Lynn Penn, a 60-year-old man, was found strangled inside his Westlake apartment in Los Angeles in July 1990. Investigators recovered a cigarette butt at the scene, but that piece of evidence did not identify a suspect at the time and the homicide remained unsolved for decades.

Juan Chavez, a convicted killer who targeted middle-aged men in Los Angeles County during the 1980s and was later convicted and sentenced for other murders and robberies, was never charged for Penn’s death while alive. Chavez died by hanging in his prison cell on September 9, 1999. Years later, blood preserved from Chavez’s autopsy yielded a DNA profile that matched the saliva on the cigarette butt from Penn’s apartment. That match, made in 2012, connected Chavez to the scene and effectively solved Penn’s homicide, though no prosecution was possible.

Did anyone who knew Lynn in Westlake in 1990 notice someone visiting him around that time or recall anything about a suspicious visitor?