US police used DNA to find the real murderer

US police in Los Angeles used &to=http:// english.pravda.ru/culture/2000/11/09/802.html ' target=_blank>DNA to link an imprisoned rapist to a dozen homicides and to help free a man wrongly convicted of three of the killings, police said Saturday.

Chester Dwayne Turner, 37, is expected to be charged next week with 10 counts of murder, the Los Angeles Police Department said.

His alleged victims were all women, some homeless, others prostitutes or &to=http:// english.pravda.ru/fun/2002/03/15/27016.html ' target=_blank>drug addicts, who were raped, strangled and dumped in alleys, vacant buildings and even in a portable bathroom, according to a police statement, reports Xinhua.

Until police identified Turner, a mentally disabled janitor spent nine years in prison, wrongly convicted of three of the murders.

Turner is expected to be charged this week with 10 of the killings, capping the first phase of a continuing investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department's cold-case homicide unit. He is a suspect in at least a dozen other slayings, detectives say.

Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for District Attorney Steve Cooley, declined comment.

The killings took place between 1987 and 1998, mostly in a 30-block stretch notorious for &to=http:// english.pravda.ru/main/18/90/359/11852_prostitute.html ' target=_blank>prostitution, drug crime and violence, informs Seattle Times.