J gerrido

Marta Santa Cruz, a Bolivian citizen, stepped out of Jelleff’s clothing store in Washington, DC around noon on July 1st, 1961. Three days later, on the Fourth of July, her nude and battered body was found in Fairfax County, Virginia. Her murder, despite attracting attention from as high a personage as the U.S. Secretary of State, has never been solved.
It should be noted that when you do see Marta’s case mentioned online, it always seems to be when people are trying to link crimes to a single perpetrator. As will be seen, the police explored possible linkages, but neither they nor I have found any particular reason to link her murder to any others based on the available evidence.
Here is a link to the initial newspaper coverage of Marta's murder:
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1961-07-05/ed-1/seq-1/#date1=1961&index=4&rows=20&words=Cruz+CRUZ+MARTA+Marta+Santa+SANTA&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=&date2=1961&proxtext=marta+santa+cruz&y=0&x=0&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1
Marta
Part of the reason Marta’s murder generated a great deal of press interest is that she came from a Bolivian family described as “prominent”, “leading”, “first-line” and “well to do”. Her father, Rene, was a retired Bolivian Army colonel and her mother, Maria Luisa Delgado, also came from Bolivian high society. Marta’s grandfather, Modesto Omiste Tinajeros, “was one of Bolivia’s outstanding historians and elder statesmen.” One source said she was from Sucre, but most accounts place her residence as La Paz. Staff at the Bolivian embassy knew both Marta and the family well. Oddly, for a case that generated considerable press, articles never quite agree on whether she was 22 or 23 years old. Physically, Marta stood a little over five feet tall, (articles often refer to her as “petite” and “pretty”), red-haired, and freckled.
Marta was residing in the U.S. on a permanent visa and had been in the country for five years. Marta shared an apartment at 1930 Columbia Road, N.W., D.C. (the Gelmarc Towers) with her 21 year old sister Ivonne and 24 year old mutual friend Xenia Melendez, who worked with Ivonne at the Pan-American World Health Organization. This has always been a fairly affluent area of apartments and townhomes. An indicator of the neighborhood’s tone is seen by the Wyoming Apartments, a few doors down from the Gelmarc; at various times Dwight Eisenhower, William Howard Taft, and General John Pershing resided there.
Location of Marta’s apartment (Gelmarc Towers):
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Gelmarc+Towers/@38.915875,-77.0470158,15.4z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x89b7b7d006422e67:0x4b7969d4cfd8ff0!8m2!3d38.9181871!4d-77.0451118
On Saturday, July 1st, 1961, Marta left her apartment, headed downtown to cash her paycheck and did so at a clothing store around noon; the clerk there was the last person known to have seen her alive…
"A Sadistic Assailant"
Around dusk on Tuesday, July 4th, two Fairfax County teenagers walking along a dirt road that branched off Hooes Road as it crossed South Run, near Lorton. (Newspaper accounts tend to call it Hoos Road, but Hooes is correct). This is about a 23-25 mile (depending on the route) drive from where Marta was last seen in D.C. While developed with subdivisions today, and with man-made Lake Mercer subsuming part of South Run, this area in 1961 was wooded and free of nearby development. Descriptions of the area as “desolate” and “lonely” are probably slight exaggerations, but this was certainly not the Fairfax County of the 21st century.
The dirt road led to an informal trash dump (or “pile” as many accounts called it), but the boys, Henry Shaver (16) and Billy Robertson (19), didn’t have to travel far down the road to notice something lying in the wooded stream next to them. It was a body. Lying only about ten feet off Hooes Road, the body was not hard to spot. The boys ran home, told Shaver’s older sister, who then drove to a neighbor’s house to phone the police. (It was surprisingly common for a house not to have phone even in 1961). I have to assume that the police did check out Henry and Billy as possible suspects, but it’s clearly unlikely that two teenagers would borrow a car, navigate around DC searching for a kidnap victim, and then be dumb enough to dump the body in their own neighborhood. (As a side note, some sources describe the body as being found by State Highway Department employees; one article makes it clear that the two boys are in fact those employees).
Based on examination of maps from the 1950s and 1960s combined with my knowledge of the local area, I believe I have pinned down the location where she was found. See the Google Map link here:
https://www.google.com/maps/@38.7374161,-77.2497143,17.38z
She would have been found just west of where Hooes Road crosses South Run. If you need a landmark, follow South Run east from Lake Mercer Dam.
Chief William Durrer reported that Marta’s body was “face up, the upper part awash in about three inches of water” in South Run. She was nude, the only things on her body being “a set of simulated pearl earrings in pierced lobes and a finger ring bearing the image of a Chinese junk”. Trying to find her missing clothes would be a major focus of the investigation.
Police soon responded and searched a mile-long stretch of Hooes Road; they turned up nothing. Police found tire tracks on the dirt road by her body, but were never able to determine if they were related to the crime or not; (a certain number of cars inevitably would be headed down the road periodically to utilize the trash dump). A “minute search” of the area was aided by K9 teams brought from D.C., but they too found “nothing of significance”, which, unfortunately, would be a phrase repeatedly used in the coming weeks.
The very first news reports noted that “there were indications that she had been raped”; what these indications of assault were (besides the obvious nudity) were never specified, but her autopsy (conducted at Arlington Hospital by Dr. William F. Enose) confirmed that she had been raped. (Some articles continued to use qualifiers like “apparently” and “probably” raped, but others directly state that the autopsy showed evidence of rape). Rope burns on the neck, wrists, and legs were immediately obvious and later confirmed by Fairfax Medical Examiner Claude Cooper, who also gave the cause of death as strangulation, most likely by a rope or strap “about a quarter-inch in diameter”. Rather vague descriptions of her body being bruised and battered occur in almost all articles, but the most specific they get is reporting that she had marks on her knees and elbows that indicated a “terrific struggle” with her killer. Another source stated that “other injuries indicated she had struggled desperately with her killer”, again without being specific about the nature or extent of those injuries. The bruising or abrasions must have been noticeable, as one paper said that from “the savagely-battered condition of her nude body”, investigators concluded that “her killer was quite strong.”
It was never determined whether she had been killed by the stream or her dead body was placed there after being killed elsewhere. Given that police believe she put up a fight, the lack of obvious ground disturbances/footprints seems to suggest that the struggle did not occur at the creek. The close distance to Hooes Road also would strongly suggest that the killer did not commit murder her in such an obvious place, but rather quickly disposed of the body there. In fact, since the location of actual murder was uncertain, from the beginning Fairfax County, Arlington County, and D.C. police were working together “with the FBI in the stand-by role of cooperating agency.”
From the beginning, the medical examiner stated that Marta had been dead up to three days (most subsequent accounts use similar language or say “two to three days”) referring to a “sadistic assailant who had bound her hand and foot before he killed her-probably sometime on Sunday”. Recall that she disappeared on a Saturday. He said he was attempting to narrow down the window, but that apparently never happened. What prompted him to believe she died on Sunday was never stated, but here is the introduction of the idea that she had been held captive for an extended period of time. As one paper stated, “it is thought she may have been held captive for as long as 24 to 36 hours before she was slain.” Clearly, if she was last seen around noon on Saturday, then being dead closer to two days meant she was indeed held somewhere for an extended time. If you accept the three day mark, then there is only a matter of hours potentially unaccounted for, making a lengthy captivity unlikely. However, as I understand it, in recent years the consensus has largely been that determining the time of death is a less precise science than previously thought. So perhaps the determination that she probably died on Sunday should be taken with a grain of salt. Just one of the many mysteries of this case.
It should be noted that the high temperature for the 1st to the 4th was 94, 93, 83, and 80 degrees, respectively, with no significant amounts of precipitation. I presume the stream must have had some sort of cooling effect on the body, but it is far beyond my knowledge to say how the weather and location could have affected the time of death determination. The body was apparently in good enough condition that the rope burns were visible, but she wound up having a closed casket funeral, implying that two or three days in the sun had certainly taken their toll.
Two friends, Maria Castellon and Lora Jimenez, came to Arlington Hospital to identify the corpse. News sources don’t explicitly say so, but apparently the connection had been made by police between a missing persons report filed by her roommate (detailed below) and the body, hence the ability to tentatively identify the body and seek out Marta’s friends.
"Marta Would Never Go Voluntarily"
Police began to piece together Marta’s last day. She left work around 6:30 p.m. on Friday the 30th and arrived at neighbor Martha Gerrido’s apartment in the same building around 8:30 p.m. Marta’s younger sister Ivonne had left Friday night to visit her fiance in Seaford, Delaware over the weekend. Her other roommate, Xenia Melendez, was “out for the evening”. The hospital she worked at is about 2.5 miles from her apartment; she typically rode the street car or walked to get around town, so she probably came more or less straight home after work given the time frame. Gerrido’s aunt fitted some dresses for her and she briefly returned to her own apartment and then came back to Gerrido’s to talk and watch TV. The two stayed up until around 1:00 a.m. watching the movie And Now Tomorrow; Marta then returned to her own apartment, the last time Gerrido ever saw her.
Somewhat curiously, it was specifically mentioned that Marta had her glasses with her when in Gerrido’s apartment, although the only other mention of glasses I have found is that she had non-prescription sunglasses with her when she disappeared. Is this simply a reference to those sunglasses or did Marta have prescription glasses that were also missing? She is not wearing glasses in any published photographs, but did Gerrido or the reporter inadvertently let slip information that the police were keeping back (i.e., another missing pair of glasses)? Pure speculation on my part, but intriguing.
Roommate Melendez arrived back home later that night. She didn’t see Marta leave the next morning (Saturday), but believed she heard her leave between 8:00 and 9:00 a.m. as she was in bed. After going about her day on Saturday, Melendez reported that she went to bed around 10 p.m. and woke up around 1:00 a.m. What prompted her to wake up at this unusual time was not stated, but when she realized that Marta was still not there, she grew alarmed and phoned the police. (Another article just says she realized Marta was missing “early” on Sunday.) At some point, Melendez checked the apartment’s mailbox and found a note from a female friend of Marta’s saying that she had showed up for their planned “dinner appointment” on Saturday night, but she left when no one was at home. A couple of weeks later, “a friend of the murdered woman said she and other friends were unhappy that police seemed indifferent when called about the disappearance of Miss Cruz.” A police spokesman responded that “they took the report and began a canvass of the woman’s neighborhood, although in most such reports they don’t investigate immediately unless there is something mysterious about the disappearance or evidence of foul play.” Although Marta may still have been alive early Sunday morning, I’m not sure that police could realistically have closed the gap with the killer even with a more aggressive response to the missing persons report.
After talking to her roommates, police determined that on Saturday Martha planned to go to Hecht Co. (a department store) to cash her two week paycheck for $105.39 (a little under $1,000 in buying power today), drawn on American Security and Trust Co. It quickly became clear that she had not been in Hecht’s, as the store automatically took a picture of anyone cashing a check and employees also failed to recognize photos of Marta.
This seemingly alarming fact turned out not to have apparent significance, as it was soon discovered that she had in fact cashed her paycheck at the nearby Jelleff’s women’s clothing store, just a few blocks from the White House. Hecht’s was located at 575 7th St, while Jelleff’s was at 1214 F St., so there is only about 3/10 of a mile between the stores. In all likelihood she simply decided to visit one store over the other while on her trip. Marta’s check cleared American Safety and Trust Co. on the afternoon of the 6th and police were able to obtain it at that point. FBI handwriting analysts confirmed that Marta had personally endorsed the check. The clerk at Jelleff’s (who suffered the 1960s indignity of only being named as “Mrs. Quincy Smith”) identified a photo of Marta as having being someone who had cashed a check sometime between 10:45 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. (noon in another account) on Saturday. The clerk could not recall what she was wearing or if she was alone.
Location of Jelleff’s, last known sighting of Marta:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/1214+F+St+NW,+Washington,+DC+20004/@38.8986312,-77.0318026,16.14z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x89b7b79724348023:0xc132842b19e45cef!8m2!3d38.896891!4d-77.028591
A lead reported as early as July 5th was that “a small, red-haired woman was seen entering a cab about 10 a.m. on Saturday” but this was soon discounted for not entirely clear reasons. In a slightly different take, a paper reported that “two cab drivers have said they took her downtown last Saturday, but police are dubious”, again without explaining why. But presumably those reports were dismissed at least partly because on July 7th, a Capital Transit streetcar conductor reported that Marta boarded his streetcar on Columbia Road and got off at 14th and F St. N.W., but “he didn’t notice whether anyone was with her.” This stop was 2/10 of a mile from Jelleff’s, so there was nothing unusual about the stop itself. Further supporting the idea that she did not take a cab were comments from the four Jimenez sisters (one of whom had identified her body), who had known Marta in Bolivia and Washington. According to one of them, “I don’t think she would take a cab … she never took cabs because she was very frugal and usually rode street cars.” (It’s not clear how extensively police considered cab drivers in general to be potential suspects, although I presume they checked out cab company records for that day).
The Jimenez sisters then added an intriguing thought; they “agreed Marta would never go voluntarily with a stranger…I think she met someone she knew.” Another friend also said, “I know she would never go out with a stranger. It was someone she knew, or someone who forced her to go with a gun or a knife.” The wording is potentially suggestive, but it’s not clear to what extent her friends truly thought an acquaintance could be involved. The police soon picked up this line of thought, with a paper observing that “police are betting that the killer was not a stranger to the winsome redhead, because ‘we don’t think she was casually picked up, and an abduction on a busy street at high noon is unlikely’”. Further, it noted that the police “are hoping to find someone who saw her with her ‘friend’ over the weekend.” It’s unclear what exactly to make of this. Did they have a solid reason to think an acquaintance was the killer or that she did in fact spend time with a “friend” on Saturday? Or were they just basing that off what her friends said and the eminently reasonable conclusion that the time and place were unlikely for an abduction? You can either read a lot or a little into these sort of tantalizing statements in old articles, but in the end, no acquaintance of Marta’s was ever mentioned specifically as a suspect.
“You Know How it is With Dreams”
Investigators looked further into Marta’s background and acquaintances. An early account described her as “very shy” and someone who “dated infrequently”, but subsequent articles pushed back on this impression a bit. Other friends described her as having a “quiet personality”, but being a “happy girl”, someone who often attended concerts, was interested in tennis and swimming; and often attended social events at the Bolivian embassy. Reporters found a young man who had briefly dated Marta. Ronnie Garcia, 21, a Library of Congress employee, “was one of the few men Miss Santa Cruz had dated.” He said he hadn’t seen her in three months and had met her at a church dance. He had met her sister and called Marta “a nice, quiet girl. We talked about books and movies. I met another girl, but was going to call her again, but never did”. A friend added that she “dated occasionally, but no one steady. Another friend echoed that she was “not shy and withdrawn” but “did not date often”. If she did have a male acquaintance she met on Saturday, it was apparently a well kept secret. But you just can’t shake the feeling when reading these articles that there is a bit more to the “acquaintance theory” than the police and her friends are letting on...
After coming to the U.S., she lived in New York City for a time, working at the Henry Street Settlement House and William and J. Sloane Furniture Company there. Her time in New York is only mentioned in one source, but I can only assume that the police did their due diligence and investigated this period in her life and people she knew there. After moving to D.C. she started working in the Washington Hospital Center’s administration office as a clerk-typist for Richard M. Loughery on February 24, 1960. (Loughery’s name was never brought up as a suspect; I can only assume that he was looked at and cleared). She was also a part-time language student at George Washington University since 1959, taking night classes there with the goal of becoming a translator. A neighbor said that she “was waiting until she finished studying her English and German. She had no definite plans about where to work, but she did so want to be a translator. You know how it is with dreams.”
“A Torturing Blind Alley”
Police conducted house to house canvassing of Marta’s neighborhood for information on whether they saw her leave Saturday morning and what she was wearing. An investigator noted that “all they can tell us is that she was a real nice girl”. Police also circulated her picture among Fairfax and Arlington “motels and other public way-stops along the Shirley highway”. No specific reason for this was given, so I suspect they were just covering the possibility that her killer had stopped with her en route from D.C. to Fairfax.
As early as July 5th, Fairfax and D.C.police held a conference in D.C. and worked out their cooperation. The case was clearly high priority for D.C., as Capt. Lawrence A. Hartnett, chief of homicide squad, was put in charge of the “District phase” of the investigation. Sanitation Department workers were brought in to sort through the trash pile near where Marta’s body was found, but no clues turned up. As of July 7th, six policemen were still searching the Lorton area.
The only forensic evidence (at least what was publicly released) showed that FBI lab tests of hair found “clutched in the dead girl’s hand” showed only that the attacker was a “white man”. The evidence source was also described as “skin and hair fragments found under the girl’s fingernails”, which sounds a bit more realistic. Later reporting said that the FBI was still investigating and they “know only that he was a white man, not very old, has dark hair, and is probably deeply marked from the frantic struggle Marta put up in fighting for her life.”
An early “possible suspect” was “locked up in a nearby Virginia county” after being arrested on July 3rd. He had attacked a 20 year old girl getting off a bus; police chased him, captured him after firing a shot, and charged him with attempted rape. By July 7th, police had “virtually eliminated” the Arlington bus attack suspect after his alibi checked out. A woman living five blocks from Marta was reported missing on July 5th and police investigated any possible connection. By July 7th, the much-embarrassed woman “was found by the FBI…visiting friends in Portsmouth, Va.” On the 8th, a 25 year old Lithuanian woman was beaten and raped in her apartment less than four blocks from Marta’s apartment. Coincidentally, she was treated at the same hospital Marta had worked at. The attacker was chased by a neighbor but escaped; he was seen to be a black man, which seemed to quickly eliminate him as a suspect in Marta’s death.
On July 12th it was reported that a major huddle in D.C. was held with “all law officials involved in the search”. In the 90 minute conference at D.C.Police Headquarters, the medical examiner and a pathologist described Marta’s “bruised remains” and showed color slides and photographs of the crime scene.
Police had released a description of Marta’s missing clothing on July 8th and they continued the search for it. After spending days interviewing roommates and searching their apartment, a detailed list of the clothing Martha was wearing when she went missing was developed. Det. Sgt. Gertrude Gettel was involved with making the inventory and she made the announcement; I presume the thought was that a female officer would be best equipped for the job. On July 18th, FBI released “a list of items missing from the apartment” of Marta:
(listed exactly as they appeared in the paper)
-ladies tan sandals
-white shoes, medium heel, plain pointed toe. Described as pump.
-Flowered blouse, blue-green flowers on white background, sleeveless, low, round neckline.
-Sun glasses with dark brown frame, not prescription type, non-expensive.
-Straight skirt- Navy blue solid color, no kick pleats.
-White leather purse about 8x12 inches, zippered on top with two matching white leather handles running end to end, gold chain attached to zipper holding matching white leather change folder with gold zipper fastener on flap. Purse probably contained 6x4 inch zippered cloth bag, colored in black, red and yellow parallel stripes, having white plastic lining, used as cosmetics container.
-Cosmetics usually contained in above described container were plain cylindrical gold lipstick holder and three inch square flat silver compact with gold flower design on lid and base, with mirror inside lid.
-Light blue panty girdle
-White dacron or blue nylon half slip
-Nylon seamless stockings of suntanned shade and sixty denier
-White Bestform bra, size 32B.
The FBI also said that Marta “used only Charles-of-the-Ritz cosmetics and was not wearing a hat.”
That seems like a pretty detailed list to me, but no trace of those items was ever found. A belt that matched her outfit was still in her apartment, so she may have been wearing another belt. Police also were looking for a gold wrist watch with a black band.
A paper reported that as of August 5th, a “squad of Fairfax County detectives, [FBI] and Washington and other police have worked almost literally around the clock to find her killer and have “questioned hundreds of suspects and talked to almost an equal number of other persons who have offered information.” It further noted that they “have examined dozens of objects ranging from flecks of automobile paint to articles of clothing, and have searched every square yard of ground within a mile of where Marta was found.” This is the only mention of automobile paint I have found; I don’t know if flecks of it were found on the body or the immediate area, or from a more tangential piece of evidence but it sounds like an intriguing clue.
In a classic example that “from the absurd to the sublime is but a step”, an article on October 5th discussed Detective Philip Powell, one of the investigators. Powell, described by a police official as “part bulldog, part preacher, part Indian, and all cop”, was thanked by a young Marine he arrested along with an accomplice for stealing from gas station vending machines. As Powell said, “I saw the boy inside going out the window…he landed on his head and became confused so that he ran toward me instead of the other way…he was thanking me for not giving him a chance to get himself shot”.
The article took a dark shift when it then noted that “Powell was off duty when he caught the two. He had been to the spot” where Marta was found. Powell “was assigned to the case of her rape-murder until it became a torturing blind alley” and he “made a habit of visiting the scene at different times of the day, to think over what is known of her life and last hours.”
“That girl’s killer made a mistake somewhere”, Powell said, “and we’ll find it.” The paper noted that “Thursday night he had prayed for a few moments” before checking out the gas station. The image of the tormented, obsessed detective unable to solve a girl’s murder seems like a movie trope, but here it is in real life.
Over the next several months, other cases would lead police to seek connections to Marta's murder, all to no avail:
- July 24th: 7 year old Hattie Jackson was abducted from a playground in D.C. Police even searched the area where Marta was found in the event the same killer deposited another body there.
-September 6th: D.C. teenager Morris A. Kent was charged with multiple rapes and assaults on women during the time frame of Marta’s murder and he was questioned regarding her death. Another dead end.
August 29th, 1962- A 20 year old Peruvian woman was abducted around 1:15 a.m. while walking about 3/10 of a mile from Marta's old apartment and raped in Rock Creek Park by Pvt. Eugene Roger Warner, an AWOL soldier. Intriguingly, it was noted that he had been charged “here” (I presume they mean D.C.) on September 24th, 1960 for assault after kicking a woman, so apparently he had previously been in D.C. But he too was cleared.
February, 1963- Maryland State Police sent investigators to Fairfax to discuss possible links to the murder of Allene Replane. An intriguing unsolved case in its own right, Maryland police noted that they “had no evidence to link the two deaths”, but were comparing similarities. No connection was found.
-As of December 29th, 1963, Marta’s case was mentioned in an article about unsolved local crimes. The police and FBI were “still at work” on Marta’s murder and noted that her’s was one of four murders from the last ten years that was “still high on the priority list”.
-February 2nd, 1965: Fairfax police wanted to speak to Walter Lee Parman, 32, who was arrested by the FBI the day previously in Los Angeles after being charged with the murder of Shirley Ann Cary in D.C. The D.C police were interested enough to fly a detective to Los Angeles to question Parman. Parman is never mentioned again as a suspect, so he obviously was quickly cleared. He had only moved to Washington at the end of 1964 and presumably the police were able to track his movements in July, 1961 to clear him. Later information indeed shows that he was living in Providence, RI in 1961 and then moved to Minneapolis, MN before his late 1964 move to D.C. He must certainly have briefly been a tantalizing lead, as his apartment in D.C. happened to be about three-quarters of a mile from Marta’s apartment and his victim was also strangled (and was covered with bite marks and cigarette burns). His later story is a wild one, but unfortunately outside the scope of this post (an absurd prison escape, years on the run, etc.)
Unfortunately, this appears to have been the last substantive mention of Marta’s case until she was placed on the Fairfax County Police’s Cold Case website several years ago.
“A Horrible Reality of Evil”
Although it was initially reported that Marta’s mother was en route for her funeral, apparently she stayed in Bolivia with her mother who was dying of cancer. For unstated reasons, Marta’s father apparently did not attend either. Her sister Ivonne was so shocked and upset that she remained in a physician’s care at the Bolivian embassy “under sedation”; she did not attend either. On July 8th, over 300 people attended the closed-casket funeral mass at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, among them the Bolivian ambassador and his wife, Marta’s roommate, and other friends. Rev. M. Frank Ruppert led the service and called Marta’s murder a “shattering, shaking, terrible, horrible reality of evil.” Among the crowd were plain clothes detectives and FBI men. Across the street, a police photographer took film footage in an effort to catch anything suspicious. About 100 of the attendees continued on to the internment at Mount Olivet Cemetery, a large and historic Catholic cemetery in D.C. (Not finding any information on her exact burial location, I contacted the cemetery and was told their records show she was disinterred on October 29th, 1964 for re-interment in La Paz, Bolivia.) So Marta did eventually make it home.
The murder had ripple effects even into the U.S. and Bolivian governments. With Marta’s family being so prominent in Bolivia, on July 7th, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk cabled the Bolivian Foreign Minister and conveyed the U.S.’s “profound shock” at the crime and promised an “all-out effort to apprehend the strangler.” Bolivian Ambassador Victor Andrade said the impact in Bolivia will be “tremendous” but wanted Bolivians to understand it “is a criminal thing that could happen to anyone…this unfortunate thing undoubtedly will cause a reaction in Bolivia…but I am sure our newsmen will not be unfair and stir up any political emotions", Regardless of what the ambassador said, female D.C. residents from Latin and South America began circulating a petition for increased police protection. An editorial noted that Latin and South American friendships that were being stressed by the Kennedy administration will be “seriously undermined if women who come here to work return to their native lands with tales of how they feared to take a stroll at night in the capital city".
I will leave you with a few last musings. The fastest route the killer could have taken from D.C. to Lorton was the 14th St. or Memorial Bridge, which both linked to Shirley Highway (now I-395), the first limited-access freeway in Virginia. Of course, we don’t know where the killer picked up Marta, but this route would hold true for most locations in D.C. From Shirley Highway, he could exit at Lorton onto a short stretch of Telegraph Road. If he really knew the area, he could quickly turn right onto Silver Brook Road and take a shortcut around Lorton Reformatory/Prison. Or, he could have stayed on Telegraph a bit longer and it soon runs into Ox Road (Route 123), the main artery in this section of Fairfax County. Either way, eventually he would make a right turn northbound onto Hooes Road until reaching South Run. Today this is about a 30-35 minute drive without traffic. His drive time should not have been too much longer given that Shirley Highway was a freeway at that time; Ox Road is wider now and Silver Brook has been realigned and widened, but otherwise the road system is the same. Recall that police canvassed motels along the Shirley Highway, so clearly they thought the killer took this route.
I think this suggests that the killer had some knowledge of Fairfax County. On one hand, heading south on Shirley Highway would have been a logical move for someone with even a limited knowledge of the D.C. area. However, Shirley Highway continued a bit farther to Colchester, so this was not a case where a killer unfamiliar with the area reached the end of the freeway and then had to figure out where to go next on the fly; I think he deliberately started going up Ox Road (or Silver Brook). There were multiple roads branching off from Ox Road; why choose Hooes Road unless you knew it would eventually cross a stream accessible by a dirt road where you could dump a body? Even today, that stretch of Hooes Road is not a major thoroughfare. It is certainly also possible that he went west on Highway 29 or 50 and then went south on Ox Road, but this would have been slower and more roundabout.
Lorton Reformatory/Prison was used as the point of reference in many articles (although it was really a huge campus with multiple sections and varying degrees of confinement). It does raise the question of whether the killer was previously an inmate there, giving him some general knowledge and comfort with the area. I can only assume that the police had the same thought and checked through Lorton records to see if any suspicions were raised. While I think the killer was familiar with Fairfax County, it would be a bit odd to take a body on a nearly 25 mile drive just to deposit it near your home. So, I’m inclined to think that the killer no longer lived in the Lorton area, but may have grown up or previously lived there. Again, I can only presume that the police tried to find any acquaintances of Marta that had a connection with that area.
One is left to speculate that an acquaintance of Marta’s, by design or happenstance, crossed paths with her and offered her a ride. Whether premeditated or perhaps the result of a rage-inducing rejection by Marta, the killer then clearly had to spend some sort of time with Marta in a location he wouldn’t be spotted. Besides committing the assault itself, he needed a place where he could tie Marta’s arms and legs together; that’s not something you can likely do unobserved if you’re just pulled over on a Washington, D.C. street. Also recall that the bruised condition of her body and fingernail scrapings indicated that she had fought her attacker. If you accept that Marta was dead closer to two days, then there is the added issue of where she was kept captive for potentially an extended period of time (and you have to assume she at least wasn’t killed immediately; why bother to tie up the wrists and legs of a dead woman)? I don’t think the information released publicly is enough to say much about the time of death. It would be interesting to see how a modern doctor would interpret the autopsy report (assuming it still exists).
This, then, is as far as Marta’s story can go for now. Unless there is some remaining physical evidence that could be useful for DNA, I don’t think we’ll ever get to the bottom of this one. But, we can at least remember Marta’s short life.
Sources:
“Slain District Girl Found in Creek”. Evening Star. July 05, 1961, Page A-1 and A-6.
Police Push Search for Girl Slayer: Bolivian Beauty's Nude Body Found, By Alfred E. Lewis and Philip D. Kopper Staff Reporters. The Washington Post, Times Herald (1959-1973); Jul 6, 1961;
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Washington Post pg. A1
“Police Sifting Slaying Clues”. “Marta, ‘a Happy Girl’, Liked to Go Boating”. Evening Star. July 06, 1961, Page A-1 and A-6
“Marta, ‘a Happy Girl’, Liked to Go Boating”. Evening Star. July 06, 1961, Page A-6
“Missing Woman Found Visiting in Portsmouth”. Evening Star. July 07, 1961, Page A-5
Slain Girl's Paycheck Cashed Here: State Dept. Help In Strangler Hunt Pledged Bolivia
The Washington Post, Times Herald (1959-1973); Jul 7, 1961; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Washington Post pg. A1
Obituary 11 -- No Title. The Washington Post, Times Herald (1959-1973); Jul 7, 1961; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Washington Post pg. C5
“Police Get Description of Slain Girl’s Clothes”. Evening Star. July 07, 1961, Page A-1 and A-6
Marta's Clothes Provide Clue
The Washington Post, Times Herald (1959-1973); Jul 8, 1961; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Washington Post pg. A3
“DC Woman Attacked and Beaten in Home”. Evening Star. July 08, 1961, page A-1
“Murdered Bolivian Girl Will Be Buried Today”, by Hank Burchard. Northern Virginia Sun, Volume 24, Number 236, 8 July 1961, page 1
“US Friendship Undermined”. Northern Virginia Sun, Volume 24, Number 236, 8 July 1961, page 8
“Friends, Police Attend Attack Victim’s Rites”. Evening star. July 09, 1961, Page C-7
Ambassador and Detectives Attend Rites for Slain Marta: Clues Still Lacking, By Phil Casey Staff Reporter. The Washington Post, Times Herald (1959-1973); Jul 9, 1961; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Washington Post pg. A3
Joint Police Sift Data In Hunt for Girl Slayer. The Washington Post, Times Herald (1959-1973); Jul 12, 1961; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Washington Post. pg. A3
“Area Officials Meet to Discuss Santa Cruz Case.” Evening Star, July 12, 1961, Page A-24
“Police Still Seeking Clues in Death of Girl at Lorton”. Fairfax Herald, Volume 79, Number 4, 14 July 1961, page 1
“Slain Girl’s Apparel is Listed”. Northern Virginia Sun, Volume 24, Number 244, 18 July 1961, page 3
“FBI Itemizes Missing Garb of Slain Girl”. Evening Star. July 18, 1961, Page B-3
“Police Hunt is Pressed for Missing Girl, 7”. Evening Star., July 24, 1961, Page B-19
“Santa Cruz Murder Still Investigated”. Northern Virginia Sun, Number 260, 5 August 1961, page 3
“Boy, 16, Charged in 3 Rapes, 8 Assaults on Women Here”. Evening Star. September 06, 1961, Page A-1 and A-23
“Policeman is Thanked By the Man He Caught”, by Hank Burchard. Northern Virginia Sun, Volume 24, Number 312, 5 October 1961, page 3
“Girl Abducted, Raped in Park”. Evening Star. August 29, 1962, Page A-1 and A-6
Police Seek Clue to Replane Slaying In Similar Murder of Girl in Fairfax. The Washington Post, Times Herald (1959-1973); Feb 13, 1963; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Washington Post pg. C7
“Seven Unsolved Area Murders of 1963 Still Baffling Police”. Evening Star. December 29, 1963, Page B-1
“Alarm Out”. Suffolk News-Herald, Volume 43, Number 13, 15 January 1965, page 7.
“Fugitive Arrested by FBI”. Suffolk News-Herald, Volume 43, Number 28, 2 February 1965, page 3
“Fairfax Police Want to Talk to Parman”. Northern Virginia Sun, Volume 28, Number 102, 2 February 1965, page 1