She was listed only as Jane Doe #39. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, a Latina girl less than a year old died on Tuesday, July 2, 2002, after sustaining blunt force trauma. Her death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Homicide Bureau case.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report gives almost nothing else. Her age is recorded as zero, which means she had not yet reached her first birthday. No name, no address and no neighborhood appear in the record, and no news story about her death could be found. The label Jane Doe is used by the coroner when a person's name is not known or not released, and the number marks her place in a series of such cases.
Because the record is so sparse, the most basic questions remain unanswered in public. It does not say where she was found, whether she died at a home, at a hospital or somewhere else, who was caring for her, or how her injuries happened. It does not say whether investigators ever learned her name, whether a parent or guardian was ever questioned, or whether anyone was ever suspected. A finding of blunt force trauma in an infant can result from many kinds of injury, and nothing in the record explains which applied to her.
Searches for "Jane Doe #39" turned up only unrelated uses of the same label, in civil lawsuits, criminal trials and true crime stories elsewhere in the country. None of them concerns a baby who died in Los Angeles County in the summer of 2002.
It is possible that she was identified later and that her name simply never entered the public record, or that her family was located but chose not to speak publicly. It is also possible that she has never been claimed. Either way, she was a child who had barely begun her life, and somewhere there are likely people, a mother, a father, relatives or neighbors, who remember her or who noticed that a baby was suddenly gone in July 2002.
Los Angeles County covers more than 4,000 square miles and 88 cities, along with large unincorporated areas patrolled by the Sheriff's Department. Sheriff's homicide detectives investigate deaths across that vast territory, from the Antelope Valley to the southeast cities and the South Bay, and the deaths of young children are among the cases they treat with the most urgency. 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 Jane Doe #39 could be found in news archives or public records. More than 23 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knows of an infant girl who died or disappeared in Los Angeles County around July 2002, or who has information about how she was hurt, may hold information that could help detectives give her a name and an answer. 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.
