Opinion ID: 1239150
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Discovery of the body of Shari Miller

Text: At 6:00 a.m. on July 6, Steven Craig, who had an office near the corner of Elm Street and West Pico Boulevard in West Los Angeles, arrived at work and parked his automobile in an alley near Elm Street. As he walked toward the front of the building, he noticed a large bundle in the parking lot. At 9:50 a.m. that morning, Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Officer Edwin Souza was dispatched to the parking lot. He observed a bundle covered by a quilt that was stained with blood. A strong odor emanated from the quilt and a human hand was visible. LAPD homicide detectives, including John Rockwood and John St. John, observed the body at the scene and were present at the time the coroner's investigators unwrapped the quilt. The body, initially identified as Jane Doe No. 60, was that of a partially decomposed Caucasian female, five feet nine inches tall, and one hundred twenty pounds. The body was nude and was bound by a single long leather thong ligature that encircled and tied the ankles together, wrapped around the left thigh, and tied together the wrists in front of the abdomen. The neck had ligature marks. The nipples had been entirely removed, and skin tissue had been removed from areas on the lower abdomen and left ankle. The body had an S-shaped tattoo on the bottom of the right foot. Yellowish matter was found under the fingernails. The hair was approximately six inches in length. A medical examiner for Los Angeles County, Dr. Wegner, performed the autopsy. Death occurred by ligature strangulation, causing discoloration of the head and neck. The nipples and sections of skin had been removed after death by means of a sharp cutting instrument. The back of the left forearm below the elbow had a cut that had been closed with five blue sutures, but no bandage was present. An Indian head silver ring was found on one of the fingers. The medical examiner estimated that death had occurred between 20 hours to 3 days prior to the time the body first was examined on July 6, or between 3:30 p.m. on July 3 and 7:30 p.m. on July 5. The medical examiner calculated that the time of death would be nearer to the evening of July 5, assuming 110 degree heat at the time of death, storage in the trunk of a vehicle during a period of time prior to the body's discovery at 6:00 a.m. on July 6, and additional exposure prior to the body's cold storage at 3:30 p.m. that day. On July 8, a locked automobile, later determined to be Shari's, was discovered in the parking lot of Sarno's Bar, located two blocks from defendant's apartment in Los Angeles. Within several weeks, the police matched a fingerprint taken from an arrest record for Shari with that of Jane Doe No. 60. On August 1, Shari's mother was informed of her daughter's death. On August 7, the police located and searched Shari's vehicle in the towing yard where it had been stored since July 8. Although Shari customarily had stored many of her belongings inside her automobile, neatly arranged and covered with the quilt that later was found wrapped around her body, at the time the police located the vehicle, the articles inside were in disarray. The several outfits Shari wore in the photographs taken by defendant were not recovered from the vehicle, nor from several friends' residences where she had stored clothing. The yellow substance on a pair of cutoff jeans recovered from Shari's automobile and on a wristwatch subsequently recovered from defendant's residence, as well as scrapings from the fingernails of Shari's body, were analyzed and found to have the same composition as the yellow paint at Mrs. Holst's residence.