Rosemarie Feria was 55 years old when she died on Friday, Dec. 2, 2005, in downtown Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, she died of stab wounds at 206 W. 6th St. Her death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Los Angeles Police Department Central Division case.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report described her as "a 55-year-old Latino female" who "died Friday, Dec. 2, after being stabbed in Downtown." That brief entry, drawn from coroner's records, is nearly everything that has been made public about her death.
Beyond her name, her age and the place where she died, almost nothing about Rosemarie Feria 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.
Searches for her name turned up almost nothing. The only results were social media comments posted years later by a living woman with a similar name, who has no connection to this case. The absence of any obituary or news story does not mean she was alone in the world. A woman of 55 had lived a long life before that December, and somewhere there are likely relatives, friends, former coworkers or neighbors who knew her and who may have wondered for years what happened to her.
The address where she died lies in the older heart of downtown Los Angeles, along West 6th Street. This part of the city is a dense district of early twentieth-century office towers, former department stores, historic theaters and storefronts, many of them converted in recent decades into apartments and lofts. In 2005 the area was in the middle of that change. New residents were beginning to move into restored buildings, while the streets were still home to residential hotels, small shops, street vendors and many people with little money or no permanent home. Busy by day with office workers, shoppers and bus riders, the blocks could become quiet and nearly empty late at night.
Los Angeles still recorded roughly 480 to 520 homicides a year in the mid-2000s, and many of those killings were never solved.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Rosemarie Feria could be found in news archives or public records. More than 20 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who lived, worked or spent time near the 200 block of West 6th Street in downtown Los Angeles in late November or early December 2005, or who knew Rosemarie and the places she went, 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).
