Body of Missing Girl, 7, Found in Riverside County

The body of a 7-year-old South Pasadena girl who was abducted while walking to school nine days ago was found in a ditch in a weed-covered field in Riverside County, and authorities said Friday that she had been strangled.

Sheriff’s investigators said Phoebe Hue-Ru Ho had been dead for no more than a day when her fully clothed body was found by a passer-by Thursday afternoon just 10 feet off a rural road cutting through rocky outcroppings, horse ranches and stucco homes near California 60 in Glen Avon in the northwest corner of the county.

“She looked like a child sleeping on her side,” said an employee of a nearby boarding home, who ran with other workers to the field shortly after the body was discovered.

“When we got down there a couple of us noticed she was the girl they talked about on television,” said the employee, who asked that his name not be used. “She had on white pants and a pink or red coat.”

The disappearance of the girl, a second-grader at Arroyo Vista School who was last seen two blocks from the school, had prompted a massive search that included distribution of flyers with her picture and the offer of a $20,000 reward.

Riverside Sheriff’s Sgt. Robert Dotts said it appeared Phoebe was killed elsewhere.

While investigators pursued myriad but inconclusive leads, Phoebe’s schoolmates celebrated subdued Christmas parties on the last day of classes before the holidays. Yellow ribbons still flew at the home of her parents, Sharon and Kenneth Ho, who immigrated from Taiwan in 1983 and make their living selling shoes at swap meets.

Phoebe had earlier been described by her teacher, Virginia Harrington, as “very sweet, very quiet, and naive.” Kenneth Ho had called her gregarious and “always smiling.”

She died of asphyxia due to strangulation, Riverside County coroner’s investigator Mickey Worthington said late Friday afternoon. More lab work will be done to pinpoint the time of death, he added.

It has not yet been determined whether the girl was sexually molested, said Scotty D. Hill, Riverside County deputy coroner.

Disposal Grounds for Victims

Hill noted that discovery of Phoebe’s body fit a pattern of Riverside and San Bernardino counties serving as disposal grounds for murder victims from more populated urban areas. “It seems like Highway 60 and Interstate 10 are the two highways they dump bodies off at,” Hill said.

Dotts said the body was found by a man walking alongside the road collecting cans. He would not identify the man.

George Brown, a South Pasadena resident who heads the “Find Phoebe Center” that earlier announced the community and family funded reward, said the money will now be offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the girl’s killer.

Investigators are looking for a possible connection between the Ho case and one involving a 7-year-old Riverside County girl who was last seen playing in a private campground on Dec. 13, two days after Phoebe disappeared.

April Ann Cooper was reported missing by her mother, Debbie Hamilton, 34, who shares a small trailer with the girl at Woodchuck Camping Resort in southeast Riverside County, officials said.

The Cooper girl--4-feet, 6-inches tall with blonde hair, blue eyes and missing her upper front teeth--was wearing a white sweater and lavender dress over white leotards when she disappeared.

“Detectives at our Elsinore station are conferring with us to see if there is anything to link them together,” Dotts said.

Received Many Tips

A witness reported seeing a “stocky, bald white man” adjusting something under a sheet on the roof carrier of a silver Mazda station wagon parked early Thursday afternoon on the opposite side of Granite Hill Drive from where Phoebe’s body was later found.

But Dotts said that report was only one of many tips received by investigators Friday. Authorities received reports throughout the day of suspicious cars on the highway and individuals walking in the area, and all those leads will be followed, he said.

The strongest clues, however, are likely to come from tiny bits of evidence such as hair or fibers found on the body or clothing, Dotts said. “It looks like this case will probably be made on trace evidence rather than witnesses because the girl had been missing for a week,” he said.

Such trace evidence, which is being analyzed at the state Department of Justice crime laboratory in Riverside, might lead to a location where Phoebe was held or murdered, or to a suspect, Dotts said.

At Phoebe’s home, her parents, 14-year-old sister, 12-year-old brother and other relatives received friends but declined to speak with reporters.

Phoebe’s grandmother, Polly Ho, her face weary with sorrow, appeared briefly at the door to see off friends, who cried as they walked away.

“Their basic statement is they want to be left alone now,” said Don Nelson, a neighbor who, with his wife, Bonnie, was stationed in the family’s front yard most of the day to act as a spokesman. “They’re very appreciative of the newspapers and the people in town and the police and all the efforts they’ve made.”

Phoebe’s mother “was visibly shaken to her toes,” Bonnie Nelson said. “She was just devastated. Chief (William L.) Reese from the (South Pasadena) Police Department was there consoling the family. The superintendent of schools came with flowers and food baskets. An outpouring of caring people stopped and asked us when the services would be.”

Funeral Services Set

Felix Liu, pastor of the Evangelical Formosan Church of Los Angeles in Highland Park, where Phoebe attended Sunday school, said that funeral services will be held at 10 a.m. Dec. 27 in the Memorial Chapel of Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier.

Msgr. Clement J. Connolly, of Holy Family Church in South Pasadena, which held a candlelight vigil prayer service Monday evening, was among those who visited the Ho family to offer comfort. Los Angeles Archbishop Roger M. Mahony also offered his condolences in a letter to Phoebe’s parents.

“From the moment of Phoebe’s disappearance, each one of us has been identified with her and with you,” Mahony wrote. “Phoebe became for all Southern Californians our sister, our daughter, our friend. . . . In the joy, gentleness and innocence of her brief years, her life stands in stark contrast to all that is dark and wrong with our human society.”

At Arroyo Vista School, unusually large numbers of parents walked or drove their children to school in the morning and picked them up in the afternoon.

Principal Helen Cease said she spoke in every classroom Friday morning, telling the children that “although we were all hoping and praying that Phoebe would be returned to us safely, unfortunately this is not the case.”

Most Already Knew

Most of the children knew of the death before they arrived, Cease said.

“We decided it would be best for the kids emotionally to carry on with our planned activities,” Cease said. School psychologists were on hand throughout the day to help children who were upset by her abduction and death, she added.

Several parents waiting to pick up students Friday afternoon said their children were frightened.

Pauline Schneider said that when she spoke Friday morning of Phoebe’s death to her three children, who all attend the school, they were shocked and disbelieving.

“The little boy, the 6-year-old,” she said, “kept saying ‘Why? Why?’ ”

David Holley reported from South Pasadena and Louis Sahagun from Riverside County.