A man who murdered 14 women in Los Angeles from 1987-98 has been charged with killing another woman in Utah, authorities said this week.
Chester Turner, 57, is currently in state prison in California for killing 14 women in a several-mile area along Figueroa Street south of the 10 Freeway. The victims were mostly sex workers and/or homeless women, and one of them was pregnant.
Prosecutors once called him the city’s most prolific serial killer, and said most of his victims were also raped.
On Friday, June 14, the Salt Lake City District Attorney’s Office announced that Turner was charged with the murder of Itisha Camp, whose body was found at the back of a business on Sept. 24, 1998 by three juveniles. Prosecutors say she was killed by strangulation; most of Turner’s victims in Los Angeles were strangled.
Utah authorities say they linked Camp’s killing to Turner through DNA evidence. They said Turner fled to Utah in 1998 in violation of his parole in California for auto theft and drug sales.
“It must have been profoundly difficult for Ms. Camp’s family and loved ones over the last 25 years, not knowing if the suspect in her murder was still out in the public,” Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill said. “We hope the filing of this charge brings some relief to Ms. Camp’s loved ones and our entire community, knowing that the defendant is already behind bars.”
Turner was convicted in April 2007 of 10 counts of first-degree murder, and was subsequently convicted and sentenced to death in 2014 for the four other killings. His appeal for those four murders is still pending.
Turner was initially convicted of murdering:
— Diane Johnson, 21, who was found dead in March 1987;
— Annette Ernest, 26, who was killed in October 1987;
— Anita Fishman, 31, who was murdered in January 1989;
— Washington, 27, who was visibly pregnant when she was slain in September 1989;
— Desarae Jones, 29, who was killed in May 1993;
— Andrea Tripplett, 29, who was strangled April 2, 1993, in South Los Angeles;
— Natalie Price, 31, whose body was found outside a home on Feb. 12, 1995;
— Mildred Beasley, 45, whose body was found in a field on Nov. 6, 1996;
— Paula Vance, 38, who was strangled on Feb. 3, 1998, during the commission of a rape, which was caught on grainy black-and-white surveillance videotape in which the assailant’s face cannot be seen; and
— Brenda Bries, 37, who was found dead in the Skid Row area on April 6, 1998.
Turner lived within 30 blocks of each of the killings — with Bries’ body discovered in downtown Los Angeles just 50 yards from where he was living at the time.
He was linked to the strangulations through DNA test results after being arrested and convicted of raping a woman on Skid Row in 2002.
He was subsequently convicted in 2014 for the killings of 33-year-old Elandra Bunn in June 1987; 28-year-old Deborah Williams in November 1992; 42-year-old Mary Edwards in December 1992; and the February 1997 killing of 30-year-old Cynthia Annette Johnson in Watts.
It was not immediately clear if or when he would be sent to Utah to face the latest murder charge.
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