Orange County Register

Lindon Barrett

A popular professor who had taught at both UCI and Riverside was strangled to death in his apartment in July, according to autopsy results obtained today.

“Someone strangled him,” Lt. Larry Dietz of the Los Angeles Coroner’s Office said about the autopsy results for Lindon Barrett.

The man accused of murdering him is being held without bail in the sheriff’s Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown Los Angeles. Marlon Martinez, 20, has pleaded not guilty to the slaying.

The autopsy results were were delayed by toxicology screens and the degree of the body’s decomposition.

Barrett had alcohol and marijuana in his body at the time of his death, assistant chief coroner Ed Winter said.

Barrett, a popular professor of English and Black Studies who helped found UCI’s African American Studies Program and served as its director, recently took a job at UC Riverside.

He was found killed July 13 in his loft in downtown Long Beach, after a neighbor noticed an unpleasant smell.

Long Beach police say they tracked Barrett’s missing car to Martinez, 20, who was taken into custody and charged with murder.

UCI’s School of Humanities has established a scholarship in Barrett’s name, administered by the Program in African American Studies.

Here’s the original post on the slaying

Here are all the previous posts on Lindon Barrett in College Life

Statement by UCI Dean of Humanities Vickie L. Ruiz on Barrett’s death

Statement from Katherine Kinney, chair of the UC Riverside Department of English:

Here’s his faculty page from UCI

Here’s his faculty page from UC Riverside