Girl Was Sexually Attacked Before Her Death, Coroner Says

Wendy Rachelle Osborn, the 14-year-old Placentia girl whose body was found in the Chino Hills, had been sexually assaulted and possibly tortured before she was strangled, San Bernardino County Coroner Brian McCormick said Tuesday.

An autopsy also showed that Wendy may have been alive eight to 10 days after she was last seen on Jan. 20 on her way to school, McCormick said, raising the possibility that the 5-foot-3, 93-pound girl had been held captive.

“She was probably alive most of the time,” he said.

12 ‘Pinching Wounds’

But McCormick said Wendy had been dead at least 48 hours when horseback riders discovered her partially decomposed but fully clothed body on Sunday along a rugged ridge line in the Carbon Canyon area.

An autopsy conducted Monday showed about 12 “pinching wounds” on the body apparently inflicted by a pair of pliers or clamps, and marks on her neck that indicated that she was strangled with a “ropelike material,” McCormick said at a press conference in San Bernardino.

Although McCormick refused to say whether the pinch marks meant that she had been tortured, San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department spokesman William Bryant said such marks probably indicate that “there was some kind of torture involved.”

Phoebe Ho Slaying

Investigators still have not ruled out a connection with the slaying of 7-year-old Phoebe Ho of South Pasadena, whose strangled body was discovered Dec. 19 in a field in the Glen Avon area of western Riverside County.

An arrest warrant has been issued in that case for James Warren Bland, 51, a parolee with a history of sex crimes who was last known to be living in the Alhambra area. Bland was questioned early in the Phoebe Ho investigation but was released and subsequently fled, police said.

“We would like to talk to him,” said San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Sgt. Michael Stodelle, who explained, however, that police do not officially consider Bland a suspect in the case. But Stodelle said that there are “some vague similarities” between the Phoebe Ho and Wendy Osborn cases.

Both cases involve girls who were apparently abducted on their way to school, strangled and sexually assaulted and their bodies dumped in remote areas, Stodelle said.

It was not known whether pinch marks also were found on Phoebe Ho’s body. Riverside Sheriff’s Department investigators could not be reached for comment.

However, in a written statement, Riverside County coroner’s investigator Mickey Worthington said that his office will release no further details about the Phoebe Ho case on the ground that it could interfere with the sheriff’s investigation.

Meanwhile, San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department investigators Tuesday set up a task force to attempt to determine Wendy Osborn’s whereabouts during the 12 days she was missing, Bryant said, adding that detectives are now interviewing known sex offenders, he said.

Wendy Osborn was last seen at 8:10 a.m. on Jan. 20 as she left home for Tuffree Junior High School, less than two miles away. She never arrived at the school, and her parents--Jack and Carolyn Osborn--reported her missing at 6:30 p.m.

Her body was found near the Western Hills Country Club on a hill overlooking a construction site of custom home view lots, west of Carbon Canyon Road and about two miles northeast of the Orange and San Bernardino county line. She was wearing the same clothes--a pink shirt with black markings, pink pants and high-top shoes--that she wore the morning she disappeared, Bryant said.

Positive identification was made Monday by fingerprints taken from Wendy as part of a Girl Scout project. San Bernardino County Sheriff Floyd Tidwell said some evidence was recovered from the area, but he declined to elaborate.

Funeral services will be conducted at 2 p.m. Saturday at Eastside Christian Church, 2505 E. Yorba Linda Blvd,, Fullerton.