On Tuesday evening,
November 12, 2019, at approximately 11PM, Los Angeles Police Department patrol
officers were dispatched, code three, to a report of a kidnapping in the
Leimert Park area of Los Angeles.
At approximately the
same time, residents in the 3800 block of Third Avenue heard a woman screaming
“Help me! Somebody help me!” and a male voice responding “I’m sorry, I’m
sorry.” These voices were captured on a
doorbell camera along with the image of a white, 2003-2008 Toyota Matrix or
Prius fleeing the scene toward 39th Street.
Southwest Division
officers could not locate a suspect or victim.
In a subsequent investigation, no missing persons reports were filed and
there was no conclusive evidence that a crime had been committed.
Living in Los Angeles,
one becomes used to the macabre and bloody. Seared into memory are the names:
Charles Manson,
Kenneth Bianchi, Angelo Buono, Richard Ramirez.
Unsolved mysterious deaths
only add to Los Angeles lore: Elizabeth
Short, the Black Dahlia; George Reeves, the murdered Superman; Ned Doheny and Hugh Plunkett, possible lovers and participants in the Teapot Dome Scandal;
Bugsy Seigel, the gangster; Biggie Smalls, rap star.
The locations of
murders also continue to attract, public attention: that vacant lot on Norton Avenue in Leimert
Park where Elizabeth Short was found; the condo on Bundy Drive where Nicole
Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman met their untimely end; the house in Los Feliz
where cardiologist Harold Perelson murdered his wife and attempted to kill his
daughter before taking an overdose of drugs causing his own death by suicide—his
mansion remained vacant for sixty years, and in all that time, the Christmas
decorations were still up from the night of the murder; the Ambassador Hotel,
now demolished, where Robert Kennedy was shot on that June evening in 1968.
The most infamous
crime scenes: the house on Cielo Drive
where the followers of Charles Manson shot and stabbed five people to death and
the house on Waverly Drive in Los Feliz where more of Manson’s group murdered
supermarket owner Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary.
Strange but true: the Cielo Drive house was later rented by
Trent Reznor of the band Nine Inch Nails who recorded much of the band’s album,
The Downward Spiral (1994) there.
There are also no
shortage of people who believe they have solved cold cases. Steve Hodel, a former LAPD homicide
detective, believes he has solved the Black Dahlia murder case when he put a
name to the unknown killer: George
Hodel, his father. The macabre pose of
the victim’s exsanguinated and dismembered body, according to Hodel, was
inspired by a Man Ray photograph he found in his father’s belongings.
And writer James Ellroy
fictionalized her case in his novel, and believes that he, too, has solved her
murder: she was another victim of the
same serial killer who murdered his mother when he was just a young boy.
All of this—murder,
mayhem, clues, crime scenes—it is all circular in Los Angeles. It all comes back to the detective, that
student of human psychology and degradation, who runs the case down like the
soles of his leather shoes. Veteran
homicide detectives will tell you a case is solved with shoe leather, not some
moment of divine realization. No bolt of
lightning; just endless shadowy darkness and the relentless detective, doggedly
pursuing the illusive murderer.
So the LAPD could use
some help finding out what really happened last month in Leimert Park, yet
another mystery in a city full up of the strange and surreal. A month on, and no reports of a missing
person. From analysis of the doorbell
camera and other security videos, they know that the Matrix or Prius had a
broken front passenger window covered in opaque plastic. The victim heard screaming was a black female,
and her hair was being pulled from behind while she sat in the passenger seat. A male black was driving, and the hatch on
the vehicle was open.
