Marta Santa Cruz was last seen cashing a paycheck on F Street in Northwest D.C. on July 1, 1961. Three days later, a couple of teenage boys found her naked body halfway submerged in a creek 15 miles away in Springfield.
Cruz was only 24. Her roommate told police what Cruz was wearing when she left the house on Columbia Road the day she disappeared: a greenish-blue two-piece dress and a sleeveless blouse. She hailed a cab around 10 a.m.
Customers recalled seeing Cruz at the store on F Street where she cashed her paycheck. When she didn’t return that day, her roommate filed a missing persons report with D.C. police.
It was 8 a.m. July 4 when the boys found Cruz off a dirt road near a trash dump and called police. Her purse and paycheck were gone, but she still wore her jewelry.
“There was evidence that she had been bound and sexually assaulted,” said Detective James Trainum, director of the Violent Crime Case Review Project. He said police recovered semen from the crime scene and determined that she died of strangulation.
Five days after Cruz was found, her purse and a few other belongings were discovered in a trash can at a gas station off Route 22 in Harrisburg, Pa.
“A couple suspects were investigated,” Trainum said. “But back then there was nothing [police] could do to definitely tie them to the case. And the evidence is probably all gone.”
But his department isn’t giving up. Trainum said he was in the process of sorting through boxes of evidence buried in an old police warehouse that could be of some use for the city’s unsolved crimes.
Cruz lived at 1930 Columbia Road NW and worked as a clerk typist at the Washington Hospital Center. Family members described her as very shy and introverted and said she seldom dated, according to police reports. And Cruz didn’t know many people in D.C. because her family lived in Bolivia.
Anyone with information on the case is asked to call 202-359-9454 or send an e-mail to [email protected].
