Loretta Perry was a 24-year-old Black woman whose body was found January 25, 1987, on South Defiance Avenue in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. Her death was later tied to Louis Craine, an unemployed construction worker who was arrested in 1987 and convicted of first-degree murder in Perry’s case and three other women’s killings.

Craine confessed to multiple murders then recanted at trial; his defense described him as illiterate with a low IQ. A jury sentenced him to death in 1989, and he died in a prison hospital shortly after his conviction. Perry is one of several women targeted during a period when multiple serial killers were operating in South Los Angeles, a set of cases sometimes referred to as the Southside Slayers.

Does anyone have memories of the South Defiance Avenue area in 1987 or information about Loretta Perry that could help preserve her story?