Carl Grillmair spent 30 years looking at the sky from Caltech.
He helped detect water vapor on a planet outside our solar system and charted the star maps that now explain how the Milky Way formed. NASA gave him a medal for it. He was 67 years old and lived in Llano, California, a quiet town in Los Angeles County.
On February 16, he was found dead on the porch of his own home, with a gunshot wound to the torso. The main suspect, Freddy Snyder, 29, lived just two kilometers away. Weeks earlier, in December, he had already been arrested near that same property with a loaded rifle, after Grillmair reported a possible intruder. That charge was dropped and Snyder was released. Detectives, according to ABC7, do not even believe the two men knew each other. The motive remains without an official explanation.
