Packed In: Overcrowded housing in Los Angeles has brought death by design
A few minutes before 9 p.m. on June 4, police arrived at a home in what they believed had been a homicide. In the dark, police quickly determined that there was indeed a homicide. The officers didn’t get much physical evidence – just the victim’s body and a large bloodstain on a wall. The home, however, was filled with evidence.
In the apartment, officers found a bloody mattress, a blood-soaked vacuum cleaner and other items, all with the same stain. They also found a gun and ammunition on the kitchen table and on the living-room floor where the body was eventually found.
At the scene of the death, the officers discovered a small living room, full of garbage, used clothes, dirty dishes, empty liquor bottles, empty coffee cups and a couch covered in urine. Officers found a plastic baggie filled with $25.50 in cash in a kitchen garbage pail. Inside the bag, police found a bloody woman’s panties, a knife and a note written to the victim.
That note, printed on a piece of paper, read: “I just killed my husband… I just put a bullet in his head.”
The suspect, a 40-year-old father of two young boys, was arrested on suspicion of murder.
But what exactly happened?
Three months later, a different detective in the department’s Homicide Bureau was assigned to the case, and he received a new tip, from an informant who had been questioned by police. This time, police found a pair of bloody panties in a trash can near the home’s trash cans. They also found a bloody woman’s handkerchief stuffed in a trash bin.
The detectives took photographs of the panties and handkerchief.
Within days, two bloodstains were discovered at the scene of the crime – one on the floor below a doorway and another at