How did the Los Angeles Police Department handle the Sam Cooke case in 1964?
Executive summary
The Los Angeles Police Department dispatched officers to the Hacienda Motel after a reported shooting, found Sam Cooke dead, and carried out an investigation that led to a coroner’s inquest and an official finding that motel manager Bertha Franklin had acted in self‑defense; Franklin was not held for murder and the case was treated by authorities as justifiable homicide [1] [2] [3]. That official handling, however, has been criticized by Cooke’s family, friends and later commentators as cursory and possibly influenced by racial bias inside the LAPD, leaving persistent questions about whether the inquiry was thorough [4] [5] [6].
1. Immediate police response and what officers found
Officers answered separate reports—first of a shooting and of a possible kidnapping—at the Hacienda Motel in South‑Central Los Angeles in the early hours of December 11, 1964; when police entered the motel office they found Cooke’s body, shot three times in the chest, and later learned the shooter was Bertha Lee Franklin, the motel manager [1] [3] [2]. Witnesses at the scene and later testimony placed Cooke and a young woman, Elisa (Lisa) Boyer, at the motel that night, and at least one witness called police after hearing a disturbance, prompting the LAPD response [7] [2].
2. The LAPD investigation and coroner’s inquest
The LAPD opened an investigation and authorities convened a coroner’s inquest to examine the circumstances of Cooke’s death; testimony at the inquest included accounts from Boyer and Franklin and other witnesses, and the initial LAPD narrative treated Franklin’s account—that she shot Cooke after he kicked in a door, struck her and was allegedly assaulting Boyer—as the basis for their inquiry [2] [7] [1]. Contemporary reporting shows the department accepted that narrative quickly enough that Franklin was not detained on murder charges at the scene, and the inquest ultimately sided with the manager’s claim of self‑defense [2] [3].
3. The official ruling and legal outcome
After the inquest and LAPD investigation, Cooke’s death was officially ruled a justifiable homicide and Bertha Franklin was not prosecuted for murder—the legal outcome the department presented publicly as closing the case [3] [8] [2]. Multiple modern summaries and encyclopedic entries repeat that the LAPD concluded Franklin had acted in self‑defense, and news accounts contemporaneous to the shooting reported that no arrest was made at the time [8] [2].
4. Criticisms of police work, allegations of bias, and competing narratives
From the start and increasingly over time friends, family and some journalists said the LAPD’s handling felt perfunctory: Cooke’s relatives and associates disputed the self‑defense account, observers later claimed the body showed signs of severe beating that friends found worrying, and critics argued that the department’s culture under Chief William H. Parker and racial attitudes in the 1960s LAPD contributed to a less rigorous probe than a white celebrity might have received [6] [5] [4]. Commentators and some former officers quoted in retrospective pieces have said investigators showed little appetite for reopening or deeply scrutinizing the motel manager’s account, and the result has been decades of persistent conspiracy theories and renewed calls for reexamination [5] [4] [9].
5. Aftermath, attempts at re‑investigation, and the unresolved record
Over the years there have been calls and occasional efforts to reopen or reassess the case—reports cite later inquiries and renewed attention—but public records and available reporting indicate no conclusive reversal of the LAPD’s original finding, leaving the official file closed while questions about what investigators did or did not pursue remain part of Cooke’s legacy [9] [5] [6]. Reporting also shows that the immediate LAPD decision—to treat the shooting as justifiable homicide, not to charge Franklin, and to rely heavily on her and Boyer’s testimony—was decisive in shaping the legal end of the matter, even as alternative explanations and critiques of the department’s motives and methods continue to circulate [2] [3] [4].