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| April 12, 1954 Boulder Daily Camera, All Leads to Identity of Girl and Her Murderer Blow Up Leads to the identity of a murdered girl found near Boulder and her slayer continue to dissolve. Authorities were no nearer a solution to the mystery today than they were when the young blonde's body was discovered in boulder cañon last Thursday night. The most hopeful clue blew up when a AWOL airman arrested in Oklahoma in a blood-stained car with a Colorado license admitted he killed the owner, a former Derby, Colo., man, last Friday. Earlier investigation centered on the possibility the victim might have been the unidentified girl here. Now another automobile is sought - but again authorities have little to go on. Sheriff Arthur T. Everson said an attendant at a Boulder filling station reported he saw a struggling, partly unclothed girl in the back seat of a car which stopped at the station about 7 p.m. Sunday, April 4. HEADED TOWARD CANON Two other young men were in the front seat of the car, which had an out-of-state license. The car headed west on Arapahoe avenue, which connects with the Boulder cañon highway. One clue to the whereabouts of the nude victim's clothing was eliminated when a bloody white moccasin found in the mountains northwest of Boulder was learned to have been there since last October. Search was being made today in a Boulder cañon area where a pad from a woman's brassiere was found. An automobile with its back seat cushions burned was found near Nederland but investigation so far indicates the fire was accidental, not set to destroy bloody evidence. A Denver man viewed the victim's body Sunday night in an attempt to tell if it might be that of his 18-year-old daughter, missing a year. He said he could tell from the teeth that the victim was not his daughter. FEW IDENTIFIABLE FEATURES The condition of the body is such that the teeth, hair, and an appendectomy scar are about the only elements of identification. Attacks by animals or birds destroyed many features. Coroner George W. Howe said the body can be held only a few more days. An inquest into the death of the victim, believed to be 17 to 20 years old and with very light brown hair, was held today as a necessary formality. As expected, it produced no new information. The main value of the inquest was to put the known facts on record for possible later use. Dr. F. L. James, Boulder pathologist who perfomred the autopsy, repeated his opinion that the girl's severe injuries were inflicted prior to death and that she undoubtedly was alive when she was dumped over an embankment of the cañon road about 300 yards below the Boulder Falls parking area. OKLAHOMA LEAD FOLLOWED Officers in Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and California kept the wires hot from Saturday afternoon until this morning in an investigation which finally solved a slaying - but not the one here. Highway Patrol Lt. Andy Bidwell, of McAlester, Okla., notified the Boulder sheriff's office that a blood-spattered car with Colorado license plates was stopped at Sallisaw, Okla., for speeding. The driver identified himself as James William Hutchins, 25, of Forest City, N.C., an airman absent without leave from Nellis Air Force Base at Las Vegas, Nev. Hutchins first said he met a stranger in Oklahoma City and the man asked him to drive the car to Fort Smith, Ark. The back seat covers had been removed. In the car were a red hair ribbon with blond hairs in it, a comb, a girl's raincoat with the name Kay on a pocket, a pair of men's shoes, and a .22-caliber pistol containing three fired cartridges. OWNER TRACED Although there was no shooting in the Boulder ocunty case, the lead looked good. The automobile was traced to Bruce Weibell, formerly of Derby, and Adams county just north of Denver. At one point it was believed that his wife, Mrs. Gertrude Weibell, 25, might have met with foul play in the car. Later she was located in Dallas. Weibell was traced to California and back to Arizona, headed for New Orleans. This morning, Airman Hutchins finally talked. Lt. Bidwell said the prisoner admitted he shot Weibell to death last Friday and stuffed his body in a culvert about 50 miles west of Albuquerque, N. M. New Mexico officers found it today near Perea, N. M., which is about 15 miles east of Gallup. Sheriff Everson checked out a clue that the Boulder county murder victim might be a missing Salt Lake City girl. Her father said she was wearing white moccasins when she disappeared. A Garden City, Kan., man telephoned Everson Sunday to report that he had been at a Boulder county mountain cabin with its owner, a Texas man, and they saw a bloody white moccasin. The Texas man, named Gregory, had tossed the shoe aside. MOCCASIN FOUND The sheriff found the moccasin near the cabin on the Lee Hill road near the Left Hand cañon junction. But he also learned from Bob Caruthers, who lives in the vicinity and drives cattle past the cabin, that the shoe had been there since last October. Caruthers distinctly remembered seeing the shoe in that month. That was before the Salt Lake City girl's disappearance and long before the slaying of the unidentified girl. Clyde Hodgson of Nederland found a rubber pad from a woman's brassiere in the borrow pit of the Boulder cañon highway at Tungsten, just below the Nederland dam and about nine miles above the place where the girl's body was found. In the pad was a hair, which is to be checked against the victim's hair. The sheriff arranged for a search of the Tungsten vicinity today in an effort to find more clothing. Everson went to Nederland Sunday afternoon to check a report of a fire in an automobile the previous Sunday night at the Cold Spring mine property northwest of Nederland. He found that the seat cushion and back rest had been removed from the car and burned. The owner has not been located but the sheriff obtained indirect information that the fire had been set to thaw out the car's frozen radiator. The investigation was being pursued today. INQUIRIES POUR IN Inquiries about, and pictures of, missing girls continue to pour into the sheriff's office from many states. The only ones which contained descriptions which could apply to the local victim were those from the Salt Lake City man and from the Denver man who came here Sunday night. After the coroner's inquest in the county court room this morning, the jury returned a verdict saying the girl's death "resulted from shock caused by severe beating by a person or persons unknown with felonious intent." The jurors were E. W. Bailey, Paul Baetz, Bill Armitage, Gil Walker, Joe Sheeley and Tom Sandham. Sheriff Everson told of the finding of the body by two University students, and other circumstances. Police Chief Myron M. Teegarden identified pictures he took at the scene. The only other witness was Dr. James, the pathologist, who described the victim's numerous fractures, bruises and abrasions. At one point, in response to a question by District Attorney M. E. H. Smith, the doctor said, "It indicates she was alive at the time the injury occurred." "It is difficult to state the cause of death with certainty," Dr. James continued. "With multiple injuries, the cause must be a term which will embody it all. I would say severe shock. It is proper to assume that the skull fracture was the proximate cause of death." The pathologist said there was no proof the girl was raped and no evidence to lead to that conclusion. "Are all the facts found consistent with murder?" the district attorney asked. "They are," Dr. James replied. He repeated his opinion that the girl was between 17 and 20 years old, 5 feet 3 inches tall, weighing about 100 pounds, very slender build, blonde or light brown hair of natural color, perfect teeth, the only scar on the body being from the removal of her appendix at least a month before death and probably several months or even years. |
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