On November 11, 1978, 57-year-old Hispanic man Francisco Perez Rodriguez was found dead in a Los Angeles parking lot. His killing was part of a string of attacks on Skid Row during the fall and winter of 1978–1979 in which predominantly homeless or transient men were stabbed multiple times with a long-bladed knife. Authorities later associated these ritualistic stabbings with a suspect labeled the Skid Row Stabber.

In April 1979 police arrested 29-year-old Bobby Joe Maxwell and charged him with multiple counts of murder, including the death of Francisco Perez Rodriguez. Prosecutors pointed to a palm print on a bench, a knife said to be consistent with wounds on several victims, and a logbook entry referencing Satan as circumstantial links to the crimes. Maxwell was convicted in 1984 and sentenced to life without parole; those convictions were overturned in 2010.

There are unresolved questions about the evidence tying individual killings to a single perpetrator and about what really happened to Rodriguez; anyone with memories of Skid Row in 1978 or information about Francisco Perez Rodriguez is asked to come forward.