Frank Garcia, 45, was found fatally stabbed on Thanksgiving Day, November 23, 1978, on a public bench less than 200 feet from Los Angeles Police Headquarters outside City Hall. Investigators recorded at least twenty knife wounds to his torso and found his empty wallet beside the body, details that prompted questions about whether the attack was a robbery or a staged theft. Despite the normally busy lunchtime crowds on the Civic Center mall, no eyewitnesses came forward at the time.

Detectives linked Garcia’s slaying to a series of similar knife attacks on homeless men in downtown Skid Row, a pattern the media called the Skid Row Stabber series. A single palm print lifted from the bench was later matched to 29-year-old drifter Bobby Joe Maxwell, who was arrested three months later. Police recovered a knife from Maxwell that matched the murder weapon, and a jailhouse informant named Sidney Storch said Maxwell confessed. Maxwell was charged with ten murders, convicted in 1984 on two counts, and sentenced to life without parole.

Over the following decades key witnesses recanted, Storch was exposed as a serial jailhouse informant, and appellate judges criticized the limited physical evidence. The Ninth Circuit overturned Maxwell’s convictions in 2010, and remaining charges were dropped in 2018; Maxwell died in 2019 while comatose. Garcia’s killing remains officially unsolved and no other arrests have been announced. Does anyone have information about Frank Garcia, his movements that day, or the Skid Row Stabber series?