Grim Sleeper Sleuth Christine Pelisek Tells Daily Beast: "How I tracked Lonnie David Franklin"

Serial killer sleuth Christine Pelisek

That day, in January 2006, was stranger than usual. I knew I had stumbled onto something that no one else had reported: a serial killer on the loose in Southern California. For the next four years, I became, in effect, a detective--an easy transition, given my love for crime shows that had begun as a kid, watching reruns of 'Columbo.' But let's start at the beginning, which was the hush-hush list of 38 dead women, many of them dumped in dumpsters and along parkways and alleyways, a list I eventually cajoled from my source at the coroner's office.

To read The Daily Beast Grim Sleeper article by Christine Pelisek, click here. And don't miss the Weekly's previous Sleeper scoops by Pelisek:

Her work has earned many awards and on July 9 she was named CNN's "Most Intriguing Person" in America. To catch up on your Grim Sleeper Summer Reading, may we also suggest:

-- What turned out to be one of biggest red herrings in this tangled case, when police fingered the wrong man in 2006, a white guy named Roger Hausmann.

-- Pelisek's key Grim Sleeper scoop in August of 2008 outed the secret serial killer "800 task force" and its target, dubbed by the Weekly the Grim Sleeper. Pelisek was the first to tell the baffled victims' families that a serial killer was afoot.

-- Pelisek's exclusive profile of Enietra Margette Washington, the miraculous sole survivor shot at point-blank range in the chest by the Grim Sleeper. She held tantalizing clues to his identity.