$50,000 Reward Reinstated in Camarillo Slaying Case

The executor of the estate of 73-year-old Margaret Reimann, who was slain in her Camarillo garage as she left for church in November, 1986, has reinstated a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the attacker.

Initially, the reward was posted in February, 1987, by Martin Bullock, executor of Reimann’s estate, after the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department failed to uncover any substantial suspects or motives. The offer expired six months later, after yielding a few leads but no suspects.

On Feb. 8, the reward offer was renewed. Bullock’s advertisements in local newspapers have brought numerous phone calls to the Sheriff’s Department, said Sgt. Roger Kerr.

“We have gotten responses, but nothing beneficial yet,” said Kerr, “nothing that we’re right on the trail of a suspect.”

At 6 a.m. on Nov. 2, 1986, Margaret Reimann ventured out to the garage of her 156-acre ranch. As she checked the tires on the passenger side of the car, she was attacked from behind. She was bludgeoned by an unknown weapon, then her throat was slit with a “knife of some kind,” Kerr said.

Reimann was a private, unmarried woman who rose early in mornings and worked hard, friends and family have said. She was a member of the Santa Rosa Valley Women’s Club, the Catholic Women’s Club of Oxnard and the Pleasant Valley Historical Society.

She willed most of her estate to her church, St. Mary Magdalen Church, and $100,000 each to her second cousins, sisters Margaret Patricia Wise of Camarillo and Trude Marie Hall of Arlington, Tex. A third sister, Barbara Kennerly of Oxnard, was left nothing because of past court skirmishes with Reimann, according to court documents.

“We have no motive at all,” Kerr said, “or perhaps several. We have no specific motive. I still look the whole case over to see if I’ve missed anything.”