Rodney Beverly was 47 years old when he died early on Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2008, in the Vermont-Slauson neighborhood of South Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds at 1246 W. 68th St. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a case of the Los Angeles Police Department's 77th Street Division.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report said that Beverly, "a 47-year-old black man, was stabbed to death at 1246 W. 68th St. in South Los Angeles about 1 a.m. Wednesday, Jan. 9." It added: "According to Officer Refugio Garza of the South Bureau Homicide, Beverly stumbled into a transitional housing center where he lived and collapsed. Beverly was taken to California Hospital Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 1:30 a.m."
Those few lines hold the only public account of his death.
They show that Beverly was still on his feet after he was stabbed and that he made it back to the place he called home before he collapsed. That suggests that he may have been hurt somewhere close by, on the street or near the building, but the report does not say where the attack took place. It does not say whether he spoke to anyone before he fell, whether staff or other residents saw who he had been with, or whether he knew the person who stabbed him. It also does not describe a motive or any suspect.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Rodney Beverly has been made public. No obituary, memorial page or family fundraiser could be found, and no news outlet appears to have followed up on the case. Rodney Beverly is also a shared name, carried by a man who died in La Mesa in 2022, a 1985 graduate of a Los Angeles high school and men named in obituaries in several other states, none of whom can be tied to this death. He surely had family, friends or neighbors who remember who he was, but none of that has entered the public record.
Vermont-Slauson takes its name from the crossing of two of South Los Angeles's busiest roads, Vermont Avenue and Slauson Avenue. It is a dense, working-class area of small single-family homes, older apartment buildings and commercial strips along its main streets, and it is patrolled by the LAPD's 77th Street Division. The hospital where Beverly died, California Hospital Medical Center, is a major trauma center on the south side of downtown Los Angeles.
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 Rodney Beverly 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 lived or worked at the transitional housing center on West 68th Street in January 2008, who saw Rodney Beverly in the hours before 1 a.m. on Jan. 9, or who later heard someone talk about the stabbing, 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).
