Robert Lee Nusbaum

Robert’s story

On the morning of Saturday, Aug. 13, 1966, a friend stopped by Robert Lee Nusbaum’s home on Huber Street in Anaheim. Nusbaum’s car wasn’t in the driveway. The front door was shut but unlocked. Inside, a few feet from the entrance to the living room, the friend found a black fireplace poker covered in blood, and nearby, Nusbaum’s body. He was 41. [1]

Two days later his missing white 1963 Chevrolet was found in Long Beach. The Sheriff’s Department concluded the killer had driven it there and abandoned it. No one has been charged. [1]

Who Robert Nusbaum was

The official account gives only his age and street. A U.S. veterans’ burial index, however, lists a Robert Lee Nusbaum who was born July 19, 1925 and died Aug. 13, 1966, the day this Robert Nusbaum was found, which makes him 41. He was buried on Aug. 22, 1966 at Fort Bliss National Cemetery in El Paso, Texas. [2]

That record describes a U.S. Navy yeoman second class (a clerical rating) who served from February 1948 to September 1952. Two separate cemetery transcriptions repeat the same details. [3][4]

The match on name, age and exact date of death is strong, but no published source yet ties the Fort Bliss burial directly to the Anaheim killing. Burial in El Paso may point to family in Texas.

What happened

Only the outline is public:

• Around 11:15 a.m. on Aug. 13, the friend arrived and found the door unlocked and the car gone.
• The fireplace poker, bloodied, lay on the floor near the living-room entrance; Nusbaum was found nearby.
• His white 1963 Chevrolet was recovered in Long Beach on Aug. 15. [1]

No contemporary newspaper coverage has yet been located online. Orange County papers from 1966 are not freely searchable.

Where it happened

Huber Street is in Anaheim. In 1966 the area was changing quickly from groves to subdivisions. The car’s recovery in Long Beach, about 15 miles northwest in Los Angeles County, suggests whoever took it had a reason to go there, or simply wanted to put a county line between themselves and the house.

What investigators have said

The Sheriff’s Department’s Homicide Cold Case Task Force says it continues to look for new leads. It has not publicly described a motive, suspects, or what, if anything, was taken from the house besides the car. [1]

Where accounts differ

• The veterans’ index notes describe service in “World War II,” but its listed service dates (1948–1952) fall in the Korean War era. There may have been an earlier enlistment that isn’t recorded in the index. [2]
• A 1956 California appeals-court opinion involves a man with the same name, appealing an LA County conviction. Nothing in it, such as an age or address, shows he is the same person as the 1966 victim. Treat it only as a same-name record to be checked. [5]

Open questions

• Who was Robert Nusbaum: his work, his family, and why he was living in Anaheim?
• Why was the car left in Long Beach, and where exactly?
• Did anyone see the Chevrolet being driven on Aug. 13–15, 1966?

What you can do

• If you knew him, or knew the Huber Street neighborhood in 1966, contact the cold case team.
• Request his Navy personnel file. Military records become public 62 years after a service member leaves, so a 1952 discharge file should now be open at the National Archives. It would give his birthplace, next of kin and addresses. [6]
• Find his California Death Index entry (free on FamilySearch) for his birthplace and mother’s maiden name.
• Search Aug. 13–20, 1966 issues of the Anaheim Bulletin, Santa Ana Register and the Long Beach Independent and Press-Telegram. The Long Beach papers are digitized on Newspapers.com and may have covered the car’s recovery.