CA CA - Marilee Bruszer, 33, Long Beach, 22 Aug 1978

The Doe Network:
Case File 1176DFCA

http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1176dfca.html

Marilee Bruszer
Missing since August 22, 1978 from Long Beach, Los Angeles County, California
Classification: Endangered Missing


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Vital Statistics

•Date Of Birth: November 4, 1944
•Age at Time of Disappearance: 33 years old
•Height and Weight at Time of Disappearance: 5'5"; 150 lbs.
•Distinguishing Characteristics: White female. Brown hair; blue eyes.
•Dentals: Available


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Circumstances of Disappearance
Marilee was last seen on August 22, 1978 in Long Beach, California. Foul play is suspected.


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Investigators
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact:

Long Beach Police Department
562-570-8810

Agency Case Number: 78-39877

Source Information:
Los Angeles Crime Stoppers

http://www.lacrimestoppers.com/missing.aspx
Note this link does not have her picture.

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/b/bruszer_marilee.html

Lee is not listed in NamUs.

I did a search using Marilee Bruszer, Lee Bruszer, and just the surname Bruszer since it seems to be an uncommon one. No archived articles at all.

I did find this which I thought was interesting and I wonder where the info came from?

http://www.southgatehigh.com/Deceased63.htm
(no date for entry given)

Bruszer, Marilee 11-02-44 8-22-83 (date of alleged kidnapping and murder) kidnapped in L Beach & killed

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Note: My comment in RED



http://www.southgatehigh.com/Messagebrd.htm
2-22-07

2-22-07...Hi, I hope you will be able to help me with a query about Marilee Bruszer. I found her name on the Deceased Class of 63 and so far that's about all I have to go on. I'm researching my family history and would like to find out more about her disappearance. If there is an old classmate of hers who would be willing to contact me I'd be very grateful. Could you pass on this query to them please?

I am trying to find an archive of the local newspaper in the hope that I might buy copies of the press coverage. Is there an archive in Long Beach? Any help or advice you could give me would be very much appreciated.

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I intentionally left off the posters name (posted full name) and email addy out of respect for privacy to the user.

Very Odd.

Marilee has been missing 32 years today. Come home soon.

Here is an archived L.A. Times article on Marilee Bruszer's disappearance that requires a subscription to read.

$5,000 Offered for Data on Missing Woman
Los Angeles Times (1923-Current File) - Los Angeles, Calif.
Author: ELIZABETH THOMPSON
Date: Sep 7, 1978
Start Page: OC_A11
Pages: 1
Section: Orange County
Text Word Count: 491

Abstract (Document Summary)
Marilee Bruszer has been missing since Aug. 22 and her friends and neighbors are willing to pay $5,000 to find out what happened to her.

I noticed that a post regarding an unidentified woman found in 1978, who was eventually ruled out as Ms. Bruszer, http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=147114 there is a map showing the route that she would have taken from 50 61st Pl, Long Beach, CA 90803 to Downtown Los Angeles (where she worked) then to the address the unidentified woman was found in Thousand Oaks. I was wondering if 50 61st Pl, Long Beach, CA 90803 was Marilee Bruszer's last known address?

Ambercat said:

I noticed that a post regarding an unidentified woman found in 1978, who was eventually ruled out as Ms. Bruszer, http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=147114 there is a map showing the route that she would have taken from 50 61st Pl, Long Beach, CA 90803 to Downtown Los Angeles (where she worked) then to the address the unidentified woman was found in Thousand Oaks. I was wondering if 50 61st Pl, Long Beach, CA 90803 was Marilee Bruszer's last known address?

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It was the general block she lived on, but not necessarily her exact address according to her Charley Project profile (http://charleyproject.org/cases/b/bruszer_marilee.html):

Bruszer was last seen in Long Beach, California on August 22, 1978. She left her apartment in the 50 block of 61st Place to go to work at the Sears and Roebuck Co. in downtown Los Angeles, where she was an inspector.

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tifflee said:

It was the general block she lived on, but not necessarily her exact address according to her Charley Project profile (http://charleyproject.org/cases/b/bruszer_marilee.html):

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Thanks! I thought I read Marilee Bruszer's Charley Project profile, but I must have overlooked that. She lived on the Bayside of the Peninsula neighborhood -- its a nice area. I used to live at 56th Place a few blocks away. The Peninsula area of Long Beach is sort of crowded and probably was even in the 1970s, so if something happened to her there one of her neighbors probably would have noticed. I wonder if LE interviewed them? Was her car ever recovered?

Its been 33 years today since Marilee Bruszer went missing.

Not sure on who was interviewed, but in the L.A. Times article posted earlier, it does mention her neighbors were part of the group offering an award for information on her disappearance.

She has been identified. RIP Marilee.

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=36762352

Marilee Bruszer, from Long Beach, California, was identified when DNA sample submissions from her mother and a sibling matched a hair sample provided by the Juab County Sheriff's Office to the University of North Texas Health Science Center.

Bruszer was 33-years-old when she went missing on Aug. 22, 1978. The state medical examiner's office ruled at the time she died by strangulation, said Juab County Sheriff Douglas Anderson. The Long Beach Police Department has said it will now reopen Bruszer's missing person case as a homicide investigation.

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UID Thread

UT - Juab County, WhtFem (UP8382), 18-22, @Shore of Yuba Lake, Sep'78

RIP Marilee Lee Bruszer

RIP Marilee Lee Bruszer.

RIP Marilee. She can rest at peace now.

I hope the monster who did this to her is burning in a very hot place.

Rest in peace, Marilee.

Another article on her identification: http://www.sltrib.com/home/3011126-155/utah-police-identify-two-cold-case-murder.

She had a family who cared about her disappearance, friends and neighbors who offered a reward for her return... Marilee Bruszer was loved and hopefully law enforcement are able to make headway in their newly opened homicide investigation.

Interviews with some of her surviving family members: http://www.presstelegram.com/genera...n-discovery-of-long-beach-womans-body-in-utah

On Aug. 20, 2015, Ryan learned that the DNA in the victim’s hair matched samples taken from Bruszer’s mother and a sibling, the sheriff’s news release said.

The Long Beach Police Department is reopening her case as a homicide investigation.

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During the intervening years, Don Bruszer said he and his family had hoped she would be found, but knew police hardly had any leads.

“You start to wonder if this was some kind of white slavery thing, if she was taken away and kept,” he said. “We expected she would come in one day and say, ‘I know I’ve been gone. I was finally able to get away.’ ”

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Don Bruszer, who is also a pastor at Grace Bible Church in South Gate, said he at least has a measure of peace from the faith he shared with his cousin.

“She wasn’t a member of our church, but she was Catholic,” he said. “We believe she’s home with the Lord.”

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https://kutv.com/news/local/two-utah-cold-case-murder-victims-identified

Juab police said in a release that her remains were run against a number of possible leads of missing females over the year, through dental records, but the case "went cold" with no new leads for "a number of years."

The body's details were listed "a number of years ago" on NAMUS according to the police report. "Over the last few years," it said the identity of the victim had been ruled out against other possible matches through dental comparisons.

In 2013 the Davis County Sheriff's Office provided an evidence sample to the Juab office that had been in evidence, "unknown to anyone since 1978." The report said that, "Due to chain of evidence, that sample was not used."

No explanation was given about why Davis County had the sample at all.

In 2014, Ryan obtained a hair sample from the State Medical Examiner's Office that it had in its custody.

The hair was sent to UNT and a DNA profile was established.

Then on Aug. 20, Ryan was notified from the UNT science center of a positive DNA match "based on Mitochondrial DNA testing results" It confirmed a match between with a family reference sample that had been provided by a mother and sibling. The finding resulted in the identification of Bruszer.

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Just saw that there is a Wikipedia article on Marilee Bruszer and wanted to share here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Marilee_Bruszer.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the discovery of her remains so far from home and just over a year to when the remains were identified as her, 37 years after her disappearance. Glad she's been returned to her loved ones.

Could Stephen Peter Morin have been responsible? He had connections to California and transported one victim's body from Las Vegas to Utah.

Stephen Morin - Wikipedia

Maybe. It seems so strange to me that she wound up all the way in UTAH. I would love to know what happened to poor Marilee.

Marilee Lee Bruszer,[1][2] previously known as Juab County Jane Doe, was a formerly unidentified American murder victim who was found on September 3, 1978. Bruszer's body was not identified for 37 years (until August 2015) due to an inaccurate physical description generated by the original investigators and the great distance she was found from where she had resided prior to her disappearance.

Contents​

• 1Circumstances
• 2Identification
• 3See also
• 4References

Circumstances[edit]​

Reconstruction of Bruszer
Bruszer went missing on August 22, 1978, from Long Beach, California. Few details were available about her case, although authorities did believe she had been murdered and classified her as "endangered missing." Further into the investigation, her dental records and DNA information were obtained to compare against unidentified bodies in the country. According to record, she was declared legally dead on August 22, 1983. [1][2]

On September 3, 1978, the naked remains of a woman were found near the Yuba Lake campground in Juab County, Utahby three women who were fishing near the Yuba Dam.[3]She was white and believed to have been five feet two to three inches (157 to 160 cm) tall at a weight around 110 pounds (50 kg), which was reported to be inconsistent with Bruszer's height and weight at five feet five inches (165 cm) and 145 to 150 pounds (66 to 68 kg), respectively.[2] The victim was said to have light blond hair that was eleven inches (28 cm) long, although some sources state that it was brown, strawberry blond or sandy blond. Her natural hair color was likely light brown, as some pubic hair was found.[4] With the body, a double-hooped earring was found along with a white barrette. She had some dental crowding, which caused one of her front teeth to be crooked.[5] The woman was believed to be between eighteen and twenty-two when she was strangled several months to three years before her body was found.[6][7] The age and time of death of the victim are now known to have been inaccurate, as Bruszer was thirty-three at the time she disappeared a month before the remains were found.[3][8]

Henry Lee Lucas confessed to the victim's murder, although most of his admissions are now believed to have been coerced.[9]