Spurned Suitor Leaves Bomb on Woman’s Car

A pipe bomb apparently placed by a spurned admirer ignited on the car of a 31-year-old secretary outside her Seal Beach apartment Friday.

The bomb, placed in a cardboard box on the hood of Sharon Lee Elliston’s car in the 300 block of 7th Street, ignited when Orange County bomb squad investigators tried to move it. No one was injured. A note attached to the box read: “To the bitch in the blue Honda.”

Friends of Elliston said Friday that a man had spotted Elliston last week when she attended a retirement dinner for a colleague at the Red Onion restaurant in Lakewood. The next morning, a note on her windshield read, “To the pretty girl in the blue Honda.”

Throughout the week, the friends said, the man left more notes on her car, asking her to meet for drinks and dancing. When she didn’t, the notes grew increasingly hostile.

On Friday, Lt. Kenneth Mollohan said, Elliston called police at 6:20 a.m. when she found the box on her car. Police using an X-ray device could see what looked like a pipe bomb inside, Mollohan said.

Police evacuated some nearby residents and cordoned off the neighborhood. They also called in the Orange County Sheriff Department’s bomb squad.

With firefighters standing by, two bomb squad investigators wearing protective clothing tried to move the 1 1/2-square-foot box by using ropes from 10 feet away, said bomb squad Sgt. Charles Stumph. The bomb ignited as soon as they moved it, creating a fireball atop the hood that firefighters quickly extinguished. Damage to the 1981 Honda was minimal, police said.

Stumph said the box was fixed to detonate as soon as someone tried to move it.

“It (the bomb) was definitely enough to kill somebody,” Stumph said.

Police have no suspects and Elliston could give no description of her assailant. From his notes, police know only that he writes very neatly with a green felt pen and signs his name Ron.

Linda Penrod, a legal secretary in a nearby office who copied the notes left for Elliston and gave them to police, said the first one read: “From the first time I saw you, I knew you’d be the kind of girl I’d like to meet. . . . Do you like to dance? I like to dance.”

The writer said he had just moved to the area and asked Elliston to meet him the next night at the Red Onion, Penrod said.

Penrod said a later note read: “To the California airhead. You’re like all the rest.”

The final note was the most ominous. It ended, “Someday you’ll know what it’s like.”

Penrod said Elliston thought someone was following her a few nights ago, but it was too dark to see his face.

“She pulled up and saw him in her rear-view mirror,” Penrod said.

Elliston, who was whisked away by police, could not be reached for comment. A friend and neighbor who declined to give her name said Elliston was badly shaken.

“She has no idea” who planted the bomb, the friend said. “She’s just a victim. She’s a real nice girl too.”

At her job at an aerospace company, co-workers were aware that Elliston had been getting notes but were shocked to hear that they had culminated in a bomb attack. In fact, Elliston didn’t tell her boss what happened when she called in Friday morning.

“She just said she wouldn’t be in,” said her boss, Jack Radak. “She said she had a problem.”