Opinion ID: 1345979
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Cheryl G.

Text: Nine-year-old Cheryl G. disappeared from the parking lot of Santa Fe Springs High School in Los Angeles County on July 14, 1978. Cheryl had been swimming with her older sisters who had left her briefly while they went to telephone their mother who was to pick them up. Cheryl was wearing a two-piece swimming suit and a pair of thongs, and carried a towel. The plant foreman at the high school saw a young Hispanic girl waiting near the gate of the parking lot when he left work at about 3:30 p.m. on that date. He also saw a young man with long, dark hair and a beard. The man, who looked very much like defendant, was sitting in a car within 20 feet of the girl. The car was yellow or orange, had mud streaks on the sides, and had brush marks on the passenger side of its top. Cheryl's body was found on July 15, 1978, in the Legg Lake region of the Whittier Narrows Recreation Area. She was nude. The top of her swimming suit was wrapped around her neck, as were a piece of monofilament fishing line and a Handy Wipe. Fecal matter was found on the cheeks of her buttocks and the inner side of her thigh. Death was caused by asphyxiation by ligature strangulation and/or suffocation. She had suffered injuries consistent with blows to the head. Her hymen was not intact. Defendant subsequently confessed to investigators that he had picked up a Hispanic girl in the parking lot of the Santa Fe Springs High School, had driven to Legg Lake, had intercourse with the girl in the bushes, and then strangled her with his belt and tied fishing line around her neck. Information about the ligature had not been released to the public by investigators at the time defendant confessed.