Verica Todor Popovich was 50 years old when she died on Sunday, Feb. 12, 2006, in Venice. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, she died after sustaining blunt force trauma at Speedway and 19th Avenue. Her death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department Pacific Division case.
The official record says little beyond those facts. The Homicide Report lists her as a white woman and gives no account of how she was hurt, whether anyone saw it happen, or whether police ever named a suspect. No mainstream news story about her death could be found for this report.
Venice did not forget her, though. The Free Venice Beachhead, the community newspaper that has covered the neighborhood for decades, ran a story headlined "Death in Venice: Verika 'Tiny Dancer' Popovich Murdered," according to the paper's online archive index. The nickname suggests that she was a familiar figure in the neighborhood, someone people knew by sight and by a name of affection. A later issue of the Beachhead carried a "Tribute to Verica Popovich" under the title "Everybody Is A Star," a phrase borrowed from the Sly Stone song. The archive index that survives online lists only the headlines, so the text of those pieces, and whatever details they held about her life and death, could not be reviewed for this story. The same index also lists a headline reading "Killer Beats Homeless Woman to Death," but it does not show whether that story concerned her.
The place where she died sits in the heart of beach Venice. Speedway is a narrow street that runs a block inland from Ocean Front Walk, the famous boardwalk lined with vendors, street performers, cafes and apartment buildings. The numbered avenues that cross it lead toward the sand. The area draws huge crowds of tourists by day, and it has long been home to artists, musicians, longtime renters and a sizable population of people living on the street. At night the alleys and side streets near the boardwalk empty out and grow quiet.
Los Angeles still recorded roughly 480 to 520 homicides a year in the mid-2000s, and many of those killings were never solved.
Popovich's case is the kind that can slip away without anyone outside a small circle noticing. The people who might have known what happened to her, the neighbors, vendors, regulars of the boardwalk and others who called her "Tiny Dancer," were part of a community that rarely appears in the daily papers. The Beachhead's coverage shows that her death mattered to that community, even if the wider city heard little about it.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Verica Todor Popovich could be found in news archives or public records. More than 19 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Someone who spent time near Speedway and 19th Avenue in Venice in February 2006, or who knew Popovich from the boardwalk, may still remember who she was with in her last days or what was said about her death afterward. 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 call the Los Angeles Police Department at 877-527-3247 or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS.
