Murder In The Desert
A brief overview of the unsolved Frislie murder case:
The 14 year old victim, Donna Marie Frislie, was abducted from a home in Lancaster, CA (located in Antelope Valley, about 70 miles north of LA) at around 1 am on February 13, 1962 while babysitting three infants.
A neighbor later reported hearing Donna laughing, then screaming around the time she was abducted. One of her shoes left behind and an overturned radio at the scene suggest that she left under duress.
A massive manhunt ensued after the girl was reported missing. Her fully-clothed body was discovered in a shallow grave near an abandoned gold mine in the desert east of Palmdale, about 30 miles from Lancaster, a week later.
The victim had been dragged from a car at the burial site, sexually assaulted (despite early reports to the contrary), stabbed and bludgeoned, and her throat was slit. Police believe she fought her killer and possibly inflected a groin injury. A man’s footprints, man's leather watch strap and .22 caliber cartridges were found close to the grave and the abandoned mine.
A highly-publicized early lead involved a “mystery man” observed by a TWA stewardess, Georgia Shaw, on a Los Angeles-New York flight on Valentine's Day (the day after Donna went missing.) The tight-lipped passenger marked up and annotated a Los Angeles Times story about the case using a ballpoint pen and left the newspaper behind on exiting the plane during a stop in Las Vegas.
An extensive search was made for the well-dressed, 50-ish "prime suspect" and two Ident-a-Kit composites were released to the press, but there seems to be nothing to indicate he was ever found. Other suspects failed to pan out and the case went cold, as it remains to this day.