April 12, 1954 Rocky Mountain News, Missing Derby Man Adds New Mystery to Boulder Slaying, by Jack Gaskie
An AWOL airman was questioned Sunday about two mysteries - an unidentified girl found murdered in Boulder Creek, and an identified Derby man who dropped from sight under strange circumstances.
The suspect arrested in Oklahoma, Airman James William Hutchins, 25, steadfastly maintained his innocence under a barrage of questions designed to find two answers.
1. Did the body of the girl found in Boulder Creek leave the bloodstains that covered the car?
2. What happened to Bruce R. Weibel, of Derby, the owner of the car in which Hutchins was arrested?
NEVER HEARD OF GIRL
Hutchins, a native of Forest City, N.C., who is AWOL from Nellis Air Force Base, Las Vegas, Nev., said he had never heard of the girl, and had simply done a favor for the missing man.
He could not account for the blood and blond hair in the back of the car, nor the red hair ribbon with blond hairs still adhering to it.
APPEARS NERVOUS
Lt. A. G. Bidwell of the Oklahoma State Patrol said Hutchins was "mighty nervous" under questioning.
"He didn't like our questions, and we didn't like his answers," Bidwell said. "He's hiding something, and we aim to find out what. The story he tells about where he got the car doesn't make sense, and we're getting a little worried over where the car's owner is, and what condition he's in."
Hutchins was arrested Saturday as he sped through McAlester, Okla., heading for the Arkansas line. He was stopped for speeding, but the blood in the car turned the questioning to a grimmer purpose.
PLATES CHECKED OUT
The car had 1954 license plates that checked out to Weibel.
Hutchins said he met a man in Oklahoma City Friday night. The man asked him to drive his car to Ft. Smith, Ark., and leave it at the police station there.
Hutchins said the man gave the name of Charles Stillwell. But Weibel's billfold was in the car, complete with all his identification papers.
"It's fantastic enough for a man to ask a stranger to drive his car to another state for him," Bidwell said. "But it's unbelievable that the man should give the stranger his billfold too.
"Besides that, we found a pair of bloody pants in the trunk of the car. They could easily have been worn by a man who was killed - or who killed someone else.
We're real anxious to find Weibel."
WIFE IS IN TEXAS
In Boulder, Sheriff Art Everson had tracked down Weibel's wife, Geraldine, 25, and their 20-month-old daughter to Dallas, Tex.
She said her husband left Dallas last Sunday to go to California. He phoned her Wednesday from California, she said, and told her he would be back in Dallas last Friday.
Weibel's sister in California, Mrs. Ruth Schriefer of Artesia, said Weibel called her Friday from Flagstaff, Ariz., and asked her to wire him $15 at Albuquerque.
It was that same Friday night, Hutchins said, that Weibel met him in Oklahoma City, and asked him to drive the car to Arkansas.
The time element indicated that Weibel's car might not have been involved in the murder of the girl found at Boulder. The body was found last Thursday.
Lt. Bidwell said Hutchins insisted he hadn't known there was any blood in the car when he got it Friday night.
"But I don't think anyone could miss it," the lieutenant said. "The back of the car was covered with blood. Someone had ripped off most of the seat covers, which were drenched in blood."
AGREES TO THE TEST
Bidwell said Hutchins had agreed to a lie detector test. He will be taken to Ft. Smith, the nearest place with a lie detector to Sallisaw, Okla, where he is being held.
A hopeful lead to identifying the nude, 17-year-old girl whose body was discovered Thursday in Boulder Creek blew up Sunday.
Boulder authorities thought there was a good chance the victim was Joeline Marquess, a 16-year-old girl who disappeared from Salt Lake.
When she disappeared, Miss Marquess was wearing a pair of white moccasins. A white moccasin lying near a pool of blood in Left Hand Cañon near Boulder was thought to be a clue.
Everson said the moccasin was found Sunday, bloody itself and lying near a big pool of dried blood as reported.
But, he said, a rancher who drives cattle through the cañon told him he had seen the moccasin as long ago as October - thus ruling out any connection with the murder of the girl with the reddish-blond hair.
A KEY QUESTION
Joe Marquess, truck driver father of the missing Salt Lake girl, could not tell police whether his daughter had ever had an operation for appendix - a key question, since the dead girl had a scar from such an operation.
But Mrs. Eunice Melessa, the girl's mother, separated from the father, was traced from Indiana to Connecticut, where she said her daughter had never had such an operation.
Everson said the dead girl's body is in such a state of decomposition that authorities may not be able to keep it long after the inquest, set for 10:30 a.m. Monday at Boulder County courthouse.
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