James Thomas Alexander was 43 years old when he died on Wednesday, June 6, 2001, in Long Beach. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds at 5008 Los Coyotes Diagonal. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a Long Beach Police Department case.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report recorded his death in a single sentence drawn from coroner's records. It described him as "a 43-year-old black male" who "died Wednesday, June 6, after being stabbed in Long Beach." It gave no other details about what happened, and no news story about his death appears to have been published.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about James Thomas Alexander 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. James Alexander is one of the most common name combinations in the English-speaking world, and searches for it turn up a naval officer who governed Guam before World War II, a Virginia man who died in 2026, men in court reports in Northern Ireland and England, and hundreds of obituaries across the United States. None of them can be connected to the man who died in Long Beach in 2001.
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.
Long Beach is the second-largest city in Los Angeles County, a port city of more than 400,000 people on the southern edge of the county. It is home to one of the busiest container ports in the country, to the retired ocean liner Queen Mary and to California State University, Long Beach. Los Coyotes Diagonal is one of the city's few angled streets, a boulevard that cuts across the street grid in the eastern part of the city through neighborhoods of houses, apartment buildings and small shopping centers. The Long Beach Police Department, not the Los Angeles Police Department, investigates killings within the city limits.
Hundreds of people are killed in Los Angeles County every year, and a large share of those killings end without an arrest.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of James Thomas Alexander could be found in news archives or public records. More than 24 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who was near the 5000 block of Los Coyotes Diagonal in early June 2001, or who knew a 43-year-old man named James Thomas Alexander in Long Beach, 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 contact the Long Beach Police Department's Homicide Detail at 562-570-7244, or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS (8477).
