California IN BRIEF : EL CENTRO : Marine Booked in His Wife’s Murder

A 27-year-old Marine drill instructor has been booked into the Imperial County Jail on suspicion of murder after allegedly digging a hole off an isolated desert road to bury his wife’s body, officials said. Michael Kenneth La Faver, 27, is being held in lieu of $250,000 bail, a jail spokeswoman said. Shortly before 9 p.m. Thursday, two U.S. Border Patrol officers spotted a car parked near Dunaway Road on the south side of Interstate 8, said Chief Deputy Michael Hackett of the Imperial County Sheriff’s Department. The officers approached the car because the area is popular spot to smuggle people over from Mexico, Hackett said. They saw La Faver, who Hackett said told the officers he was working out. “The officers got suspicious because people don’t work out in the middle of the desert in 100-degree heat,” Hackett said Saturday. Inside the car, officers found the body of a woman who apparently had been strangled. She was identified as La Faver’s wife, Rebecca Joy La Faver, 27, of El Cajon, from whom he had been separated for a few weeks. The couple have two sons, both under 4.