Blind Woman, 75, Stabbed to Death : Crime: Relatives believe the motive for the slaying was robbery. Police say they have no suspects.

Helen Duvalle was a fighter. At age 75, the Southwest Los Angeles woman had scrapped with everyone and everything--from an abusive husband to arthritis to pneumonia to blindness--losing to some, besting others and, relatives said, always remaining resilient.

But some time before dawn Monday, Duvalle’s fighting spirit was quelled forever.

Duvalle, blind for 30 years, was stabbed to death in her apartment on South Brighton Street, Los Angeles police said Tuesday.

Investigators said they have no suspects or official motive. But relatives believe the motive was robbery.

“She always kept $300 or $400 in her bosom,” said Duvalle’s nephew, Walter Monroe. “I had just come over Thursday and gave her the $100 I’d owed her. I told her that I’d come over to take her to the market Tuesday.”

Duvalle’s niece, Ninotchka Brownlee, said several vials of her aunt’s medication were missing, including codeine, pain pills and Valium.

“They took almost everything,” she said. “They even took the phones.”

The body was discovered by a man delivering bottled water.

“He said the screen door was open so he knocked on the (inner) door,” said Brownlee, 47. “When she didn’t answer, he came in and saw her.”

The delivery man alerted Brownlee and her family, who live in a house in front of Duvalle’s second-floor apartment.

“I came up and found her there,” Brownlee said, pointing at a small overstuffed couch smeared with blood. “She was in a kneeling position beside the couch, and her body was leaning over it.”

Brownlee said her aunt had also been bludgeoned, but police declined to comment.

“We’re just saying that the cause of death is stabbing,” said Detective Larry Kallestad of the Los Angeles Police Department’s South Bureau, adding that there were no signs of forced entry into the cluttered apartment.

“She always kept her door open,” Brownlee said. “We would have to tell her to close the door.”

Another nephew, Orinio Opinaldo, 49, said his aunt, despite her blindness, often swept her porch late at night.

“She didn’t have a sense of time,” he said. “People could see her outside sweeping. I would tell her that that was dangerous.”

But despite these warnings, family members said, Duvalle clung fiercely to the way she had lived since moving to Los Angeles from Louisiana in the 1920s.

“She was very independent,” said Violet Bowen, Duvalle’s sister. “She didn’t want any Seeing Eye dogs, or cane, or anything. She liked doing things on her own. She didn’t like people trying to run her life.”

Duvalle, who relatives said was blinded as a result of an injury received during a fight with her former husband, adopted a cocker spaniel named Lady and a Yorkshire terrier named Toby.

“They weren’t Seeing Eye dogs, but they went with her everywhere,” Monroe said. “They were always at her side.”

The dogs were in the apartment at the time of the slaying but sat strangely silent, relatives said. After the incident, Brownlee had the dogs put to sleep.

“The man at the animal shelter said that was the best thing to do, because they would never recover,” she explained. “They were just in shock. What must have happened was so horrible that they were messed up emotionally. When I went up there, Toby’s fur was on end.”

Recalling their “Aunt Cookie,” family members described Duvalle as funny and giving.

“She was always saying something humorous,” Monroe said, choking back tears. “If you were down in the dumps, she said something so ridiculous that you just had to come out of it. . . . And she was very free-hearted. I know she loved me because she was always doing things for me.”

Brownlee said her aunt went to great lengths to avoid making enemies.

“That’s why this is so tragic,” she said. “She never did anything to anyone. For all the 75 years that she lived, she did not deserve to die like this. God, I hope they catch who did it.”