Lilian Kramer, a 67-year-old white woman, was found murdered in her Los Angeles apartment on November 14, 1975. Her killing matched a disturbing pattern from the 1970s that targeted elderly women living alone: forced entry, sexual assault followed by strangulation, and household items used to obscure the victim’s face after death.

Investigators linked Kramer's case by those points of similarity to other unsolved murders attributed to an offender called the Westside Rapist. Authorities later identified John Floyd Thomas Jr., born in Los Angeles in 1936, as a suspect who was connected by DNA to multiple murders of elderly women from that period. Thomas’s known modus operandi—breaking into homes, sexually assaulting victims, then strangling them—aligns with the circumstances described in Kramer’s case. Kramer’s name was not among the cases formally charged, but law enforcement strongly suspected his involvement and her death is considered part of the broader investigation.