You do enter some situations in the movie that could be potentially very dangerous, and you’re this small white guy talking with an accent, who has no business in this community. Don’t you get terrified doing that?
Well I never felt unsafe, particularly in South Central. I mean, no one is really stupid enough to go and kill two white guys who are journalists, because then the keys would get thrown away. And I’ve always been very careful to go in with people. Like, we went into South Central with this comedian, Tiffany Haddish, who grew up on the street next to Lonnie Franklin’s, and is well-known in the community as someone who is one of the few success stories out of there. So she has a lot of respect, and she’s attractive—you know, 35 and sassy and funny—so she was the ideal person to go in with. I think once you’ve gone in the right way, and have been kind of quasi-accepted, you meet people like Pam and people like Richard and Gary who then kind of take you over. And they were always in the car with us, they would introduce us to other people, and they’re kind of like your guardian angels. And when you’re with them, you don’t have much to worry about.
But how did you get those people from South Central to trust you?
I think you just spend time hanging out with them, you take them out for meals. Pam, and my son Barney, who shot the film, became gambling buddies. They’d play backgammon and cards all of the time when they weren’t filming. And I think Pam had a good time with us, she enjoyed hanging out with us. And Richard, too. I think that despite everything, they liked hanging out with us, they liked being involved with something constructive. They liked being able to talk, and I guess were flattered that we were interested in actually hearing what they had to say.
You don’t say it in the documentary, I assume for legal reasons, but you believe that he is guilty of killing all of those women?
Yeah, I mean, there’s a complete DNA match between him and, so far, 20 victims. When I had a brief conversation with Bernard Parks, the ex-LAPD police chief, he said we think it could be 100-plus. So, that’s a staggering number of people. I mean, I think it’s very significant that a computer caught him and it wasn’t the police, because it wasn’t a priority.
What’s the status of the case right now?
He was arrested in 2010, and he still hasn’t come to trial. There have just been endless problems, and it looks like it might now be delayed for a further year. So, it’s just sort of going on and on.