LA police hunt serial killer of 11

All the victims were black and were found in or near South Los Angeles. Police believe some of the women were prostitutes.

Seven women and a man were killed by the same handgun in a three-year period starting August 1985. The women had been sexually assaulted and their bodies were often dumped in the same alley in South Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday approved the reward first proposed by City Councilman Bernard Parks, who as police chief in 2001 ordered the department to look into a backlog of unsolved cases.

Alicia Monique Alexander was the last known victim in the first round of killings. Porter Alexander last saw his youngest daughter one evening in September 1988 as the 18-year-old ran out for what was supposed to be a quick trip to the store.

"I said make sure you go to the store and come back. She says, 'OK,'" Porter Alexander said. "She left, and that was the last time I saw my baby."

Four days later, police knocked at the front door of the family home. They'd found her body in a nearby alley with a gunshot wound in the chest.

A 13-year hiatus followed Alexander's death, police said, and investigators retired or moved on to other cases.

"What accounted for that gap, we still don't know," police Capt. Denis Cremins said at a news conference Wednesday. "We try not to engage in conjecture."

The hiatus ended in March 2002, when 14-year-old Princess Berthomieux was found beaten and strangled in an alley in the city of Inglewood. DNA samples linked her to the suspect in the earlier murders.