BRUTAL MURDER.

Waikato Times, Volume 120, Issue 19991, 15 September 1936, Page 7

BRUTAL MURDER.

DEATH OF A WOMAN. A DESPERATE STRUGGLE. ARREST OF A MASQUERADER. United Press Assrr.—Elec. Tel. Copyright LOS ANGELES, Sept. 14. A tragic affair is reported from Lajolla, a southern Californian seaside resort. Last Monday night, Miss Ruth Muir, superintendent of the Young Women’s Christian Association, walked there to look out over the moonlit ocean. An hour later, Miss Muir was found dead, her head having been struck with a heavy object. Her clothing was torn and her body mutilated. At first the police believed that the woman had been attacked by a degenerate male; but 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 another woman. To-day the San Diego police arrested Sam Burge, alias Smith, masquerading in woman’s clothing and wearing a long-haired wig. The theory is that Burge was the attacker. Miss Muir had gone to Lajolla on a visit to her parents and there is no evidence that she even knew Burge. Officials hold the theory that Burge telephoned her to meet him in the sequestered spot, and Alias Muir fell no suspicion when approached by a trim figure clad in a summer pink dress, blue coat, high-heeled slippers and full-length silk stockings. fit 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 murder. He was formerly a sailor on a United Slates warship. He served in the Sandino campaign in Nicaragua in 1929 and was honourably discharged two years later.