Una Cartwright, a 78‑year‑old white woman, was found raped and murdered in her Los Angeles apartment on April 8, 1975. Her front door was ajar and a television set was missing, suggesting forced entry and a burglary that escalated to sexual assault and homicide.

Investigators later linked her killing to a pattern affecting elderly women in Los Angeles and Inglewood: forced entry, sexual assault, followed by strangulation or suffocation, often with pillows or blankets placed over the victim. In 2009 a DNA match connected convicted sex offender John Floyd Thomas Jr. to biological evidence recovered from Cartwright’s scene. Thomas was arrested March 31, 2009; subsequent charges included Cartwright among several victims. In April 2011 Thomas pleaded guilty to seven counts of first‑degree murder, including Una Cartwright, and received seven consecutive life sentences without parole.

Several other unsolved rapes and homicides of elderly women from the 1970s and 1980s remain under suspicion for the same offender. Did anyone who knew Una remember unusual visitors or a missing television around April 1975?