L.A. council offers $500,000 reward to catch serial killer

By Phil Willon, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday approved a $500,000 reward to help catch a serial killer believed responsible for 11 slayings in South Los Angeles and Inglewood over the last two decades.

The first known killing occurred in 1985, when Debra Jackson, 29, was shot three times in the chest; her body was found in an alley near West Gage Avenue.

• 

  The latest from The Homicide Report,...

• LAPD on the hunt for serial killer

• The 11 unsolved slayings

Three years later, police determined that the gun used to killed Jackson was linked to seven other slayings. DNA evidence has since linked the killer to homicides in 2002 and 2003 and most recently to the shooting death of 25-year-old Janecia Peters, whose body was found covered with a garbage bag on South Western Avenue in January 2007.

Under a motion by Councilman Bernard C. Parks, who as the former chief of the Los Angeles Police Department launched a unit to delve into thousands of unsolved cold cases, the city will offer $500,000 in reward money to people who provide information that leads to the conviction of the killer or killers involved.

Original here