On October 15, 2012, Lester Wayne Donaldson, a 48-year-old Black man, was found dead in a Motel 6 in the 17200 block of Downey Avenue in Bellflower. Coroner's records and contemporaneous reporting indicate he was discovered unresponsive by his parole officer and was pronounced dead at the scene at 8:32 a.m. Preliminary records list the cause of death as strangulation.
Donaldson was identified in Los Angeles County coroner files as a resident whose body was located inside the motel room; few additional personal details were reported at the time. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Homicide Bureau handled the investigation. Initial public notices provided limited information beyond the location, manner of death and that Donaldson had been found by his parole officer.
Investigators asked anyone with information to contact the sheriff's homicide bureau; the LA Times report published the sheriff's homicide tip line number and Crime Stoppers as contacts for anonymous information. There are no publicly available news reports or official releases located in the record that announce an arrest, charge, conviction, or formal case closure in connection with Donaldson's strangulation. No reward notice or subsequent investigative update was found in sources searched.
As of the most recent archival records reviewed, the death of Lester Wayne Donaldson remains unsolved with no public record of an arrest or prosecution. Anyone with information about this killing was asked at the time to contact the Los Angeles County Sheriff's homicide bureau at 890-5500 or Crime Stoppers at 222-8477.
