Community Remembers an Atrocity

Nine months after their daughter’s charred remains were found outside a machine shop near Whittier, the parents of Kartrice Ann Whitfield visited the site of her gruesome death for the first time Friday.

They were joined at a tree-planting ceremony by more than 100 people, many of them local residents who held weekly candlelight vigils at the site last summer. Neighbors beseeched police not to give up on the case, even as one lead after another dried up.

“I wasn’t expecting it,” Willie Whitfield, Kartrice’s father, said of the ceremony. “I got a call, and they said, ‘We’re going to plant a tree, and we’re going to put your daughter’s name on it.’ I wanted to see it for myself.”

The horrific crime touched a nerve in this working-class community, even though Whitfield was not identified for more than two months after her death. It did not matter that she turned out to be a woman from South-Central Los Angeles, about 20 miles from this unincorporated area south of Whittier.

“At first, they didn’t know if she was black or Mexican or white,” said Angel Cabral, who lives about a block away. He was one of the first to arrive on the crime scene. “It didn’t matter.” Kartrice Whitfield, he said, was just a helpless person.

The 22-year-old woman disappeared July 8. Police believe her attackers picked her up at a bus stop, took her to their home and bound her. Before dawn the next morning, they doused her with a flammable liquid and set her on fire.

The body was burned beyond recognition. In the ensuing weeks, sheriff’s homicide detectives received more than a dozen calls from anxious families, sure the body was that of a missing relative.

But authorities could not identify the victim, and the community continued to voice its concern. On Sept. 8, investigators arrested Michael Lynn Crosby, 36, of Whittier, and his 15-year-old stepson in connection with the murder. Both have pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, torture, attempted robbery and kidnapping.

A week after the arrests, Kartrice Whitfield’s family visited the coroner’s office. They confirmed what the victim’s mother, Idella Stacy, had long feared: the body was her daughter’s.

Cabral, who is also a member of the Whittier Community Coordinating Council, came up with the tree-planting idea. “Every time I drive by I think of her,” he said. “I thought it would be a good idea to plant a tree, to have some kind of closure on this. So she could rest in peace.”

Friday morning, a bottlebrush tree was planted outside the D & B Machine building on Inez Street, where Whitfield was killed. Cabral also planted a rosebush nearby.

Kartrice Whitfield’s parents said they were glad they had come--glad to meet the strangers who shared their grief. “It’s a long way from home,” Willie Whitfield said.