Chester Turner

Chester Turner
Chester Turner's mugshot
Born	Chester Dewayne Turner (1966-11-05) November 5, 1966 (age 50) Warren, Arkansas
Other names	Southside Slayer
Criminal penalty	Death
Killings
Victims	15 (convicted)
Span of killings	1987–1998
Country	U.S.
State(s)	California
Date apprehended	September 2003

Chester Dewayne Turner (born November 5, 1966) is an American convicted serial killer. On April 30, 2007, he was convicted of the murders of 10 women in Los Angeles, and was also found guilty in the death of the unborn child of one of his victims. He was convicted of 4 additional murders on June 19, 2014. Prosecutors have called Turner "one of the most prolific serial killers in the city’s history". On July 10, 2007, Turner was sentenced to death for the 11 murders he was originally convicted of committing. On June 26, 2014, Turner was sentenced to death a second time for the 4 additional murders.

Turner was born in Warren, Arkansas, but moved to Los Angeles with his mother when he was five years old, after his parents separated. He attended public schools in Los Angeles but dropped out of high school. Working for Domino's Pizza as a cook and delivery person as a young man, he lived with his mother until she moved to Utah. After that, he moved around to different homeless shelters and missions.

Turner has been convicted of 11 murders that occurred in Los Angeles between 1987 and 1998. The first nine of these murders took place in a four-block-wide corridor that ran on either side of Figueroa Street between Gage Avenue and 108th Street:

The last two murders occurred outside of this corridor in Los Angeles County:

The Vance murder was witnessed by a bystander at a neighboring trailer park. Turner was jailed seven times from 1995 to 2002, six for nonviolent offenses and once for an assault charge on an officer and cruelty to an animal on April 9, 1997. In March 2002 Turner sexually assaulted a 47-year-old woman for approximately two hours and threatened to kill her if she told the police. He was convicted and sentenced to eight years at a California state prison. Turner was required to give a DNA sample to California’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS). In September 2003, based on that sample, Turner was identified as a match for DNA recovered from Vance and Beasley. Detectives then began a careful examination of Turner’s background. Nine of the 11 unsolved murders were matched to Turner using DNA evidence.