Robert Fagan was 75 years old when he died on Saturday, Oct. 21, 2000, in East Hollywood. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, he died of stab wounds at 518 N. Normandie. His death was ruled a homicide, and it is listed as a case of the Los Angeles Police Department's Rampart Division.
The Los Angeles Times Homicide Report recorded his death in a single sentence drawn from coroner's records. It described him as "a 75-year-old white male" who "died Saturday, Oct. 21, after being stabbed in East Hollywood." The entry gave a street address on Normandie Avenue, but it did not say whether that was his home, the home of someone he knew or simply the place where he was found.
At 75, he was far older than most homicide victims in the city, and the stabbing of a man his age might be expected to draw attention, yet no follow-up story appears to have been written.
Beyond his name, his age and the place where he died, almost nothing about Robert Fagan 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. Robert Fagan is not a rare name, and searches turn up many other men who share it, including a Maryland man convicted in a 1990s case involving his wife, a film and advertising producer, a business executive and an eighteenth-century portrait painter. None of them has any connection to this death.
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.
East Hollywood is a dense, working-class neighborhood of apartment buildings, small shops and busy commercial streets on the eastern side of Hollywood. Normandie Avenue is one of the long north-south streets that run through it. The area has long been home to many immigrant families and older residents living on modest incomes, and it is close to the large hospital complexes along Vermont Avenue and Sunset Boulevard. In 2000, the Rampart Division that covered the area was in the middle of a major police corruption scandal, which consumed much of the department's attention that year.
Homicides in Los Angeles rose sharply in the early 2000s, climbing past 600 in 2002, and detectives carried heavy caseloads. Many killings from those years were never solved.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Robert Fagan could be found in news archives or public records. More than 25 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew a 75-year-old man named Robert Fagan, or who lived or worked near the 500 block of North Normandie Avenue in October 2000, 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 (877-LAPD-24-7), or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 800-222-TIPS (8477).
