Susan Carole Cash was 54 years old when she died on Sunday, December 14, 2003, in Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, she died after sustaining blunt force trauma. Her death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department West Los Angeles Division case. No address for the place where she was hurt was released.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report, which draws on coroner's records, describes her as a white woman and gives little more than her age, the date and the cause of death. One other public record adds an important detail. A Los Angeles City Council actions record from early January 2004 refers to a reward connected to the "November 26, 2003 assault and subsequent death of Ms. Susan Cash on December 13, 2003." The council record goes on to "FIND that the subject reward complies with the provisions" of the city's rules, which suggests that the city offered money for information leading to whoever attacked her.
That record means Susan was assaulted more than two weeks before she died, on the day before Thanksgiving in 2003, and that she survived for some time after the attack. The council gives her date of death as December 13, while the coroner's listing gives December 14, a difference that may reflect the time of death near midnight or a simple clerical gap. City rewards of this kind are generally sought when detectives hope that money will bring forward a witness.
Beyond those documents, almost nothing about Susan Carole Cash has been made public. No obituary, memorial page or family fundraiser could be found for this story, and no news article about the assault appears in the material gathered. Her name is shared by several other women in public life, including an Inyo County supervisor and a university administrator, but none of those records are about her.
The LAPD's West Los Angeles Division serves a large part of the city's Westside, including neighborhoods such as Brentwood, Westwood and Pacific Palisades. Much of the area is residential and comparatively affluent, and violent attacks there draw attention. It is not known exactly where in the division Susan was attacked, whether at home, on the street or somewhere else, or whether she knew the person who hurt her.
Los Angeles still recorded roughly 480 to 520 homicides a year in the mid-2000s, and many of those killings were never solved. A reward offer shows that the city considered her case worth a public appeal, yet no arrest was ever reported.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Susan Carole Cash could be found in news archives or public records. More than 22 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who was on the Westside of Los Angeles on November 26, 2003, and saw or heard of an attack on a woman in her 50s, or who knew Susan and remembers what happened to her that day, 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 call the Los Angeles Police Department at 877-527-3247 or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS.
