Noel Stanford Cooper was 56 years old when he died on Thursday, Sept. 30, 2004, in Reseda. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma at 6804 Baird Ave. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a case of the Los Angeles Police Department's West Valley Division.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report recorded his death in a single sentence drawn from coroner's records. It gave his age, listed him as a white man, placed his death in Reseda and gave the address. It did not say how he was hurt, whether the address was his home, who found him, or whether detectives had identified anyone they wanted to question. No follow-up story appears to have been published.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Noel Stanford Cooper 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. Searches for his name turned up several other men named Noel Cooper, in other states and in New Zealand, none of them connected to his death.
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.
At 56, he would have been born in the late 1940s and would have come of age in the 1960s. Nothing in the record says how long he had lived in the San Fernando Valley, what he did for a living or whether he had a family nearby.
Reseda is a neighborhood in the west-central San Fernando Valley, part of the city of Los Angeles. It grew from farmland into a postwar suburb in the 1950s, when tracts of single-family homes filled the flat valley floor, and it later added many apartment buildings along its main streets. Reseda Boulevard and Sherman Way are its main commercial streets, lined with shops, restaurants and small businesses. The neighborhood was among the areas hard hit by the 1994 Northridge earthquake. It is served by the LAPD's West Valley Division.
Los Angeles still recorded roughly 480 to 520 homicides a year in the mid-2000s, and many of those killings were never solved.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Noel Stanford Cooper could be found in news archives or public records. More than 21 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who lived on or near Baird Avenue in Reseda in September 2004, or who knew a 56-year-old man named Noel Stanford Cooper, 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 call the Los Angeles Police Department at 877-527-3247 or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS.
