LAGUNA BEACH : Man Gives Up, Says He Killed Woman

A 19-year-old Tennessee man was arrested in the Laguna Beach police station parking lot Friday after he drove up to a uniformed city employee and confessed to murdering an Arizona woman earlier this week, Laguna Beach Police Sgt. Ray Lardie said.

Bryan Allen Buckingham of Murfreesboro, Tenn., is being held in Laguna Beach Jail in connection with the Aug. 15 shooting death of a 44-year-old woman who ran the Valentine, Ariz., post office. The woman’s identity was not released.

The woman was fatally wounded with a pistol and the post office station was robbed and her yellow Ford station wagon stolen, Lardie said.

After eluding authorities for two days, Buckingham drove the stolen car into the parking lot and approached an employee of the city’s technical services department, saying he wanted to confess to a murder, Lardie said.

A police investigator overheard the remark and arrested Buckingham, Lardie added.

U.S. Postal Service authorities from Arizona and Los Angeles and investigators from Arizona’s Mohave County Sheriff’s Department were heading to Laguna Beach late Friday to question the man.

Valentine, Ariz., population 60, is a tiny Bureau of Indian Affairs town along Route 66 in northwestern Arizona, about 20 miles east of Kingman.

Its post office is located in another tiny town called Annadale, about three miles west of Valentine.

Canceled postmarks from the Valentine postal station are popular for Valentine’s Day correspondence.

Around that time, the post office receives 2,000 pieces of mail per day, as opposed to its typical flow of 100 letters a day.

Lardie said the murder victim was one of two women who handle the holiday postmark requests.