Posting these articles for Miss Sandy Betts

Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, CA)
July 1, 1996
Section: news
Edition: Final
Page: A04

SLAYER NOT FOUND 16 YEARS AFTER BABY SITTER SLAIN
LISA HAYDEN

ANTIOCH Ted Bombardier thinks his daughter must have known her killer.

Why else would the pretty 14-year-old girl, baby-sitting two nieces alone in a Hudson Court apartment 16 years ago, have let someone in?
"Obviously, there was no forced entry. She must have known who it was," Ted Bombardier said.

The body of Suzanne Bombardier, a popular Antioch Junior High School student, was found in the San Joaquin River on June 27, 1980 16 years ago last week. Her family and Antioch police had searched in vain for the blonde, blue-eyed girl for five days.

Police interviewed dozens of people, gave polygraph tests to some and even worked with psychics hired by the family and FBI to glean leads in the case.

Nothing they turned up ever led to an arrest. The Bombardier case, which remains unsolved, is one of the most puzzling murders in the city’s history.

"For Antioch, it was one of the first big whodunits’ I can recall," said Antioch Police Lt. Bob Low, who was a detective in 1980 when he worked on the Bombardier case. "It is a mystery what happened to her. She just disappeared. There was no struggle, no noise.. … Why would she leave?"

At the time, the girl’s family said she was responsible and not likely to wander off from the apartment.

She was last seen alive in a red-and-white striped nightgown on the Saturday night she was baby-sitting. A friend talked with her on the telephone at about 1:30 a.m. and noticed nothing unusual. That was the last time she was heard from.

When her sister, Stephanie Mullen, returned home at 4 a.m., there was no sign of Suzanne.

Her nude body was pulled from the river the following Friday with several rings on her fingers. There was no sign of a gold chain with a heart-shaped pendant she had worn, or of her nightgown.

A coroner’s report determined that the girl died from a single stab wound through the heart.

Antioch police, who got a big break in another languishing child murder case this year thanks to new DNA tests, may someday use evidence collected years ago to arrest Suzanne’s killer.

In April, Larry Christopher Graham of Concord was arrested for the 1983 slaying of 5-year-old Angela Bugay. Tests matched his DNA to semen found in the girl’s body, police say.

Low said police still possess evidence from the Bombardier case. He would not describe the evidence; a coroner’s report states that police retained hair samples from the girl’s body.

Her body had been floating in the river for several days, Low said, making it more difficult to rely on physical evidence.

He said there have been no new leads for about two years, and no breaks in the case are imminent. However, he didn’t close the door.

"The possibility always exists that DNA evidence may play a part in solving this case," Low said. "Right now, it’s still an open case. We’re ever hopeful something will turn up."

Suzanne’s mother, Catherine Rutland, could not be reached for comment. But Mullen, Suzanne’s sister, said the anniversary of Suzanne’s death is always painful.

She remembers that hours after the family learned the body pulled from the river had been identified as Suzanne, the mailman delivered the girl’s report card. She had gotten straight A’s.

Mullen said she doesn’t want to blame police but that the family thinks some leads were not pursued aggressively enough.

Mullen said she tipped police to an acquaintance who drove a blue van after a toll collector at the Antioch bridge said a blue van had passed through at 2:30 a.m. on the night of the killing, and that there were banging sounds coming from the van.

Low said police followed every lead they had, but there was never sufficient evidence to make an arrest.

Bombardier, 57, who is spending the summer in Sonora with a brother, was divorced from Suzanne’s mother and living in Hope, Ark., at the time of her disappearance.