Latonya Urain Watkins-Smith, 43, was found dead in a garbage bin in an alley in the 8500 block of South Vincennes Avenue in Auburn Gresham, on Chicago's South Side, on the morning of Tuesday, December 12, 2023. The Chicago Police Department investigated, and Area detectives were assigned to the case.
About 8:30 a.m., a city Streets and Sanitation worker checking a garbage bin before loading the trash into the truck found her body, according to a police report.
She was partially clothed, and her hands and feet were bound. She was dead at the scene. An autopsy that day found that she died of multiple injuries from an assault, and the Cook County medical examiner's office ruled her death a homicide. Her name was released two days later.
Police said nobody was in custody. No suspect description, person of interest, vehicle or reward has been made public. It has not been reported when she was killed, where she was attacked, whether she died before she was placed in the bin, or how long she had been there before the sanitation crew arrived. Those basic questions have never been publicly answered.
Almost nothing about her life has been made public. No obituary, memorial page or family fundraiser for her could be found, and no relative was quoted in news coverage. Her full name, with the middle name Urain and the hyphenated surname Watkins-Smith, suggests family ties on more than one side, and she surely had relatives and friends who noticed when she stopped calling or coming home.
The circumstances stand out even among Chicago homicides. She was bound and left in a trash bin in an alley, which means someone had to bring her there or leave her there and walk away. Her death came two weeks before Christmas, when many families gather and an absence is noticed.
Auburn Gresham is a largely residential South Side community area of bungalows, two-flats and small apartment buildings, centered on 79th Street. City garbage bins sit in the alleys behind homes and are emptied on a regular schedule, so residents who took out their trash in the days before, or who saw a car or a person stop in that alley, may have noticed something that seemed minor at the time.
Chicago recorded about 620 homicides in 2023, fewer than the roughly 780 in 2020 and about 800 in 2021, the deadliest year in a quarter century, but still far more than in most large American cities. Chicago police reported clearing roughly half of homicides in 2019 through 2023, though those figures count cases closed without charges. Many killings from those years remain without an arrest.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Latonya Urain Watkins-Smith could be found in news archives or public records. More than 2 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew her and saw her in the days before December 12, 2023, or who noticed unusual activity in the alley behind the 8500 block of South Vincennes Avenue, may be able to help. Even a small detail, such as a name overheard, a car seen leaving the area or a conversation remembered, can help detectives move a case forward. Anyone with information can call the Chicago Police Department's anonymous tip line at (833) 408-0069 or submit a tip online at CPDTIP.com, or contact Cook County Crime Stoppers at (800) 535-STOP (7867).
