Slaying Shows Lancaster Isn’t Immune to Urban Ills

It’s the kind of murder case that makes people in Lancaster realize they don’t live in a country town anymore: a 14-year-old girl from a devoutly religious family is found strangled to death beside a desert road, hours after running away from home in a relative’s car.

And while Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigators have made the slaying of Angela Migliore a top priority, they say they have developed few leads since a motorist found the girl’s body Oct. 11. The Lancaster City Council planned to offer a $5,000 reward at its meeting Monday night in hopes that someone will come forward with new information.

“It’s a real high priority case,” said Sgt. Jacqueline Franco, a sheriff’s homicide investigator. Franco has spent weeks talking to people who knew Angela and canvassing the neighborhood where the teen-ager apparently abandoned the car after slipping out of the house late at night.

“She was 14 years old,” Franco said. “We don’t want this to happen to anyone else up here.”

Officials hope the reward will generate the same kind of attention that followed the area’s first gang-related slaying earlier this year, when a high school soccer star died in a shooting outside a party.

The Migliore case is more mysterious. Neighbors and investigators describe the Migliore family, who were not available for comment, as religious and strict. The Migliores moved to the western Lancaster neighborhood about three years ago from Edwards Air Force base after Angela’s father, Daniel Migliore, retired from the Air Force, neighbors said.

Angela attended services three or four time a week at Lancaster Baptist Church and was an eighth-grade student at the church school, neighbors said. But she had also run away from home several times during the past year because of family conflicts, according to neighbors and deputies.

“She didn’t look rebellious, but the police had been over here a couple of times when she ran away before,” said a neighbor who asked not to be identified.

The neighbor said he was told by Angela’s father that on one such occasion the teen-ager was found at the residence of a male friend. He said the father had described the friend as “rough around the edges.”

Angela was last seen by her parents on the night of Oct. 10, when she went to bed about 10 p.m., Franco said. She left the house and drove off in her brother-in-law’s car, which was parked in front of the house, deputies said.

A teen-age neighbor, who asked not to be identified, said Angela was angry because of an argument with her 17-year-old brother. The neighbor said she had run away before because of similar arguments. Investigators would not comment on that account.

Angela had planned to meet a female friend in Lancaster and drive to a site outside Los Angeles County, which Franco would not disclose. But the two never met. The car was found in a residential neighborhood near downtown Lancaster the next morning.

Investigators believe Angela, who did not have a license, abandoned the car because of engine trouble or because she had difficulty driving.

The girl’s parents discovered that she was missing the next morning and called deputies. The body was found at about 2:30 p.m.

There was no evidence in the car of foul play, Franco said. Investigators believe the killer dumped Angela’s body behind a tumbleweed near 70th Street East and Avenue N, east of Lancaster, after strangling her elsewhere.

Sheriff’s deputies said initially that the girl’s clothing was disheveled and that she appeared to have been sexually assaulted, but Franco would not comment on those reports.

Franco said deputies have not ruled out either the possibility that the killer was someone Angela knew or that the attack was committed by a stranger who saw the girl on the street at night.