Do you know who murdered Lanycha Zimmer? Caucasian/White, female, age 27. In the cold of early December 2019, a grey Mazda 6 sat abandoned along the 500 block of North Sitka Street in east Anchorage. Shortly after 10:30 a.m. on December 5, responding officers opened the car and found the body of 27-year-old Lanycha Zimmer. Police determined the sedan had been reported stolen a month earlier, on November 4, from the 2000 block of East 3rd Avenue, and that it had likely been stashed for a time in an apartment parking lot along the 600
block of East 22nd Avenue before reappearing on Sitka. Trauma was visible on Zimmer's body, and the medical examiner's office took custody as detectives began a homicide investigation.
The theft of the Mazda, the long and murky window when the car was parked unseen, and the discovery of Zimmer's body inside it turned the vehicle into the case's central thread. Detectives traced its movements and asked nearby residents for information, seeking anyone who had noticed the Mazda sitting for days in late November. The Anchorage Police Department assigned the case number 19-43738 and publicly emphasized the unusual timeline: a car stolen in early November, apparently left in a neighborhood lot for weeks, and then found with a homicide victim inside at the start of December.
Zimmer's death added to a grim year for the city. Local outlets noted it as the 33rd homicide of 2019 and the sixth in a rapid succession that week, a burst of violence that unsettled neighborhoods from Mountain View to Midtown. Her name—released days later—was linked in some reports to family ties in Palmer, underscoring how reverberations from the killing spread beyond Anchorage proper. Even as the city debated trends and statistics, investigators kept circling back to the Mazda and to anyone who might have driven or ridden in it after the theft.
As weeks turned into months, authorities renewed their plea for tips, posting reminders across official channels and partner organizations. The Anchorage Daily News amplified the timeline that the Mazda had been reported stolen roughly a month before the discovery, and police reiterated that the case remained open. No arrests were announced, no suspect was publicly named, and the investigation continued as an unsolved homicide, with Crime Stoppers repeating the call for information that might identify the person or people responsible for the killing of 27-year-old Lanycha Zimmer.
