(L.A.) Heather Marvets, 37, Died in a Riverbed

Case Number: 2021-03295

Los Angeles County is reporting the death of a 37-year-old Caucasian female that occurred in a riverbed.

The coroner’s office identified the woman as Heather Marvets.

Manner of Death: Homicide

Cause of Death: Puncture Wounds

RIP HEATHER MARVETS (May 26, 1983 – February 20, 2021)

Formal pronouncement of death was made on Saturday.

The decedent, also known as Heather Marvets Kauffman, was killed while sleeping in her tent at a homeless encampment in the San Gabriel River riverbed.

Reference address: 2800 East Huntington Drive, Irwindale, CA 91010

The suspect Steve Carlos Williams, a Black man, used a pickaxe and a rock in his attack. He was arrested on February 23 and convicted in 2025 for first-degree murder.

His motive was concern that Marvets might cooperate with law enforcement regarding an unrelated crime.

Williams was sentenced in April 2022 in a separate case to three years in state prison on two counts of robbery stemming from a Feb. 3, 2021, run-in with an employee at Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles in Pasadena.