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SHADES OF THE BLACK DAHLIA’Beach’s ‘Pajama String’(Editor's Note; This is the second in a series of stories of unsolved crimes in the Long Beach area. Others in Ike series will appear from time to time in Southland,)jj^EVERAL WOMEN were killed in Southern California in a wave of sex murders that followed the death of Elizabeth Short, the “Black Dahlia,” in January 1947 in Los Angeles.In Long Beach the murder in that series — and it still is as great a mystery as the murder of the Black Dahlia herself — was the slaying of Mrs. Laura Trelstad, 37, attractive mother of three children.Mrs. Trelstad's partly nude, ravished body was found early the morning of May 12, 1947, in a lonely field on Locust Ave. north of Wardlow Rd. She had been slugged on the head and choked to death with the waistband ripped from a pair of man's pajamas. The pajamas were of a gay, flowered design. The drawstring still was in the band.A PRESS-TELEGRAM reporter, checking a cleaning mark in the woman’s coat, went about noon to the Trelstad home, 2211 Locust Ave. The husband, Ing-man Trelstad, moving truckSlaying of Elizabeth (Black Dahlia) Short was most widely publicized murder of a series in late 1940s, one of them a Long Beach killing and still unsolved.swamper, identified a picture of the body as that of his wife.Later, he stood beside her body in the county morgue and sobbed, “This is Laura.”Bereaved by the tragedy were the couple's children, Audrey, 9; Janet, 7, and Tommy, 3.Then it was disclosc-d that the afternoon before — which was Sunday, Mother's Day — the Trelstads had gone to the home of friends.The men played penny antepoker.About 5:30 p. m.. Mrs. Trelstad said to the other women present: “If the boys can play poker, we girls can go and dance.”THEY DID NOT go with her, but she caught a bus. saying she was going to the Crvstal Ball-By Vera Williams
Newspaper Details
Independent Press Telegram
Long Beach, California, US
Sun, Mar 18, 1956
Page 7
Full Page
Clipped by
Eli F.
CA, USA 17 Jul 2020
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