Alicia Espinoza was 45 years old when she was found dead on Tuesday, December 31, 2013, in Wilmington, in the Harbor area of Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, she died of stab wounds at 1712 Wilmington Blvd. Her death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a case of the Los Angeles Police Department's Harbor Division.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report described what police and the coroner's office said that day. Espinoza, who lived in Long Beach, was found in the 1700 block of North Wilmington Boulevard. "Espinoza and a male in his 40s were discovered with multiple stab wounds by an employee at Oscar's Motel," coroner's spokesman Ed Winter told the paper. The employee called police at about 12:10 p.m., according to LAPD Officer Giovanni Oliva.
"The man was taken to a hospital, where he remains in critical condition," Oliva said.
Espinoza was pronounced dead at 12:20 p.m., and an autopsy showed that she died of multiple stab wounds. According to Oliva, "The two had rented the room and had been staying there for a few days." The Times reported that the investigation was ongoing and asked anyone with information to call Oliva or Det. Rodriguez at the Harbor Homicide Division at 726-7881.
That brief account raises questions that were never answered in public. The record does not name the man who was found with her, say how the two knew each other, or say whether he survived. It does not say whether investigators treated him as a second victim, and it does not say whether anyone else was seen going in or out of the room.
Beyond her name, her age, her hometown and the place where she died, almost nothing about Alicia Espinoza has been made public. No obituary, memorial page or family fundraiser could be found for this story. Alicia Espinoza is a common name, and searches for it are crowded with other women, including a young woman convicted in a 2020 killing in Tulare County and obituaries of older women in several states, none of whom can be tied to this death.
Wilmington is a working-class community at the southern end of the city of Los Angeles, next to the Port of Los Angeles. Its streets mix modest homes and apartment buildings with oil refineries, rail lines, warehouses and trucking yards that serve the harbor. Wilmington Boulevard is one of the community's main north-south streets, lined with small businesses, auto shops and motels. The neighborhood sits beside Long Beach, the city where Espinoza lived, and is patrolled by the LAPD's Harbor Division.
By the mid-2010s Los Angeles was recording roughly 250 to 300 homicides a year, among the lowest totals in decades, yet many of those killings still went unsolved.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Alicia Espinoza could be found in news archives or public records. More than 12 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew a 45-year-old Long Beach woman named Alicia Espinoza, who stayed at or worked near Oscar's Motel on Wilmington Boulevard, or who saw anything there in the last days of December 2013, 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 call the Los Angeles Police Department at 877-527-3247 or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS.
