Martha Menzel was 74 years old when she was beaten to death inside her own home on West Locust Street in Lodi, and more than three decades later, no one has ever been arrested for killing her. Lodi police are seeking information about the May 1, 1991 murder.
Menzel was fatally assaulted inside her home that day, according to lodi411.com, which reported the attack happened in the 900 block of West Locust Street.
Construction workers delivering roofing supplies reportedly saw Menzel early that Wednesday morning, the last known sighting of her alive, per a findagrave.com account of the case. Her body wasn't discovered until roughly 1:20 p.m., when her tenant, a psychiatrist named Robert Roller, returned home and found her, the same account notes.
A Brutal Attack With No Clear Motive
Investigators determined Menzel had been struck in the head several times with a blunt object, suffering massive head injuries, per the findagrave.com account. At the time, detectives were unable to establish a motive or name any suspects, the same source states. Lodi News reported separately that no arrests were ever made, though the newspaper noted that various detectives revisited the case over the years, per lodinews.com.
The case is tracked as Lodi Police Department file No. 91-4988 and had gone unsolved for nearly 35 years as of the report's March 18, 2026 publication, according to the lodi411.com report, which listed Detective Lockie as the case's assigned investigator. That three-decade-plus gap underscores just how cold the trail has gone, even as the file remains technically open.
County Task Force Built to Dig Back Into Old Cases
Lodi Police are investigating Menzel's case as a cold case.
The same office has pointed to active work on other long-unsolved cases as well: it reported that two separate Stockton cold cases were recently submitted to a private laboratory for advanced forensic testing, a sign of the kind of renewed scientific scrutiny the task force can bring to decades-old files. Anyone with information specifically about Menzel's killing is asked to contact Detective Lockie or Lodi Area Crime Stoppers.
Anonymous tips can also be submitted, according to stocktonca.gov. For a woman whose killing has sat unresolved since 1991, investigators are betting that someone, somewhere, still remembers something worth calling in.
