Actress Found Dazed On Road

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28169, 7 January 1957, Page 7

Actress Found Dazed On Road

(Rec. 8 p.m.) INDIO (Cali.), Jan. 5. The actress Marie McDonald, her face bruised and two of her teeth cracked, was found late last night wandering dazed on a desert road in night attire, the police reported.

Officers said that Miss McDonald, the object of a 24-hour search, told them that two kidnappers had pushed her from a car after a wild ride at 60 and 70 miles an hour from Los Angeles, 140 miles away.

Miss McDonald said that she was beaten, and robbed of a 22carat diamond ring. She was brought to Coachella Valley Hospital in Indio where a doctor reported she was “in good condition, but bruised about the face and head.” The actress vanished from her home at Encino. California, early yesterday in circumstances which suggested she had been kidnapped.

Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, and deputies from the Imperial County Sheriff’s office were at the hospital to question the actress. She telephoned three friends yesterday and said -she was being held.

The police pointed out that when the actress telephoned she did not tell them the number from which she was calling. She told one, officers said, that she was blindfolded. The three persons she telephoned were the film columnist. Harrison Carroll, the British actor, Michael Wilding, with whom she has been going out recently, and Mr Harold Plant, her agent. Mr Carroll said p woman whose voice he recognised as Miss McDonald’s telephoned him at 4.35 a.m. and said: “Tonight at my home these two men came in and abducted me. They drugged me They gave me an injection. They carried me miles." She then said that the two men were in another room and believed her to be asleep. "That's how I happened to get hold of a telephone,” Mr Carroll reported her saying. Mr Wilding told police that when Miss McDonald called him at 130 pm. she whispered: "I’m blindfolded and doped. I wish 1 knew where I was.” Miss McDonald said that the two men were probably in their twenties. She said they finally pushed her out of the car on a deserted highway and she tumbled down an embankment, then saw a truck approaching. The truck driver, Mr /Richard Corn, said Miss McDonald ran

in front of his vehicle. "I had trouble stopping the truck,” he said. "She was so hysterical I didn’t know what was going on.” Police at Van Nuys, near Miss McDonald’s home, were puzzled and somewhat sceptical yesterday of the actress’s telephoned reports to her friends instead of to police that she had been kidnapped. They began an immediate investigation. The chief detective, Mr Thad Brown, said: “We’re a little inclined to think that it is not a bona fide kidnapping. lam speaking for myself." Mr Harry Karl, to whom Miss McDonald was twice married, was reported as having said: “Marie is a very sick woman. I believe she left of her own accord. She has done some very strange things in the past.” Dr. Allan Fisher, the attending physician at the hospital, said Miss McDonald was "in good shape.” Of her mental condition. Dr. Fisher said: “She Is upset, I can’t tell you if she is under the effects of drugs.”