Stuart W. Greenburg was 67 years old when he died on Saturday, Dec. 13, 2008, in Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department Wilshire Division case. Unusually, the public record does not give the address where he was hurt or where he died.
The coroner's record describes him as a white man. The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report entry for him consists of a single line, stating that he "died Saturday, Dec. 13, after being stabbed." No street, block or neighborhood was listed, and no follow-up story was ever written.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Stuart W. Greenburg 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 surname is spelled in a less common way than the more familiar Greenberg, but several men with the same name appear in records across the country, and none of those records could be tied to the man who died in 2008.
Because so little has been released, even the basic circumstances remain unknown to the public. The record does not say whether he was stabbed during a fight or a robbery, attacked by a stranger or by someone he knew, or hurt indoors or on the street. 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.
The missing address makes this case even harder to picture than most. Without it, the public cannot know whether he died at home, in a business, in a parked car or on a sidewalk, or even which part of the Wilshire Division's territory the case came from.
The LAPD's Wilshire Division covers a large stretch of central Los Angeles west of downtown. Its territory includes the Mid-Wilshire area, with its office towers and museums along Wilshire Boulevard's Miracle Mile, older residential neighborhoods such as Hancock Park and the Fairfax district, and the Mid-City area farther south. It is a mix of apartment buildings, single-family homes and busy commercial corridors, home to people of every age and background, including many older residents who have lived there for decades.
Homicides in Los Angeles fell steeply in the late 2000s and early 2010s, yet many killings from those years were never solved.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Stuart W. Greenburg could be found in news archives or public records. More than 17 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew a 67-year-old man by that name living in central Los Angeles in 2008, who was a neighbor, friend or relative, or who heard talk in December 2008 about an older man being stabbed in the Wilshire area, 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 (877-LAPD-24-7), or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS (8477).
