Lonnie David Franklin, Jr., was a serial murderer. But he was a “nice guy.” Huh? Only alcoholism can explain such dichotomies.
Lonnie David Franklin, Jr., Now Linked to The Grim Sleeper Killings, Again Proves we can’t Predict how Destructive an Addict may Become—or When
It was an open secret that Lonnie David Franklin, Jr., who fronted as a neighborhood mechanic, dismantled stolen cars and sold the parts from his big backyard in South Los Angeles. However, no one thought he was capable of murder, must less serial murder.
Franklin was either a “beer drinking buddy” or on the wagon. He was at times a father figure to adolescent women and at others a pervert talking about nothing but sex and drugs. He was always willing to help out a neighbor, except when he was so paranoid he wouldn’t even go to his street mailbox without locking the front door.
Some of his neighbors were not only disbelieving, but figured that since “Lonnie couldn’t have done this” he was being set up by the LAPD. Locals described him as a “kind and compassionate neighbor who volunteered in the community, helped elderly residents of the block and fixed their cars for free.” To those who viewed him as such a gentleman, it would seem contradictory that he could be linked, via DNA evidence resulting from a “familial search” of prison inmates (authorities tracked him down from his incarcerated son’s DNA), to the murders of at least 10 women over 25 years. However, once we understand that alcoholism causes erratically destructive behaviors usually interspersed with productive and caring ones, the seeming contradiction disappears.
Relatively small transgressions such as sounding like a pervert or oddball misbehaviors such as locking the front door before fetching the mail more often than not prove to be clues to alcoholism. As pointed out in Drunks, Drugs & Debits: How to Recognize Addicts and Avoid Financial Abuse in the section describing the tragic murder-suicide of comedian Phil Hartman by his wife Brynn:
We cannot predict how destructive the behavior of a practicing addict may become.
The case of Lonnie David Franklin, although set in a very different environment from the one the Hartman’s lived, is really no different. Brynn Hartman proved she had two faces. As one of Franklin’s neighbors put it, “He’s a man with two faces.” Addicts, regardless of their position in society, are really all the same.