“He needs to be held accountable for what he did,” LA County Deputy District Attorney Robert Grace said. “It’s very important for everyone in the city, particularly those in South LA [where the murders took place], that the justice system does value the lives of people killed.”

Chester Dewayne Turner, one of Los Angeles’ most prolific serial killers who prowled the streets of South L.A. in the 1980s and ‘90s, was charged Tuesday with four additional murders linked to him through DNA.

The charges were filed after a DNA test recently connected Turner to the 1997 slaying of Cynthia Annette Johnson, whose killing had been considered cleared by the LAPD after the arrest and unsuccessful prosecution of another suspect. A department criminalist inadvertently included evidence from the Johnson case for testing last year as part of the LAPD’s effort to reduce the backlog of untested sexual assault kits, Det. Cliff Shepard said.