I apologize in advance to sensitive readers who may be upset by crime stories--if you are, please do not read further.
A grocery checker named Joanna Veil left her job at a local store, the Ben Lomond Market, on Saturday, September 9th, and was found murdered on Thursday, September 14th. Her car was found about a quarter-mile from the market, and her body was discovered at the end of Love Creek Road, which is a mostly "walkable," mostly paved road with a large, rugged area at the very end, the scene of a huge landslide in the 1980s. She was six and a half months pregnant. I remember her, because I go to that market very frequently; it's a fifteen minute drive from my house. The very last time I went there, she was my checker (I remember her from her accent and the fact that she was visibly pregnant).
There are no suspects so far in this killing. I feel so terrible for her family, her friends. Apparently she got off work on Saturday at seven-thirty, according to some news articles (thanks to the folks on the alt.truecrime group for pointing this out), though I have heard from locals that she was actually working later than that. If she was working after sundown, then I think it is important to note that Ben Lomond has the worst lighting in places--the part around the market is fairly well-lit, but if you walk just a bit down the block, it gets increasingly darker, and is pitch-black by the Ben Lomond park, where all kinds of creepy people lurk at night. I never go down by the park at night, just to the market. It is baffling that someone could just vanish like this--nobody seems to have seen a thing. Love Creek Road is not densely populated at the top, where she was found, but there are homes all around that area on the way to the end of the road.
Lately the murders in Santa Cruz seem to be gang or drug related, or idiots who think it's cool to beat up homeless people; there has been one domestic violence-related death. This is terrifying and sinister to me in a different category of terrifying and sinister things--I keep wondering, how did this happen? It was not a killing to take the baby from her mother's womb, something I feared from the get-go. Did her car break down? It was found just a short distance from her home, though. She was still wearing her apron from the Ben Lomond Market when they found her body--she didn't even have time to take it off after her workday was over. The police have released little to no information about the crime, except for basic information. I wonder if she consistently worked the late shift on Saturday and the person who did it was familiar with that. I can't begin to imagine the unspeakable fear she must have experienced.
I feel very sad and scared by this; I caution my two teens emphatically not to go running around the Valley at night anyway, but now even more so. All sorts of rumors have been flying like sparks, but mostly people are afraid, and the early-autumn darkness is not friendly when it descends.
