Woman’s Body Is Discovered in Car Trunk

The body of a 59-year-old woman, missing since last Friday, was found in the trunk of her car in a residential area of San Clemente, police said Thursday.

One of Emily Mae Lombard’s two sons had reported her disappearance on Monday. At 10 p.m. Wednesday, several hours after police had checked the locked car and neighborhood, the sons asked police to open the trunk, investigators said.

San Clemente Police Lt. Al Ehlow said Lombard had been slain, but an autopsy Thursday failed to show how she died.

Investigators said there were no visible wounds or trauma to the body, which was clad in a nightgown and lying on a blanket in the trunk of her 1972 Ford Maverick.

Resided With Son

Lombard, a longtime divorcee, lived in Capistrano Beach with her 25-year-old son, James Matthew.

Monday was the first day residents remember seeing the Maverick parked in the 3800 block of Via Manzana. Ehlow said it was parked in front of a lot where a home is being built.

Lombard, who worked at Solag Disposal Co., in San Juan Capistrano, was last seen alive Friday night in Capistrano Beach at a family friend’s dinner party that her sons attended, Ehlow said.

Investigators interviewed both sons after Lombard’s body was found, Ehlow said. Matthew told them that the last time he saw his mother alive was about 9:30 p.m. Friday, when she left the party alone and presumably drove home. He told investigators that he did not return to their home at 26411 Via Sacramento until 8:30 a.m. Saturday. Neither his mother nor her car were there, he said.

Matthew “didn’t think much of it,” Ehlow said. He “didn’t get too concerned until she didn’t go to work on Monday, and that’s when he called the (Orange County Sheriff’s Department) and reported her missing.”

Investigators for the Sheriff’s Department, which patrols the unincorporated area, learned Lombard’s car had been found on Via Manzana, and at about 3 p.m. Wednesday asked officers in nearby San Clemente to check it, Ehlow said. Spokesmen for both agencies said they were not sure who initially found the missing woman’s car.

Ehlow said the San Clemente officer arrived 26 minutes later and studied the locked car, finding only boxes and an aluminum beach chair in the back seat. Neighbors told the officer they had not seen the woman nor anyone around the car.

Around 10 p.m., Lombard’s other son, Robert, also in his 20s, phoned San Clemente police and asked that an officer meet him, his roommate and his brother at his mother’s car, Ehlow said.

“(He) calls and says . . . ‘I want to meet an officer. I found my mother’s car and I want an officer to come up and open the trunk,’ ” Ehlow said.

Before the officer unlocked the trunk, Ehlow said, he asked the trio: “Are we looking for anything in particular?”

“They said no, they just wanted to check everything out because their mother was missing,” Ehlow said. Robert also said his father wanted him to look in the trunk.”

Investigators want to interview Lombard’s former husband but had not found him by Thursday afternoon, Ehlow said. He said the couple had been divorced for some time.