The State - News from Aug. 6, 1987

Robbery may have been the motive in the killing of University of Texas graduate geology student Harlan T. Sutherland, 24, whose body was found last weekend with a bullet in his head at the bottom of a 100-foot cliff in Westport Union Landing Beach State Park, about 150 miles north of San Francisco, authorities said. Robbery was indicated when Mendocino County sheriff’s deputies discovered that his wallet and camera were missing from his car. Sheriff Tim Shea said his investigators want to question anyone who was camping in the park while Sutherland was there. Sutherland, who had attended the University of California, Berkeley, as an undergraduate, was collecting coastal rock samples as part of his research for a master’s thesis.