Los Angeles' most infamous unsolved murders and mysterious deaths — cases that passed through the Los Angeles Coroner's Office and remain open to this day.
Operation Hard Ball charged 37 people across three India-based syndicates. Riley B. breaks down what the RICO indictments actually allege — and what they don't.
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William J. Mann spent five years in the archives and came out with a name. Riley B. reads the book and interrogates the evidence — carefully.
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How a bus stop confrontation on Hollywood Boulevard turned into a fatal stabbing — and a murder case that took investigators eight days to fully close.
Read more →The 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short remains the most notorious unsolved case in Los Angeles history. How the Los Angeles Coroner's Office handled the case that launched a thousand theories.
Read more →The Los Angeles Coroner's 'Body Notes' notepad turned the language of autopsy reports into an office supply — and became a cult favorite.
Read more →A cotton tote bag stamped with the Los Angeles Coroner's seal became an unlikely fashion statement on the streets of Los Angeles.
Read more →In 1922, one of Hollywood's top directors was found shot dead in his bungalow. The investigation exposed secrets that rocked the film industry — and the case was never solved.
Read more →The Los Angeles Coroner's gift shop sold a plush German Shepherd named Indy — modeled after the real cadaver dogs that helped recover remains across Los Angeles.
Read more →When the 'Ice Cream Blonde' was found dead in her car in 1935, the coroner ruled carbon monoxide poisoning. But was it really an accident? The evidence tells a more sinister story.
Read more →The Los Angeles Coroner's crime scene towel turned yellow tape into a beach accessory — and became one of the gift shop's most popular items.
Read more →On March 9, 1997, Christopher Wallace was gunned down in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Coroner confirmed the cause of death, but the killer has never been identified.
Read more →A white beach towel with a body outline became the Los Angeles Coroner's most iconic product — and an unlikely symbol of Los Angeles itself.
Read more →When Marilyn Monroe was found dead in her Brentwood home on August 5, 1962, the Los Angeles Coroner ruled it a probable suicide. Sixty years later, the questions haven't stopped.
Read more →The man who played Superman was found dead with a gunshot wound in 1959. The coroner ruled suicide, but the evidence left room for doubt — and Hollywood never stopped whispering.
Read more →In 1981, actress Natalie Wood drowned off Catalina Island. The coroner called it an accident. Thirty years later, the case was reopened and the ruling changed.
Read more →When RFK was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in 1968, the Los Angeles Coroner's autopsy was meticulous. The ballistic evidence, however, raised questions that persist to this day.
Read more →No coroner's office in America has touched more famous deaths, generated more controversy, or sold more beach towels than the Los Angeles Coroner. Here's how it happened.
Read more →When wildfires sweep through Los Angeles County, the coroner's office faces its most difficult identification challenge — recovering and naming the dead from scenes where everything has been reduced to ash.
Read more →The AIDS crisis and crack epidemic hit Los Angeles simultaneously in the 1980s — and the coroner's office was the institution that counted the dead when no one else wanted to.
Read more →Los Angeles County buries more unclaimed dead than almost any jurisdiction in the country — a grim intersection of homelessness, poverty, and isolation in America's second-largest city.
Read more →Thomas Noguchi autopsied Marilyn Monroe, Robert Kennedy, and Sharon Tate — but his legacy extends far beyond celebrity cases to forensic innovations that changed how America investigates death.
Read more →The Los Angeles Coroner's Office on North Mission Road was never meant to be a tourist attraction — but its distinctive architecture and macabre gift shop made it one of the most recognizable buildings in Los Angeles.
Read more →Elected coroner or appointed medical examiner? The distinction shapes how death investigations are conducted — and Los Angeles has been at the center of this debate for decades.
Read more →California is one of the few states where autopsy reports are public record — a transparency policy that has fueled true-crime research, journalism, and controversy for decades.
Read more →Earthquakes, wildfires, plane crashes, and mass shootings — the Los Angeles Coroner's Office has been tested by some of the worst mass casualty events in American history.
Read more →Every year, the Los Angeles Coroner's Office handles over a thousand bodies that nobody claims — a crisis that reveals the isolation and anonymity hidden beneath the surface of America's second-largest city.
Read more →Before the autopsy, before the toxicology, the LA Coroner's investigators arrive at the scene — apartments, alleys, freeways, and hillsides — to begin piecing together how someone died.
Read more →DNA, dental records, fingerprints, and forensic anthropology — the Los Angeles Coroner's Office uses every available tool to identify remains that arrive without a name.
Read more →The Los Angeles Coroner's toxicology laboratory analyzes blood, tissue, and fluid samples from thousands of death investigations each year — the silent science behind every suspicious death.
Read more →Death certificates issued by the Los Angeles Coroner's Office carry enormous legal weight. The distinction between cause and manner of death can determine whether someone goes to prison.
Read more →The Los Angeles Coroner's Office handles roughly 19,000 death investigations annually — making it one of the busiest forensic operations in the Western Hemisphere.
Read more →A practical guide to how to read an autopsy report from LA County — cause vs. manner, deferred rulings, toxicology levels, and the mistakes readers make.
Read more →LA County overdose death data shows how fentanyl reshaped death investigation — surging caseloads, toxicology backlogs, and the first hopeful signs of a turn.
Read more →This week's LA County unclaimed dead ceremony at Evergreen Cemetery will lay to rest 1,865 people, continuing a tradition of dignity that dates to 1896.
Read more →A Halloween-season guide to Los Angeles dark tourism — the Cecil Hotel, Hollywood Forever, the Museum of Death, and the coroner's Mission Road legacy.
Read more →Sixty-two years on, Marilyn Monroe's cause of death is settled science — yet the 'probable suicide' ruling never settled the public mind. Here's why.
Read more →How investigative genetic genealogy is solving cold cases in Los Angeles — from the Golden State Killer arrest to the coroner's unidentified dead.
Read more →On the Black Dahlia anniversary, Los Angeles remembers Elizabeth Short again. Why a 1947 unsolved murder still commands the city's imagination, 77 years on.
Read more →The LA coroner gift shop sold body-outline beach towels and toe-tag keychains for a quarter century. The strange, charming story of Skeletons in the Closet.
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