Stephen Malcolm Glatt was 80 years old when he died on Wednesday, April 17, 2013. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma. His death was ruled a homicide, but the public record does not list an address, a neighborhood or a city where he was hurt, and it does not name an investigating agency. The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report entry for him lists the agency simply as "None."
That makes his case one of the thinnest entries in the Homicide Report. The Times recorded only his name, his age, his gender, his race, the date of his death and the cause. It did not publish a story about him.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Stephen Malcolm Glatt 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.
Glatt is not a common surname, but searches for his name are crowded by another man, Stephen J. Glatt, a psychiatric geneticist at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York, whose research papers fill page after page of results. Nothing ties that scientist to the 80-year-old man who died in 2013, and none of the other records found under the name could be matched to him.
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.
His age raises its own questions. When an older person dies of blunt force trauma, the injury can come from many different kinds of events, and a coroner's ruling of homicide means that investigators concluded another person caused the death. It does not, by itself, say whether he was attacked deliberately, injured during a robbery, harmed by someone caring for him or hurt in some other way. Without a location or a named agency, it is not even clear which police department or sheriff's station was responsible for the investigation, or whether he died in the place where he was injured.
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 Stephen Malcolm Glatt 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 knew him, cared for him or lived near him in April 2013 may hold information that could help investigators understand what happened to him. 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 local law enforcement or the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Homicide Bureau at 323-890-5500, or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS.
