Robert Daniel Twitchell was 50 years old when he died on Friday, June 14, 2013, in Long Beach. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma near 305 W. Anaheim St. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Long Beach Police Department case.
He was a white man of 50. Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Robert Daniel Twitchell 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. He surely had family, friends or neighbors who remember who he was, but none of that has entered the public record. His surname is fairly uncommon, but searches for it turned up only other men named Robert Twitchell, in obituaries from Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Ohio and elsewhere, none of them the man who died in Long Beach.
Because so little has been released, even the basic circumstances remain unknown to the public. The record does not say whether he was beaten in a fight, attacked by a stranger, assaulted indoors or on the street, or struck by a vehicle, all of which can lead to a finding of blunt force trauma. It does not say what time of day he was hurt, whether he died at the scene or later at a hospital, whether anyone saw what happened, or whether investigators ever identified a suspect.
The coroner's record places his death near an address rather than at it. That wording suggests he may have been found outside, on the sidewalk or street near the building, rather than in a home, although the record does not say so directly.
Long Beach, the second-largest city in Los Angeles County, is a port city of close to half a million people. It is known for one of the busiest container ports in the country, the Queen Mary, the Aquarium of the Pacific and miles of beaches along its southern edge. Away from the waterfront and the downtown towers, much of the city is made up of dense neighborhoods of apartment buildings, small houses, corner stores and busy commercial streets, where many residents have lived for decades and neighbors often know one another by sight. Anaheim Street is one of the city's main east-west corridors, lined with small shops, restaurants, motels and apartment buildings, and the 300 block of West Anaheim lies in central Long Beach.
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 Robert Daniel Twitchell could be found in news archives or public records. More than 12 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who lived, worked or spent time near the 300 block of West Anaheim Street in Long Beach in June 2013, or who knew Robert and saw him in the days before his death, may hold information that could help detectives. 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 Long Beach Police Department's Homicide Detail at 562-570-7244, or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS.
