also, murders aren’t typically considered hate crimes when they are committed by a family member, friend, or partner. Police may also have trouble identifying victims as transgender in the first place, making it harder for data to be accurately gathered–many of the victims identified by the Human Rights Campaign weren’t identified as transgender by the police or media. For these reasons, among others, these murders aren’t being thought of or investigated as hate crimes and are not being reported to the FBI as such.

There is little that the FBI can do about this–it relies entirely on information provided by law enforcement across the country. So it doesn’t matter how many protests take place–as long as law enforcement doesn’t consider these murders to be hate crimes, they will not be included in the FBI’s statistical reports. However, this also provides a glimmer of hope for the trans and LGBTQ community at large. The number of crimes that are classified as hate crimes is getting larger each year, including the number of hate crimes motivated by a person’s gender identity. In fact, 2014’s number is triple the amount of reported hate crimes motivated by gender identity in 2013. The rate of murders against transgender people may not change that much from year-to-year, instead, they may be getting reported more regularly. Therefore, there is hope that the statistics that the FBI releases may be much closer to accurate in the future.

What Can Be Done?

There are several things that can be done to decrease the number of transgender murders in the future. The first is already underway–the FBI has begun keeping track of statistics for hate crimes involving gender identity. The FBI only started gathering statistics on gender identity motivated hate crimes five years ago. There is a lot of room for growth in how the FBI gathers the information for these statistics, but improvement has so far been made each year. Hopefully, these hate crime statistics will give the country–including law enforcement and legislators–an idea of what is happening in the United States and what else needs to be done to protect transgender people. Congress recently created a Transgender Equality Task Force to help identify issues that transgender people face, which according to advocates should include tracking incidents of violence.

Allies and education are other key ways to prevent the murders of transgender people in the future. When any marginalized group of people has allies on their side, it is easier to fight back. Allies, in this case, are people who do not identify as transgender but who support the causes important to transgender people, such as safe spaces and the legal right to be recognized as an individual’s identified gender. Education about what it is like to be transgender is another small thing that can go a long way. Both trans people and allies can work to educate people throughout the country, hopefully helping develop a broader sense of understanding of what it is like to be transgender and what kinds of rights transgender people are still fighting for.

A Look at the Numbers

There is some good news: trans support in the United States is increasing. In April 2015, the Human Rights Campaign noted that the number of people who say they know a transgender person is up 5 percent from the previous year, and 66 percent of those people look favorably on their transgender acquaintances. The percentage of people who were polled by YouGov as saying that they believe being transgender is immoral is down to 31 percent. While it’s still unclear what the actual transgender population is in the United States–FiveThirtyEight postulates that many of the people who claim to not know any transgender people likely do–each person’s choice on how broadly to share their personal life differs.

All of these statistics show a changing tide in the fight for transgender rights, and also show that younger generations are even more likely to support transgender rights and fight for an end to violence against the trans population.

Conclusion

In 2015, there were at least 21 transgender women who were the victims of murders across the United States. 2015 also marked the highest number of murders against transgender people on record. These murders were committed by both strangers and loved ones of the victims, and they have been classified as hate crimes by activists and by the people who were close to the victims. But until law enforcement consistently reports on the set of criteria that would classify transgender murders as hate crimes, the statistics that the FBI is required to release each year will fall short of being accurate. While we do not yet have reliable statistics about murders and hate crimes against transgender people, as awareness increases that will likely improve. While there are many ways to support transgender people–including activism–the most effective way to shrink the number of murders in the future is to compile and release accurate statistics that would show these crimes for what they are. Until then, these sad and gruesome crimes will continue to occur, and transgender people will continue to be victimized.

Resources

Primary

The Federal Bureau of Investigation: FBI Releases 2014 Hate Crimes Statistics

The Federal Bureau of Investigation: Matthew Shepard/James Byrd Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 Brochure

Additional

The New York Times: Obama Calls for End to ‘Conversion’ Therapies for Gay and Transgender Youth

Vanity Fair: Caitlyn Jenner: The Full Story

Rolling Stone: The 5 Best and Worst Trans Moments of 2015

Slate: Five Things Trans People Teach Us All About Ourselves

Huffington Post: Lives Guided By Fear: In Honor of the Transgender Day of Remembrance

Human Rights Campaign: Addressing Anti-Transgender Violence: Exploring Realities, Challenges, and Solutions for Policymakers and Community Advocates

Huffington Post: What Does Transgender Day of Remembrance Mean to the Trans Community?

Broadly: ‘He’s Not Done Killing Her’: Why So Many Trans Women Were Murdered in 2015

Broadly: A Crisis of Violence: Transgender Murders Increased 84% This Year

Vice: Trans Women of Color Face an Epidemic of Violence and Murder

Fusion: 20 Trans People Were Murdered This Year. This is What Happened.

Mother Jones: It’s Incredibly Scary to Be a Transgender Woman of Color Right Now

Time: Why Transgender People Are Being Murdered at a Historic Rate

Rolling Stone: More Trans People Have Been Killed in 2015 Than Ever Before

Crime Museum: History of Hate Crime

The Williams Institute: Suicide Attempts Among Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Adults

USA Today: Transgender People Face an Alarmingly High Risk of Suicide

Think Progress: As 2015 Sees a Record Number of Documented Transgender Murders, a Glimmer of Hope

Human Rights Campaign: Survey Shows Striking Increase in Americans Who Know and Support Transgender People

YouGov: One-third Think it is Morally Wrong to be Transgender

FiveThirtyEight: Most Americans Say They Don’t Know a Transgender Person – But Many of Them Probably Do

Huffington Post: The Kids Are All Right with Transgender Rights

Amanda Gernentz Hanson

Amanda Gernentz Hanson is a Minnesota native living in Austin, Texas. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Hope College and a Master’s degree in Technical Communication from Minnesota State University, where her final project discussed intellectual property issues in freelancing and blogging. Amanda is an instructional designer full time, a freelance writer part time, and a nerd always. Contact Amanda at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Transgender Murder Crisis: Why Were There So Many Killings in 2015? appeared first on Law Street.

Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump recently tweeted out some blatantly false statistics about murder in the United States. The tweet, which featured a graphic breaking down “USA Crime Statistics ~ 2015,” not only gets the facts about crime wrong but does so in a way that is pretty clearly racist.

Here’s the tweet:

“@SeanSean252: @WayneDupreeShow @Rockprincess818 @CheriJacobus pic.twitter.com/5GUwhhtvyN“

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2015

The graphic claims that the statistics are from the “Crime Statistics Bureau – San Francisco,” which does not actually exist. The San Francisco Police Department does have a Crime Analysis Unit that releases crime statistics, but it doesn’t publish information about the racial makeup of victims and offenders. For those statistics, we have to rely on the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR), which is a comprehensive report of offenses known to law enforcement in cities, states, and regions across the United States. The UCR is the most authoritative source for crime statistics in the United States–Law Street uses it to rank the Safest and Most Dangerous Cities and States in America.

According to the Crime in the United States report for 2014, the most recent statistics available, Trump’s numbers are clearly off. In total, 5,472 black and white Americans were murdered in cases where the race of both the victim and the offender are known. Here’s the breakdown according to the report’s supplementary homicide table:

Blacks killed by whites: 7.6 percent

Whites killed by blacks: 14.8 percent

Whites killed by whites: 82.4 percent

Blacks killed by blacks: 90 percent

The most blatant inaccuracy in Trump’s statistics is his claim that 81 percent of white victims were killed by a black offender. In reality, that number is about 15 percent, and the number of black victims killed by white offenders is nearly four times higher than Trump’s statistics claim.

Generally speaking, most murders involve a victim and offender of the same race–so no, there is not a massive inequality in the number of white people killed by black people. It is also important to note that when you look at cases where the relationship between the victim and the offender is known, most murder victims already know their assailant–meaning that murder by a stranger is much less likely than murder by a victim’s friend, family member, or acquaintance.

Trump’s tweet also comes after a notably crude statement that he made a couple days earlier. After a protestor interrupted Trump at a rally in Alabama yelling, “black lives matter,” a fight broke out and the protestor was badly beaten. Trump was asked about the incident later and said, “maybe he should have been roughed up because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.” He made a similarly controversial statement back in August after a homeless Hispanic man was badly beaten; one of the two alleged perpetrators cited Trump as his inspiration. When asked about it, Trump simply said,

I will say, the people that are following me are very passionate. They love this country. They want this country to be great again. But they are very passionate. I will say that.

In both cases, Trump refused to denounce what happened, all but condoning the violence.

Trump’s recent tweet isn’t the first time that he’s been called out for playing fast and loose with evidence–though it may be the first time he’s trumpeted completely fabricated numbers. When Trump announced that he was running for president he kicked off his campaign with a clearly offensive comment about Mexican immigrants. He said,

They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.

He later tried to back up his claim citing an article from Fusion reporting the tragic finding that as many as 80 percent of all Central American girls who try to cross the border are raped in the process. Trump decided that the article supported his previous statements and when pressed to explain the connection, he said, “someone’s doing the raping.”

Despite all of these tenuous and inaccurate claims, Trump has retained a remarkably high level of support among conservative voters. In fact, he is notoriously difficult to fact check. Even when he cites blatantly wrong statistics or does a television interview where he repeatedly makes false claims, his comments, unfortunately, have no effect on his high poll numbers. We’ll have to see if this total mischaracterization of crime data is any different.

See more from Law Street–the authoritative source for crime data: Crime in America 2016

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

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