Mary Louise Baker was 56 years old when she died on Tuesday, September 3, 2002, in the city of Gardena. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, she died of stab wounds at 1715 W. 144th St. Her death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Gardena Police Department case.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report recorded her death in a single sentence drawn from coroner's records. It described her as "a 56-year-old black female" who "died Tuesday, Sept. 3, after being stabbed in Gardena." The entry gave a street address, but it did not say whether that was her home, the home of someone she knew or simply the place where she was found. No follow-up story about her death appears to have been published.
Beyond her name, her age and the place where she died, almost nothing about Mary Louise Baker 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. Mary Baker is one of the most common name combinations in the country, and even the full name Mary Louise Baker belonged to many other women, including a Hollywood actress of the 1940s who performed as Joan Barry, an artist who illustrated pottery for a university museum, and women whose obituaries appeared in Tennessee, Nebraska and elsewhere. None of them 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.
She was 56, an age when many women are watching children grow into adults, helping raise grandchildren or caring for aging parents, though nothing in the public record says what her own life looked like.
Gardena is a small city in the South Bay area of Los Angeles County, south of the city of Los Angeles. It has long been known for its card clubs and for a large Japanese American community whose roots in the area go back to the farming days of the early twentieth century. Its numbered east-west streets, including 144th Street, run through blocks of single-family homes and apartment buildings. The city has its own police department, which investigated her death.
Hundreds of people are killed in Los Angeles County every year, and a large share of those killings end without an arrest.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Mary Louise Baker could be found in news archives or public records. More than 23 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew a 56-year-old woman named Mary Baker in Gardena, or who lived on or near West 144th Street in early September 2002, 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 contact the Gardena Police Department, or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS (8477).
