Phillip Michael Matthews was 46 years old when he died on Thursday, July 22, 2021, in the Palms neighborhood on the Westside of Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds near 9070 W. Venice Blvd. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department case handled by detectives of the department's West Bureau Homicide unit.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Phillip Michael Matthews has been made public. No obituary, memorial page or family fundraiser could be found for this story, and no news outlet appears to have reported on the death. He surely had family, friends or neighbors who remember who he was, but none of that has entered the public record. The coroner's record describes him as a white man, and the Los Angeles Times entry says only that he died "after being stabbed near 9070 W. Venice Blvd.
in Palms."
His name is a common one, and that makes it hard to trace any record of his life. Searches for Phillip Matthews turn up obituaries, business listings and public records for many other men in Indiana, Florida, Michigan, Virginia, Alabama and elsewhere, but none of them mention a death in Los Angeles in July 2021 or match his age and circumstances.
Because so little has been released, even the basic circumstances remain unknown to the public. The record does not say whether he was stabbed during a fight or a robbery, attacked by a stranger or by someone he knew, or hurt indoors or on the street. It does not say what time of day he was hurt, whether he died at the scene or later at a hospital, whether anyone saw what happened, or whether investigators ever identified a suspect.
Palms is one of the oldest neighborhoods on the Westside, founded in the late nineteenth century and later absorbed into the city of Los Angeles. Today it is a dense area of apartment buildings and small homes, popular with students and young workers, lying between Culver City and the neighborhoods of West Los Angeles. Venice Boulevard is one of the main east-west routes across the Westside, carrying heavy traffic from the city's core toward the beach, and the stretch through Palms is lined with apartment buildings, auto shops, small businesses and restaurants. A busy boulevard like this one has steady car and foot traffic for much of the day, and many of the businesses along it keep security cameras, which means someone may have seen or recorded something.
Los Angeles recorded about 260 homicides a year in 2018 and 2019, among the lowest yearly totals in more than half a century, yet many of those killings still went unsolved.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Phillip Michael Matthews could be found in news archives or public records. More than four years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew him, who was on Venice Boulevard in Palms in late July 2021, or who heard talk afterward about a man stabbed there, may hold information that could help detectives. Even a small detail, such as a name overheard, a vehicle seen nearby or a conversation remembered, can help detectives move a case forward. Anyone with information can call the Los Angeles Police Department at 877-527-3247 or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS.
