Girl’s Purse, Bag Found in Trash on Day She Vanished

The red leather purse and pink book bag that Wendy Rachelle Osborn carried the morning she was last seen were discovered in an Anaheim trash can about two hours after she vanished Jan. 20, authorities said Wednesday.

But Placentia detectives investigating the 14-year-old girl’s disappearance said they did not learn about the discovery until almost a week later--and “four or five days” before her body was discovered Feb. 1 in the Chino Hills area of San Bernardino County.

Wendy’s belongings will now be pictured on a flyer to be distributed next week in Anaheim, according to one member of the law enforcement task force investigating the kidnaping and murder of the Placentia junior high school student.

Going Back to Area

Investigators said they will return Tuesday to the area where Wendy’s belongings were found--the same day of the week she disappeared while walking to school--as part of their widening search for her murderer.

Officers will circulate hundreds--if not thousands--of flyers to motorists and pedestrians alike in the area. Authorities declined to pinpoint the neighborhood.

“We will be seeking anyone who saw a person or persons dump this stuff into a trash can at this location,” said Sgt. Bill Arthur of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, which is part of the task force. He described the canvassing as “a mass flyer and interview” operation.

Area ‘Flooded’

Placentia detectives already have “flooded the neighborhood,” Placentia Police Capt. Walter Pichon said. “But that was before the body was found.”

A spokesman for the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, which is involved in the investigation because Wendy’s body was found by equestrians on a bridle path about two miles from the Orange County line, said they had received 77 phone calls as a result of another flyer widely distributed in Placentia on Tuesday. But none of the callers had been able to provide solid leads in the case, the spokesman said.

More than 2,000 flyers describing the thin, bespectacled teen-ager and two vehicles that law enforcement officials say may have been involved in her abduction were passed out Tuesday morning at an intersection that Wendy would have had to cross to get to Tuffree Junior High School.

However, spokesmen for both Placentia police and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said they remained hopeful that the flyers will jog someone’s memory about that Jan. 20 morning.

Warren James Bland, a 51-year-old convicted sex offender who had been painting houses since his parole, is the leading suspect in Wendy’s abduction and murder. Bland has been charged by Riverside County authorities with the murder of 7-year-old Phoebe Ho of South Pasadena, whose body was found in a ditch near the community of Glen Avon, a suburb of Riverside.

On Wednesday, San Bernardino County investigators searched a van that a Chino man may have loaned to Bland on or near the day that Wendy disappeared, but they discovered nothing to directly link the van to Wendy’s disappearance, officials said.

“Nothing jumps out at us and says, ‘This belongs to the Wendy Osborn case,’ ” Sheriff’s Department spokesman James Bryant said. “. . .We’re finding nothing in there to link Bland to the van at all.”

However, results of further studies of hair, fibers and other evidence gathered from the van are not expected to be complete for several weeks, Bryant added.

Placentia Police Capt. Pichon said Wednesday that little has turned up from an examination of Wendy Osborn’s book bag and purse. The purse was examined at the Orange County crime lab “to see if we could get any evidence from it. And we have absolutely zip from the purse,” Pichon said.

Pichon added that “the only thing it (discovery of the purse and book bag) did was make us very, very concerned that something in fact bad had happened to her. It only served to make us feel ominous.”

The belongings, Pichon said, were found the morning of Jan. 20 by “an indigent-type person” who turned them in at a liquor store. The store owner then gave the items to the Anaheim Police Department, where they remained in a property room for “about seven days,” Pichon said.

At the time the purse was booked into the property room, Pichon said, “we didn’t know she was a missing person.”

Nothing with Wendy Osborn’s address was found inside her purse; only her school identification card carried her name, Pichon said.

Stressing that he did not have exact dates, Pichon said Anaheim property clerks unknowingly telephoned Wendy’s junior high school the week after she disappeared--a routine procedure--to report that the girl’s bags had been found.

“The school said, ‘Oh, my God, she’s missing!’ This was before we discovered her body,” Pichon said.

Anaheim Police Lt. Bill Wright, reached late Wednesday, said he did not know details about how the girl’s belongings ended up in the property room, how her school was notified of the discovery or when Anaheim police might have received an advisory about her disappearance.