jun 23, 1969 - Virginia Lynn "Ginny" Smith ABDUCTION & HOMICIDE

Description:

On the afternoon of Monday, June 23, 1969, Virginia Smith was dropped off by a male friend of hers at a girl friend's house. The girl friend was not home, and so Ginny was last seen walking toward her own home a mile away.

That same day her body was found, nude and badly beaten, 2mi from her home in a creek bed just north of the Claremont college community. Her clothes were found 20ft from the body. An autopsy indicated she died of head and neck injuries.

Her step-father, Harry Neumann, 40, was an LA County probation officer at the time. After hearing radio reports that the body of a brown-haired, blue-eyed girl had been found in a canyon 2mi from their home, Neumann identified the body as being that of Ginny. She had lived with her mother, step-father, and four other children at their home in Claremont at the time. She was vice president of her 8th grade class at La Puerta Intermediate School and had recently been voted the "most popular girl" at school.

In April 1971, a man named Leon William Short, 25, was arrested in Ocala, FL on charges of drunkenness. While in police custody he told officers that he killed a 13-year-old girl in Los Angeles County, CA. A sergeant for the LA County Sheriff's Office went down to investigate, and Short confessed to Virginia's murder. Short was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He died in 1997.

Before her case was solved, Virginia was mentioned in contemporary newspaper articles alongside other victims in this timeline such as Rose Tashman, Marina Habe, Doreen Gaul & James Sharp, and the Tate-LaBianca murders, which all occurred in LA County in 1969. Those clippings were how I found out about this case.

-----
WRITE-UP COMPLETION DATE: May 2025

Cases mentioned above that are also present on this timeline: Rose Tashman, Marina Habe, and Doreen Gaul & James Sharp
-----

LUNAR PHASE:
ZODIAC SIGN:
DAY OF WEEK: Monday

Added to timeline:

Date: