Lillie Viola Jones was 72 years old when she died on Tuesday, December 2, 2003, in the Vermont Knolls neighborhood of South Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, she died of stab wounds at 1112 W. 76th St. Her death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a case of the Los Angeles Police Department's 77th Street Division.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report recorded her death in a single sentence drawn from coroner's records. It described her as "a 72-year-old black female" who "died Tuesday, Dec. 2, after being stabbed in Vermont Knolls." The entry gave a street address, but it did not say whether that was her home, the home of someone she knew or the place where she was found. No follow-up story appears to have been written, and no police news release about her death could be found.
Beyond her name, her age and the place where she died, almost nothing about Lillie Viola Jones 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. She surely had family, friends or neighbors who remember who she was, but none of that has entered the public record. Lillie Jones is also a common name, and searches turn up many other women who shared it, including several whose obituaries appeared in Virginia, New York and Maryland, none of whom can be connected to this death.
Because so little has been released, even the basic circumstances remain unknown to the public. The record does not say whether she was stabbed during a fight or a robbery, attacked by a stranger or by someone she knew, or hurt indoors or on the street. It does not say what time of day she was hurt, whether she died at the scene or later at a hospital, whether anyone saw what happened, or whether investigators ever identified a suspect.
Her age sets the case apart. Killings of women in their seventies are uncommon, and a stabbing of an elderly woman at a residential address raises questions the public record cannot answer: whether she lived alone, whether someone entered her home, or whether she was attacked by a person she trusted. None of those possibilities has been confirmed, and the record offers no clue as to which, if any, is true.
Vermont Knolls is a residential neighborhood in South Los Angeles, made up largely of modest single-family houses and small apartment buildings set along numbered east-west streets. It lies in the part of the city patrolled by the 77th Street Division, a busy police area that covers much of South Los Angeles.
Los Angeles still recorded roughly 480 to 520 homicides a year in the mid-2000s, and many of those killings were never solved.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Lillie Viola Jones could be found in news archives or public records. More than 22 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew a 72-year-old woman named Lillie Jones, or who lived on or near West 76th Street in Vermont Knolls in December 2003, may hold information that could help. 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 (877-LAPD-24-7), or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS (8477).
