Frank Floyd Reed was a 36-year-old White man stabbed to death on November 12, 1978, in a parking area at 237 East Fifth Street in downtown Los Angeles. His killing was one of several knife attacks concentrated in the city’s Skid Row area during late 1978 that investigators linked to an unidentified assailant dubbed the Skid Row Stabber. Many victims in the series were found in parking lots, alleys, sidewalks or other exposed public locations and suffered stab wounds to the upper body; several were experiencing homelessness or spent time in the Skid Row neighborhood.

Police later connected the string of murders to a suspect, Bobby Joe Maxwell, who was arrested in April 1979 and tried in 1984. Maxwell was convicted of two of the killings but jurors deadlocked on Reed’s murder, producing a mistrial on that count; prosecutors did not immediately retry Reed’s charge. Questions about the reliability of key jailhouse informant testimony and other prosecution practices would later become central to challenges to Maxwell’s convictions.

Does anyone who knew Frank Reed or was in downtown Los Angeles that November 1978 have information that could shed light on his last hours?