David Alan Cardoza, a 48-year-old male from Phoenix, Arizona, was found dead in the city on May 12, 2014, in circumstances that police quickly classified as homicide. His body was discovered that day within Phoenix city limits, and case records list both the date he was found and the date of death as May 12, 2014, indicating that he died very close in time to when he was located. Public databases summarizing the case describe the manner of death broadly as a “death by force,” a term used in some homicide-tracking systems when the victim has clearly met with violence but officials have not disclosed specific information about the weapon or injuries involved. Cardoza is identified as a local resident of Phoenix, but open sources do not report his ethnicity, and there is no publicly available biographical material that details his background, work, or family life.
From the outset, the case was handled as a murder investigation by Phoenix authorities. CrimeSolversCentral, which compiles information from law-enforcement and public-record sources, notes that police opened a homicide investigation immediately after Cardoza’s body was found and that the case remains an unsolved killing rather than a natural, accidental, or self-inflicted death. The same entry emphasizes that “specific details and circumstances” leading to his death have not been released to the public, underscoring how little has been formally shared about where, how, or by whom he was attacked. The case is listed under “Death by Force,” but there is no accompanying narrative about the exact location of the scene, the presence of any witnesses, or whether investigators recovered physical evidence such as shell casings, weapons, or surveillance footage.
Over time, Cardoza’s killing has come to be treated as a cold case in public-facing crime and data sites that aggregate unsolved homicides from Phoenix and the wider region. He appears in “area cold case” summaries that draw from Phoenix Police Department and partner databases, where his cause of death is explicitly labeled as murder and the investigating agency is identified as Phoenix police. CrimeSolversCentral lists a $3,000 reward connected to the case, indicating that investigators or associated tip programs have offered money for information leading to an arrest or resolution, and the case file on that site shows a “last updated” date in late November 2025, suggesting that it is still being actively maintained in public cold-case trackers even though no new public details have emerged.
There is no indication in open sources that any suspect has ever been publicly named or arrested in connection with the killing of David Alan Cardoza. None of the accessible case summaries, reward listings, or cold-case aggregators reference a person of interest, an indictment, or a trial tied to his death; instead, they emphasize the ongoing nature of the investigation and invite members of the public to come forward if they have information. As far as publicly available information shows, Cardoza’s homicide remains unsolved more than a decade after he was found, with investigators still lacking—or at least not disclosing—enough evidence to identify those responsible for his violent death.
