Four Murders

In four scattered locations across the U.S. last week, terror struck suddenly. P:Floating half submerged in a tiny Fairfax County, Va., stream, the nude body of Marta Santa Cruz, 22, was discovered by two teenagers. Marta had apparently been raped, then strangled. Her hands and feet were bound, and flesh scrapings found under her fingernails indicated a desperate struggle with her attacker. Daughter of a retired Bolivian army colonel. Marta worked as a clerk-typist at the Washington, D.C. Hospital Center, was a frequent guest at parties given by Bolivia's Ambassador Victor Andrade. P: In North Buffalo. N.Y.. frightened parents confiscated their children's bikes, Bible-class attendance dwindled, and one cautious housewife locked all three doors to her house, kept the key on a chain around her neck. The town had been terrified by the brutal drowning of blond Andrew Ashley, 3, who was found floating in the nearby Delaware Park lake, hands and feet tied with nylon stockings. Recalling two similar but nonfatal kidnapings of North Buffalo children during the past two months, a local psychiatrist concluded. "This is the reaction of a person who has become extremely jealous, perhaps as a result of the loss of her own child." But when police finally picked up a likely suspect, the jealous woman turned out to be a disturbed teenager. Chyrel Jolls. 15, was twice questioned and released, then arrested a third time last week when a rambling diary found in her home contained allusions to the Ashley kidnaping. But at week's end, although Chyrel confessed to abducting the Ashley child, police had not yet charged her with murder, and North Buffalo parents were still not sure the streets were safe. P: Summoned to the neat red brick bungalow of Mrs. Delette Nycum, Charlotte, N.C., police were met at the door by 14-year-old Richard Nycum, who silently led them to his mother's bedroom. There they found the 39-year-old divorcee dead, her body blotched with 251 bruises. While they questioned Richard, Charlotte Millionaire George King Cutter, 48, drove up and introduced himself as "a friend of the family." Cutter, a real estate developer, admitted that he had spent the previous evening with plump, attractive Mrs. Nycum aboard a converted Post Office bus (complete with bar, bath and bedroom) that he kept parked in an abandoned Army warehouse on the grounds of Charlotte Municipal Airport. Cutter said he had slapped Mrs. Nycum, but insisted that he had not killed her. An autopsy left the cause of death in doubt and failed to establish whether Mrs. Nycum had died before or after her beatingk but police charged Cutter with murder.

P:Off U.S. Highway 160, near Moab, Utah, an oil rigger returning to camp drove up moments too late to prevent a vicious murder. Off to the side of the road, clutching his bloody head, stood Charles Boothroyd, 55, a Hartford, Conn., machinist. Near by, fatally wounded, lay Mrs. Jeanette Sullivan, 40. In a ditch was a crumpled tan Volkswagen with sleeping bags and a tent lashed to its top, its interior littered with toilet paper, pillows and sun caps. Missing was Mrs. Sullivan's 14-year-old daughter Denise. Boothroyd and the Sullivans had been sightseeing at Dead Horse Point, a towering promontory that commands a magnificent view of the Colorado River canyon and the surrounding Utah badlands. They had stopped on the highway to aid a fellow motorist. "Generator trouble." explained the swarthy stranger as he asked to borrow Boothroyd's flashlight. Then he produced a rifle and demanded money. Boothroyd threw his wallet--containing $250--to the ground, but Mrs. Sullivan angrily snatched up the wallet and turned to walk away. The bandit fired, and Mrs. Sullivan fell with a bullet in her brain. Then the murderer shot Boothroyd twice in the face. In the Volkswagen, Denise Sullivan tried to drive off. But the bandit jumped into his dusty sedan, ran Denise off the road, and pulled her into his car. At week's end, FBI agents cornered a suspect who killed himself before he could be questioned. Said Moab Sheriff John Stocks: "It's one chance in 1,000 that we'll find the girl alive."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.