SUSPECTED OF MURDER

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19123, 18 September 1936, Page 7

SUSPECTED OF MURDER

SEX MASQUERADER

EX-SAILOR ARRESTED

LOS ANGELES,. Sept. 5

Lajolla, pronounced “Lahoya,” is. Southern California’s loveliest seaside resort, and Lover’s Bench is a quiet retreat on the hillside overlooking the beach sands. On Monday night, Ruth Muir, superintendent of the Young Women’s Christian Association, walked there to look out over the moonlit ocean. An hour later, she was found dead, her head battered by blows from a heavy object. Her clothing was tom and her body mutilated. At. first the police believed that the handsome YAV.C.A. executive had been attacked by a degenerate male; hut when they found a woman’s hair—not her own —clutched in the victim’s hand, and many evidences of a desperate struggle, they concluded that she had been bludgeoned by a woman

To-day the San Diego -police arrested Sam Burge, alias: Smith, masquerading in woman’s clothing and wearing a longhaired wig. The. theory is that Burge was the attacker in one of the mostcurious murders in California s history. Miss Muir had come to Lajolla on a visit, to her parents and there is no trace that she even knew Burge. Officials hold the theory that Burge telephoned her to meet him in the sequestered spot, and Miss Muir ielt no suspicion when approached by a trim figure clad in a. summer pink dress, blue coat, high-heeled slippers and full-length silk stockings.

After an aptopsy, Dr. Toomey said that, the girl was'criminally attacked, and reported that the method of the killing was typically that of a female rather than a male slayer. Experts from Pomona College were today examining hairs, underclothing and scrapings of dirt, taken from the scene of the murder.

In Burge's home the police found a large quantity of woman’s apparel, and Burge admitted that he visited Lajolla about the time of the killing. lie was formerly a sailor aboard a United States warship. He served in the Sandino campaign in Nicaragua in 1929 and was honourably discharged two years later.