Mario Alvarado was 24 years old when he died on Tuesday, December 9, 2003, in downtown Los Angeles, in the area the Los Angeles Times lists as Chinatown. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma at 450 Bauchet St. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Homicide Bureau case.
The address is that of the Twin Towers Correctional Facility, part of the Los Angeles County jail complex just north of downtown. Mario died in custody. A 2005 article in Prison Legal News, a publication that covers jails and prisons, reported that "transient Mario Alvarado, 24, was killed in the Reception Center adjacent to the downtown Twin Towers jail." The Inmate Reception Center is where people arrested in Los Angeles County are brought to be booked, processed and assigned to housing, and it holds large numbers of men at once.
The description of him as a transient suggests that he had no fixed home at the time of his arrest. The saved material does not say why he had been taken into custody, how long he had been there, or who attacked him. The same article described several killings inside the county jail system during that period, and in at least one other case inmates were charged with murder, but no such charge connected to Mario's death appears in the material gathered for this story.
Beyond that short account, almost nothing about Mario Alvarado has been made public. No obituary, memorial page or family fundraiser could be found for him. His name is a common one, and searches turned up many other men named Mario Alvarado in California, Texas, Maryland and elsewhere, none of them connected to this case.
A death inside a jail is still a homicide, and the person who caused it can be charged like anyone else. Because the attack took place in a secured facility, the people present were mostly other inmates and staff, which means that those who saw what happened may later have been released, transferred or sent to state prison. Some of them may still remember the day.
The jail complex on Bauchet Street sits between Chinatown, Union Station and the Los Angeles River, a short distance from the historic core of the city. It is one of the largest jail systems in the United States, and thousands of people pass through its reception center every week. 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 Mario Alvarado 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 held in or worked at the Inmate Reception Center or Twin Towers in early December 2003, or who knew Mario on the streets of Los Angeles before his arrest, may hold information that could help investigators. 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 Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Homicide Bureau at 323-890-5500, or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS.
