William Magdalena Heredia was 49 years old when he died on Tuesday, May 28, 2002. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died after sustaining blunt force trauma. The coroner's summary published by the Los Angeles Times does not give the place where he was hurt. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Homicide Bureau case.
The Homicide Report entry for William contains only his age, the date and the cause of death. There is no address, no neighborhood, no account from detectives and no word from family. Even the city where he died has not been made public.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about William Magdalena Heredia 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 given name and surname are common ones, and searches turned up only other men named William Heredia, including a teenager tried in Connecticut in the 1990s and people in Puerto Rico, Florida and New England, none of them connected to this 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. Without even a street or a city, it is impossible for the public to say whether he died in a home, a business, a park or along a road.
Because the case belongs to the Sheriff's Department, William was most likely hurt somewhere outside the city of Los Angeles, in one of the unincorporated communities the department patrols or in one of the dozens of cities that contract with it for police services. That territory stretches from the beaches to the Antelope Valley and from the San Gabriel Valley to the harbor area, and it includes dense urban neighborhoods as well as quiet suburbs. The department's Homicide Bureau handles killings across all of it, and it also investigates deaths in county jails and some other custody settings.
Hundreds of people are killed in Los Angeles County every year, and a large share of those killings end without an arrest. A death with no published location is among the hardest for the public to help with, because no one can know whether they were nearby.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of William Magdalena Heredia 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 knew a 49-year-old man named William Heredia who died in Los Angeles County in late May 2002, or who knows how he was hurt, 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 Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Homicide Bureau at 323-890-5500, or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS.
