On January 12, 2004, the body of 22-year-old Rose Anna Gonzalez was found in Los Angeles; the Los Angeles County record lists her cause of death as strangulation. The Homicide Report entry for the case records her as a 22-year-old Latina female who died on Jan. 12, 2004, and lists the investigating agency code as NEWT.
Court filings connected to her estate provide additional factual background about Rose's circumstances before her death. According to the public administrator's investigation included in the appellate record, Gonzalez had a history of prostitution and drug use and had been incarcerated at Valley State Prison in October 2003. She was paroled to Los Angeles County on January 1, 2004, and stayed briefly with her grandfather in Fresno before taking a bus to Los Angeles on or about January 9-10, 2004.
The public administrator's report, filed January 19, 2007 and summarized in the Court of Appeal record, states that Los Angeles police informed the grandfather on January 12 that Rose had been murdered and her body found that morning. The report also says that two men were arrested in connection with the death but that charges were dismissed because of a lack of credible witnesses; the public administrator concluded there was no viable wrongful-death action to pursue. The court record notes the investigation and the public administrator's determination.
The case remains unsolved in the sense that no conviction or continuing criminal prosecution is reported in the public record reviewed: charges connected to arrests were dismissed and the public administrator did not pursue a wrongful-death suit. No tip line or reward notice was found in the documents reviewed.
