Killer faces jury in penalty trial

After five weeks of barely glancing at the jury, Chester Turner on Wednesday turned to watch intently the men and women who will decide whether he will live or die for the murders of 10 crack cocaine-addicted women on Los Angeles’ streets.

Returning to face Turner two days after finding him to be the city’s most prolific serial killer, jurors did not return his glare. They will decide whether he will become the 665th person on California’s death row, where 13 have been executed, and 12 have committed suicide, since 1978.

“Do what is morally right and just,” Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Bobby Grace said in his eight-minute opening address.

“They say that one murder is a tragedy, but anything more than that is just statistics,” Grace said. “Sometimes we get lost in the enormity of the numbers. The names and the faces of the dead disappear.”

Grace began by accusing Turner of yet another killing. Elandra Bunn, 33, a mother, was found on Turner’s stalking ground along the Figueroa corridor in South Los Angeles in 1987 by an 11-year-boy. Alvin McThomas told of finding Bunn in an alley, left naked in trash.

Lisa Scheinin, deputy county medical examiner, testified that the autopsy showed that Bunn had suffered two battered and bloody eyes, abrasions and lacerations on her head, bruises on her neck as she was strangled and bruises and lacerations over her legs and torso.

She said Turner wrenched the victim’s neck, probably by violently shaking her head back and forth as he raped and strangled her.

Jurors closely followed the penalty phase, which is like a second trial in California. The only question is whether Turner, 40, will spend his life in prison or be executed. The trial moved quickly, with Grace calling three witnesses in less than an hour.

Carla Whitfield, 32, testified that 10 years ago, Turner tried to drag her off a downtown street into an alley. She screamed, and when a patrol car passed by, Turner ran, she said.

Whitfield, speaking for less than 10 minutes, was reluctant to look at Turner. When Grace asked her to point him out, she was hesitant, looking down as she extended a finger. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge William Pounders fixed the identification by asking her if Turner was wearing a blue shirt -- he was the only one at the counsel table who was not in a suit.

When her identification of Turner was questioned, she said she knew him because of a “long scar” on his face. Turner has an eight-inch scar from the top of his head to his right cheek, which he told police he received when he was attacked and robbed.

If sentenced to die, Turner would join Randy Kraft, the Orange County man convicted of killing 16, and Richard Ramirez, the so-called Nightstalker, who terrorized Southern California while killing 11 people. State corrections officials could not say whether anyone had more victims than Kraft.

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john.spano@latimes.com