‘It was a terrifying time’
On a Monday morning in the spring of 2007, a prosecutor named Truc Do stood to tell a jury about the world in which Chester Turner had killed — and to offer a requiem for a dark chapter in the heart of Los Angeles.
Turner lived with his mom on Century Boulevard, drank fortified wine and made a sporadic living delivering pizzas and selling crack. His murderous binge, which took the lives of 10 women, began in 1987, a perilous time in South Los Angeles.
Jobs had vanished. Crack cocaine, a new drug so powerful and profitable it was worth dying over, ravaged the neighborhood. Gangs carved up the streets. The LAPD recorded a violent crime every eight minutes. It was a world, the prosecutor told the jury, in which “life itself is degraded.”
