Elizabeth Garrett was 25 years old when she died on Wednesday, June 11, 2008, in the 3500 block of Buena Vista Avenue in Baltimore. She died of asphyxiation. The Baltimore Police Department investigated her death, and the Baltimore Sun's homicide database lists it as a homicide.
Only a few traces of her life and death reached the public record.
A death notice published through the Baltimore Sun's obituary pages in late June 2008 remembered her as "ELIZABETH "Frootloop" GARRETT, a victim of violent crime, beloved daughter of" her family. Only that fragment of the notice could be found online. No longer obituary, memorial page or family fundraiser could be found for this story.
Her death came during a summer in which several women were found dead in Baltimore, and it was later discussed alongside theirs. In August 2008, the crime-mapping site SpotCrime published a post about the deaths of women in the city that named Yolanda Brown, Elizabeth Garrett, Amanda Bishop, Nicole Sesker and Brenda Hatfield, and said all of them "were found naked or partially undressed by the police." The Baltimore Sun reported in July 2008 that, because of the recent killings of women, police had formed a task force of detectives to review unsolved homicides of women from the past decade, but that they had "not drawn any connections." That description of the women does not by itself show that any of the deaths were linked, and no public source located for this story says that investigators ever tied her death to anyone else's.
Beyond those details, little is known about how she died. The public record does not say whether she was attacked indoors or outdoors, whether she knew the person responsible, what time of day it happened or whether anyone saw or heard anything. It also does not say whether detectives ever identified a suspect. Searching for her name online is made harder by the fame of Mary Elizabeth Garrett, the nineteenth-century Baltimore philanthropist, whose story fills most results and can bury the few references to a young woman who died in 2008.
Buena Vista Avenue is a residential street in Baltimore, and the 3500 block is the one recorded for her death in the Sun's database. Whoever lived on or passed through that block in June 2008 may have seen or heard something that seemed unimportant at the time.
Baltimore recorded roughly 200 to 280 homicides a year between 2007 and 2014, one of the highest rates of any large American city, and many of those killings were never solved. Cases like hers, with few public details and no announced suspect, are among the ones most likely to be forgotten.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Elizabeth Garrett could be found in news archives or public records. More than 18 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Neighbors, friends or relatives who knew her, and anyone who was near the 3500 block of Buena Vista Avenue in June 2008, may hold information that could help detectives understand what happened to her. 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 Baltimore Police homicide detectives at 410-396-2100, or leave an anonymous tip with Metro Crime Stoppers of Maryland at 1-866-7LOCKUP (1-866-756-2587).
