Victim Spotlight: Who Was Princess Berthomieux, Beyond the Case File?

# Victim Spotlight: Who Was Princess Berthomieux, Beyond the Case File?

Content Warning: This post discusses severe child abuse, the foster care system, and the murder of a minor. It is written with her foster family's public tribute in mind, and does not represent a final determination beyond what has already been proven in court.

Before She Was "The Youngest Victim"

In almost every article about this case, Princess Cheyanne Berthomieux is described the same way: the youngest of Lonnie Franklin Jr.'s confirmed victims, killed at fifteen. That fact is true, and it matters. But it isn't who she was.

Her foster sister, Samara Herard, has spoken publicly about Princess more than almost anyone else connected to this case — and the picture she paints is not of a statistic. It's of a little girl who came into her family's home at age three, after surviving some of the worst documented child abuse in Los Angeles at the time.

A Childhood Split Between Trauma and Care

Princess joined the Herard family as a foster child in Claremont, California, when she was three years old. Samara Herard, who was fifteen at the time, has said Princess arrived "after being one of the most severely abused children in LA's history at that time" — and that the family responded by sheltering her closely. She went to private school. Herard described her plainly: "really sweet... we really sheltered her, we protected her... she was a wonderful child." (Source: WBEZ, "'What you sow, you reap': Sister of Grim Sleeper victim responds to death sentence," June 2016.)

Herard was old enough to help Princess get ready for school in the mornings, and has said their relationship "sometimes felt maternal" — an older sister who became something closer to a second mother to a little girl who badly needed one.

What Changed

That stability didn't last. When Herard's own mother died, Princess was returned to the foster care system. It's a detail that's easy to skim past, but it marks the moment a child who had finally found steady care lost it again — placed back into a system that, as this case's broader pattern shows, has historically struggled to protect exactly the children most vulnerable to exploitation.

On December 21, 2001, Princess was last seen by her family. She was fifteen years old.

The Last Known Moment

On March 19, 2002, Princess's body was found in an alley in Inglewood, California — strangled and beaten, left in the shrubs where a passerby discovered her. (Source: Los Angeles Times, "The Homicide Report.") She would not be identified by name in connection with a serial killer for another eight years.

Investigators would eventually connect her death to Lonnie Franklin Jr. through DNA evidence following his July 2010 arrest. She became one of the ten victims named in his 2016 conviction — and, at fifteen, the youngest.

A Sister Waiting Eight Years for the Truth

Samara Herard didn't learn Princess had been murdered when it happened. She found out Princess had died roughly two years after her death — and even then, she wasn't told it was a homicide. "He didn't tell me she was murdered," Herard said of the moment her father broke the news. "That was bizarre because, nothing made sense." She only learned the full truth — that her foster sister had been killed, and by whom — when Lonnie Franklin Jr. was arrested in 2010. She has called it "one of the most devastating things I've ever experienced in my life." (Source: WBEZ.)

When the guilty verdict came down in 2016, Herard said that was the moment that mattered most to her — more than the death sentence that followed. "That says, 'You've done this thing. And there's no question about it,'" she said. Of Franklin's sentence, she added: "I'm glad he'll never hurt anyone else the way he hurt my sister... I believe that justice is served, and I believe what you sow, you reap." (Source: WBEZ.)

Why We're Telling Her Story This Way

Princess Berthomieux is almost always introduced by her age and her place in a body count. We wanted to do something different: to spend time with the fact that she was a foster child who was sheltered and loved by an older sister, that she went to private school, that someone described her — years after losing her — as simply "a wonderful child." Reducing her to "the youngest victim" is accurate, but it isn't the whole truth, and it's not what her family wants remembered first.

Sources

1. WBEZ / Chicago Public Media — "'What you sow, you reap': Sister of Grim Sleeper victim responds to death sentence" (June 7, 2016)

2. Los Angeles Times — "The Homicide Report," Princess Berthomieux case entry

3. ABC News — "'Grim Sleeper' Lonnie Franklin Jr. Sentenced to Death for Murders"

4. Wikipedia — "Grim Sleeper" (compiled court and sentencing records)

**Disclaimer:** This post is based on public interviews, court records, and news reporting current as of this writing. NaturalQueen77 TV strives for accuracy but cannot guarantee completeness. Quotes are reproduced as given by Samara Herard in her 2016 WBEZ interview.

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