Joseph Danks

Joseph Martin Danks (born June 17, 1962), known as The Koreatown Slasher, is an American spree killer and serial killer who killed six homeless men in January 1987 in Los Angeles' Koreatown neighborhood. Convicted of the six killings and sent to serve his life sentence at the California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi, he was sentenced to death in 1990 for the murder of his cellmate, 67-year-old Walter Holt.

Biography Danks was born on June 17, 1962, in Bay City, Michigan. His birth resulted from an intimate relationship between 42-year-old Edward White, the son of a successful entrepreneur, and his 17-year-old nanny Karen. Despite the White family being well-off financially and living in a prestigious area of the city, Edward's older children - Joseph's half-brothers, one of whom, Earl, was a schizophrenic - grew up impoverished since their father was drug-addicted alcoholic suffering from memory loss. Joseph's mother also drank alcohol while pregnant, resulting in his premature birth two months earlier, with the baby weighing only two kilograms and having to spend four weeks in an incubator. After he was born, Joseph's parents continued to abuse alcohol, leaving his older half-sister and the housekeeper looked after him. According to the housekeeper, his mother was in a constant state of duress due to the baby's whining, actively trying to avoid it; on at least two occasions, the housekeeper found the crying Joseph locked up in a drawer. It has been alleged that both of Joseph's parents were seen giving him sedatives to make him sleep most of the day, but his mother denied the claim. In early 1964, Edward beat up his wife and broke her nose, causing Karen to leave with her child.

A year later, Karen met Leroy Danks, whom she married in 1966, with Leroy formally adopting Joseph. After that, the family left the state and moved to South Dakota, Being jobless, Danks lived off money provided by his mother, whom he believed was engaged in printing counterfeit money with his aunt, which he threatened to expose to the police. In his free time, Danks associated with local homeless people, and with time, stopped taking care of his physical appearance, becoming untidy and unclean.

In October 1982, Danks showed up at a New Jersey elementary school with torn clothes, for which he was taken to the police station. Upon returning to Michigan, he again complained of having visions. He committed several petty offenses, for which he was forcibly confined to a mental hospital; he escaped two weeks later. A few days after his flight, he was found in Florida and returned to the facility,

Murders Following his arrival in Los Angeles, Danks began killing homeless men in the Koreatown neighborhood by stabbing them in the back with great force. The first death was 40-year-old Christopher Michael Forsblade, whom Danks stabbed to death on January 6 on Vermont Avenue.

During his interrogation at Parker Center, Danks claimed that he had stabbed to death a homeless man named Edwin Trujillo in Santa Monica in a fit of anger on Christmas Day, after he was not allowed to sleep in a homeless shelter due to overcrowding.

First trial In March 1988, Joseph Danks was asked by the prosecutor's office to accept a plea deal, but he refused. During his trial, he was kept in the Men's Central County Jail, where he displayed signs of paranoia and a tendency to espouse conspiracy theories surrounding his detainment: he complained that his prison food was poisoned and was confident that actor Burt Reynolds and TV host Johnny Carson were with him in the jail cell, defecating in his food. He accused the administration of psychologically manipulating him through music broadcast on the prison camera. He constantly kept his cell tidy, brushing his teeth on average six to ten times daily. In one of the court hearings, he attacked his lawyer Larry Rivetz with a makeshift knife made from a toothbrush and razorblades, inflicting a superficial wound on him.

Due to his worsening mental health, Danks was transferred to Atascadero State Hospital, where he remained from June 1989 to March 1990. While housed there, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and antisocial personality disorder following a psychiatric evaluation. When he took an IQ test, he scored a total of 106 points. Danks also underwent a neurological examination for a suspected cyst in his brain; however, no such thing was found. After undergoing treatment, his mental state improved, and he was transferred out of the hospital on August 23, 1990 to serve his life sentence at the California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi.

Aftermath Following his verdict, Joseph Danks was transferred to San Quentin State Prison's death row, where he remains. Over time, his mental health deteriorated, as he frequently complained about hallucinations and pain caused by rats, no traces of which were found in his cell. He also suffered from insomnia, screaming at night and keeping other inmates awake, and frequently attacked prison guards, whom he doused in his urine. Despite his erratic behavior, Danks was untreated until 2011. In 2004, his lawyers drew up an appeal to overturn his death sentence and asked for a retrial because two of the jurors at his second trial in 1993 had sought advice from clergy members of their parish. In 2012, his family hired lawyers to appeal against Danks' death penalty, asking that it be replaced with medical treatment for his insanity, but the final decision on this appeal has not been made yet.

On March 13, 2019, the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, ordered a moratorium on the death penalty in the state, which dismantled the chambers at San Quentin indefinitely.

As of March 2025, Danks remains incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison.