Elzie L. Johnson, 46, was found stabbed to death inside a home in the 1600 block of South Lawndale Avenue in the North Lawndale neighborhood on Chicago's West Side on the morning of Tuesday, May 21, 2019. He lived on the same block. The Chicago Police Department investigated, and Area Central detectives were assigned to the case.
A woman discovered Johnson not breathing about 6:40 a.m. inside the home, according to Chicago police and the Cook County medical examiner's office. He had a stab wound in his chest and was pronounced dead at the scene. His death was ruled a homicide. The reports do not say how long he had been dead, whether the woman who found him lived there or whether anyone else was in the home overnight.
Police did not release a description of a suspect, a weapon or a motive, and no arrest was announced.
No reward tied to his case could be found, and no follow-up story about the investigation appears to have been published.
Almost nothing about Elzie Johnson's life has been made public. No obituary, memorial page or family fundraiser could be found for this account. His first name is uncommon, but searches for it are crowded with other men named Elzie Johnson, including other young men killed in Chicago in unrelated cases in other years. That overlap has buried the story of the 46-year-old man from South Lawndale Avenue and may help explain why so little has been written about him.
South Lawndale Avenue runs through North Lawndale a few blocks south of Roosevelt Road. North Lawndale is a West Side community area known for its rows of greystone two-flats, its churches and its long history as a center of Black Chicago. A stabbing inside a home overnight on a residential block may have been heard by neighbors through shared walls, and someone may have seen a visitor arrive or leave in the hours before dawn.
Chicago recorded about 500 homicides in 2019, down from about 580 the year before. Chicago police reported clearing roughly half of the city's homicides that year, though that figure counts cases closed without charges. Stabbings and beatings drew far less attention than the shootings that dominated the city's headlines, and many of them were reported in a few lines and never mentioned again.
Cases in Chicago can still move long after the first reports. In December 2019, more than a year after Refugio Ceja was found stabbed on a sidewalk in the 1100 block of South Keeler Avenue in November 2018, prosecutors charged a man already jailed in another stabbing with his murder, citing surveillance video that showed the older man being followed down the street and a bus driver who remembered seeing both men near a bus stop.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Elzie Johnson could be found in news archives or public records. More than 7 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who was with Elzie L. Johnson on the night of May 20, 2019, who visited the home on South Lawndale Avenue, or who heard talk afterward of what happened there may be able to help. Even a small detail, such as a name overheard, a car seen leaving the area or a conversation remembered, can help detectives move a case forward. Anyone with information can call the Chicago Police Department's anonymous tip line at (833) 408-0069 or submit a tip online at CPDTIP.com, or contact Cook County Crime Stoppers at (800) 535-STOP (7867).
