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During a 10-year period beginning in 1984, multiple serial killers targeted young, poor, African American women across the south side of the city and county, the Los Angeles Times says in a story by reporters Scott Gold and Andrew Blankstein. Five suspected killers have already been named, but they so far account for only 30 of the murders.
Biological evidence suggests that at least two more men, who have not been apprehended, were each responsible for at least four more deaths, officials said. That would mean at least seven serial killers were preying on women in the same neighborhood at roughly the same time....Few people in South L.A., including parents of victims, were even aware of a serial killer operating in their neighborhood — much less five or more. While the more publicized cases had distinctive hallmarks, in South L.A. there were so many people being killed, almost all of them from the margins of society, that it was difficult for neighbors or police to pinpoint any patterns.
The rapes and murders of dozens of young women were, effectively, lost in the crime wave.