' . . . chance favors only the prepared mind.'

The LAPD set out to catch one serial killer, and inadvertently caught a different one.

How LAPD's "Closers" Nabbed the Westside Rapist

The police were using a DNA dragnet to find the Grim Sleeper. In so doing, they caught John Floyd Thomas aka The Westside Rapist.

Theories crumble, but good observations never fade.

Harlow Shapley (astronomer)

The big break in the case came because a detective took special care to collect and preserve trace evidence in case forensic science ever began using DNA to solve crimes. He did this long before such evidence had ever been used in court.

Then a crucial coincidence occurred, the kind of thing that would give Harry Bosch pause: It was 1976, and Manchester saw a magazine article about the science of DNA technology. “It was something pretty new,” Manchester says today. In fact, most cops then relied on crime-scene analysis as rudimentary as grade-school math: spraying Luminol to locate fingerprints, and identifying blood types and groups.

Influenced by the fascinating magazine piece, Manchester did something odd for those times: He insisted that the Los Angeles County autopsy technicians save as much human detritus and trace evidence found at the McKeown crime scene as possible. His unusual request would prove instrumental in solving the dust-gathering case, retrieved from a police evidence shelf by Bengtson and his partner Vivian Flores three decades later.

This is another serial killer who does not fit the popular image. Time and again on TV and in movies we’ve seen a cop or a profiler harangue their boss or other authority figure:

This guy is out there. He’s killed before. He will kill again, and he will keep on killing until somebody stops him.

The cinematic predator either won’t stop because he is arrogant or he can’t stop because he has an overwhelming compulsion to kill. An orgy of violence builds until the brave and brilliant hero (or heroine) finally brings the killer to justice.

Yet, in the last decade we’ve seen something completely different. Killers like the Grim Sleeper, BTK, or the Golden State Killer all have gone on long hiatuses or stopped killing completely.