An 86-year-old woman who was stabbed to death inside her home in the upscale Windsor Square neighborhood of Los Angeles was identified Tuesday as the widow of a Superior Court judge.
The victim whose body was discovered Monday evening was Antonia Maria Yager, whose husband was Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Thomas C. Yager, who died at age 90 in 2008.
Officers responded to the 100 block of North Beachwood Drive (map) about 7:25 p.m. Monday after the Fire Department received a report of a stabbing victim inside a house, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
When they went into the home, they found the deceased woman in her bed with an apparent stab wound, LAPD Lt. John Radtke said.
“There is some evidence of an assault occurring inside the residence,” he said, adding there was no sign of forced entry.
Police later confirmed in a news release that Yager died from multiple stab wounds.
No weapon has been found. The body had not been removed by the coroner’s office as of 1 p.m.
Antonio Yager was identified as the victim by LAPD Officer Liliana Preciado. Police on scene said she was the widow of the former Superior Court judge.
The court tenure of Thomas Yager, who served on the bench from 1958 to 1978, was shrouded in controversy beginning in 1965, according to the legal newspaper the Metropolitan News-Enterprise. Yager’s first wife, a wealthy heiress who was about 14 years his senior, disappeared from the deck of yacht four days after their marriage and was presumed dead, according to the newspaper. Yager reportedly said he was unable to call the Coast Guard because the radio was not working.
On Monday, the body of Antonia Yager was discovered by her caretaker, who had gone to the home to check on her cats, police said.
It was not clear how long the woman had been dead for. The caretaker, however, told police he had seen her in the two days prior to the discovery.
The victim was described by Radtke as being in good shape, and was known to drive around and run her errands every day.
Antonia Maria Yager was believed to have been a longtime resident of the neighborhood, which borders Hancock Park and Larchmont. The home is about a block away from heavily trafficked Larchmont Village.
“This is a beautiful neighborhood, one of the best places to live in Los Angeles,” Radtke said.
He added there was “almost no violent crime” in that area.
Yager’s death was only the third homicide in the historic Windsor Square neighborhood since 2000, according to the Los Angeles Times Homicide Report.
Detectives planned to go door-to-door in the subsequent days to interview neighbors, and they were looking for video taken in the area.
“People in this neighborhood care about this community. They pay attention to people coming and going, so of course we are interested in anyone who might have seen anything out of the ordinary yesterday, or perhaps even the day before,” Radtke said. “We’re interested in anything that might have occurred in this area.”
Investigators were asking anyone with information to call LAPD at 213-382-9470.
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