Marina Taylor was 65 years old when she died on Thursday, June 6, 2019, in the Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw area of Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, she died of stab wounds in the 3900 block of Coco Avenue. Her death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department South Bureau Homicide case.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report described her only as "a 65-year-old black female" who "died Thursday, June 6, after being stabbed in Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw." No news story about the stabbing could be found, and the police have not released any public account of what happened.
Beyond her name, her age and the place where she died, almost nothing about Marina Taylor 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.
She surely had family, friends or neighbors who remember who she was, but none of that has entered the public record.
Because so little has been released, even the basic circumstances remain unknown to the public. The record does not say whether she was stabbed during a fight or a robbery, attacked by a stranger or by someone she knew, or hurt indoors or on the street. It does not say what time of day she was hurt, whether she died at the scene or later at a hospital, whether anyone saw what happened, or whether investigators ever identified a suspect.
Marina Taylor is a fairly common name. Searches turn up a family law attorney, a nurse in Arizona, a television producer, a university trustee and obituaries for many other women, as well as a woman of the same name who was killed in Illinois years earlier. None of them can be connected to this death, and that crowd of namesakes has made it even harder for any trace of this particular woman to surface.
Baldwin Hills and the Crenshaw district lie in the southwestern part of Los Angeles, and for generations the area has been one of the best-known centers of Black life and culture in Southern California. Its neighborhoods include tidy single-family homes, apartment buildings and hillside streets with views across the city. The Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza shopping center and the Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area are nearby landmarks. Coco Avenue is a residential street, the kind of block where neighbors often know one another and may notice when something is wrong. A woman of 65 who lived or spent time there may have been known to many people on the block.
Los Angeles recorded about 260 homicides a year in 2018 and 2019, among the lowest yearly totals in more than half a century, yet many of those killings still went unsolved.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Marina Taylor could be found in news archives or public records. More than six years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who lived on or near Coco Avenue in the Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw area in June 2019, or who knew a 65-year-old woman named Marina Taylor, 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.
