Curtis Glenn Dutton was 38 years old when he died on Monday, February 7, 2005. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Long Beach Police Department case. The public record does not give the address or neighborhood where he was hurt.
Coroner's records described him as a white man. Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Curtis Glenn Dutton 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 full name is fairly unusual, but searches turned up only other men named Curtis Dutton in other states and other eras, none of whom could be connected 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. Even the location is missing from the coroner's summary that the Los Angeles Times published, so it is not known which part of Long Beach he was in when he was hurt, or whether he lived in the city or was only passing through.
Long Beach is the second-largest city in Los Angeles County, with roughly 460,000 residents. It stretches from the busy Port of Long Beach and the downtown waterfront, with the Queen Mary docked across the harbor, to quiet residential neighborhoods such as Belmont Shore, Bixby Knolls and Lakewood Village. The city has its own police department, which investigates homicides within its borders separately from the Los Angeles Police Department and the Sheriff's Department.
The lack of a location makes this one of the hardest cases to picture from the outside. Detectives know where Curtis Dutton was found, but the public does not, which means that people who might have seen something may never have connected what they saw to his death.
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 Curtis Glenn Dutton could be found in news archives or public records. More than 20 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew Curtis in Long Beach in early 2005, or who remembers a man being badly hurt in the city in the first week of February that year, may hold information that could help. 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.
