The winter of 2020 in Los Angeles was marked by the unsettling quiet of a world grappling with the onset of a global pandemic. But on Saturday, February 22, the stillness was broken by a grim discovery in the historic neighborhood of Watts. In the 1400 block of East 103rd Street, a man was found dead, his life brought to an end by means that remain a mystery to the public. He was identified as Anthony Roy Cheatham, a 62-year-old Black man.
Details surrounding the discovery of Mr. Cheatham have never been released by authorities. It is not known who found him, what the circumstances were, or what led them to that specific location. The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner conducted an autopsy, but the findings only deepened the enigma. His cause of death was officially listed as "other," a rare and ambiguous classification that suggests the manner of his death was not immediately obvious. The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report, which chronicles such deaths, noted that authorities had not yet determined the cause, leaving a void where answers should be.
The investigation into the death of Anthony Cheatham fell to the Los Angeles Police Department. Detectives were faced with a case that began with almost no public footprint. There were no initial news reports of a crime on that block, no police announcements seeking witnesses, and no public appeals for information from family or friends. His death became a silent statistic in a year that saw a troubling surge in homicides across the city, the highest number in over a decade. While the city grappled with the broader trends of increasing violence, Mr. Cheatham's case remained shrouded in obscurity.
The area where Mr. Cheatham was found, a stretch of East 103rd Street in Watts, is a community with a rich and complex history, a place that has long contended with the realities of street violence. The year 2020 was a particularly difficult one for the neighborhood, which, like many parts of South Los Angeles, experienced a significant rise in homicides. Each of these deaths left a wake of grief and unanswered questions, but the silence surrounding Mr. Cheatham's case is particularly profound. Without a known cause of death, it is impossible for the community to understand what happened, or if a killer might still be at large.
Years have passed since Anthony Roy Cheatham's life was cut short. The questions from that February day remain unanswered. Was he the victim of a random act of violence, or was his death the result of a personal conflict? What were the final moments of his life like? Without any new information from law enforcement or any public pleas from those who knew him, his case has grown cold, a faint entry in a vast database of unsolved killings. His death serves as a stark reminder that behind the crime statistics are individuals whose stories are left unfinished, their final chapters unwritten and their cases waiting for a break that may never come. The investigation into who killed Anthony Cheatham and why remains open, a quiet and unresolved file in the archives of the LAPD.
