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“Grim Sleeper” Gets Nabbed

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In La La Land aka Los Angeles where everyone is a waiter or waitress and wants to be Tom Cruise  or Julia Roberts, they captured a serial killer dubbed “Grim Sleeper” named as such due to the fact there was a lull in his murderous killing spree.

The Los Angeles Police Department had been hunting the man who had stalked South Los Angeles since 1985, killing at least 10 women. Lonnie David Franklin Jr. was at one time was an employee for the LAPD. Detectives pulled DNA from the crime scenes and had the information for years.

Recently the LAPD arrested his son for an unrelated charge. From that arrest they pulled his DNA, (I don’t know why) and it was a partial match to the DNA found at the crime scenes in the 80’s. This is called “familial DNA”, like father/son, mother/daughter or twins. However the son was too young to commit the crimes back then so detectives searched out his social network and on a hunch determined his father would more than likely be the closest match to the sons DNA. Based on where dad lived in proximity to the murders, dad fit the killers profile.

Detectives followed him to a pizza joint and let him finish up then went in and grabbed a few hunks of crust and a drinking glass and did a DNA test on it and they found their match.

Real life “crime scene investigation” stuff. Law enforcement got their man. Nice to see the good guys win one.

The chance of you ever coming face to face with a serial killer is extremely slim. However, there is an extremely slim chance you’d ever get struck by lightning too. But I’ll bet you wouldn’t go climbing a metal flag pole in a lightning storm.

The key is to understand your options and know your strengths if you’re ever faced with an attacker. My favorite form of self defense is running away. Like Muhammad Ali would say “I’m too pretty”. Do you really want to get punched in the face? RUN!

Also take a self defense training program. The best self defense training technique is called “adrenal stress training”, learn as much about it as you can and find a course in your area.

Robert Siciliano personal security expert to Home Security Source discussing self defense on some cool station in Virginia. Disclosures.

Google Street View Security Issues

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You may not realize it but a picture of your own home is very likely available on the Internet thanks to the popular Google Street View map program.

I’m a big fan of Google. They’ve done a great job or organizing the world’s information. All their tools and apps like Gmail, calendar and docs are fully functional and mobile. They seemed to have taken the fight out of technology with these tools.

Then, there is Google Street View. Zoom, rotate and pan through street level photos of cities around the world. I remember the day Google Street View came down my street. I live on a private dead end and they came right down my driveway. They got stuck trying to turn around and we had to move a car for them.

Then, a few months later there it was on Google Street View. It’s an ambitious attempt at mapping the world just like you were there yourself.

So how does this affect you? For one thing, it allows anyone anywhere to gain intelligence about your street, fences, gates, driveway and information about your home and in general scope out your neighborhood. Certainly someone can simply just drive–by and use a video camera or take pictures and Google Street View makes it even easier.

But what if Google captured much more than a picture?

Now Google admits they messed up a little. An ambitious Google Street View engineer plugged some code in their data collection process that they planned on using to collect data on “Public Wi-Fi Hotspots”.

The code pulled more the just hotspots. There could have been enough data pulled to steal someone’s identity.

Protect yourself by making sure your wireless router is protected with a password.

When you have an unsecured wireless connection, it’s just like leaving the front door to your home open and inviting the world to come inside to take a peek.

Google says its Street View cars will stay in park until the problem is fixed.

Robert Siciliano personal security expert to Home Security Source discussing burglar proofing your home on Fox Boston