In late December 2013, 26-year-old Justin Bentler, whose gender and race/ethnicity are listed in official homicide records as unknown, was killed in a still-unsolved violent incident in Phoenix, Arizona. Public databases that compile unsolved murders show the case as having been reported to Phoenix police on December 31, 2013, with the incident location recorded as 3611 South 59th Avenue in the 85043 ZIP code. These same records categorize the offense as murder and describe the manner of death only broadly as “death by force,” without specifying whether the violence involved a firearm, stabbing, beating, or another method.
The timeline surrounding the exact day of the killing is not completely consistent across public sources. An online memorial listing for a person with the same name and matching age reports a date of death of December 18, 2013, in Arizona, while the homicide databases and cold-case compilations tie the case to a report date of December 31, 2013, at the South 59th Avenue address in Phoenix. Taken together, these entries point to a violent death discovered and recorded by Phoenix authorities at the end of December 2013, even though commemorative records suggest that the fatal incident may have occurred several days earlier.
Although the killing was recorded in Phoenix, publicly available information shows that Bentler had deep ties to the Pacific Northwest, particularly Hermiston, Oregon. A high-school sports biography lists a student named Justin Bentler as a 2007 graduate who played varsity football for Hermiston High School, and community posts from late 2013 describe a candlelight vigil “in remembrance of Justin Bentler” held at Weber Field in Hermiston on December 21, just days after the death. A follow-up message invited friends and family to a celebration of life at a local restaurant in April 2014, underscoring that people who knew the victim came together in Hermiston to grieve, share memories, and honor the life that had been lost in Arizona. Public-record aggregators also link the Bentler surname to both Hermiston and Phoenix addresses, reinforcing the picture of someone whose life and family connections spanned Oregon and Arizona even though the homicide itself was handled by Phoenix police.
On the investigative side, the available case summaries are starkly minimal, and they emphasize how little has been disclosed publicly. The Project Cold Case database entry for this homicide lists the offense simply as “Murder,” with the cause of death marked “Unknown,” the suspect name recorded as “Unknown,” and the case status labeled “Unsolved.” The entry confirms that the Phoenix Police Department is the lead law-enforcement agency and repeats the South 59th Avenue address as the incident location. A separate profile on CrimeSolversCentral, which also relies on official and family-submitted data, echoes that the case remains unsolved years after the killing and invites members of the public to report any new information. In addition, multiple crime-mapping and cold-case index sites reference “Justin Bentler” under Phoenix Police Department cold cases, but none of them add details beyond confirming the homicide classification and the involvement of Phoenix authorities.
Crucially, across all of these online sources there is no indication that investigators have publicly identified a suspect or made any arrest in connection with the murder. The formal cold-case listing explicitly records the suspect's name as unknown, and there are no accompanying press releases, news stories, or court records in the public domain that link any individual to charges in the case. The repeated appearance of the homicide in unsolved-murder databases and cold-case awareness sites, without subsequent updates about developments, suggests that the investigation has remained open but unresolved, leaving the circumstances of the attack, the motive, and the identity of the person or persons responsible undisclosed to the public and still the subject of appeals for information more than a decade later.
