Car Taken From Woman Slain in Malibu Found Wrecked in New Mexico

The car that belonged to a woman stabbed to death at Malibu’s Zuma Beach last week was found wrecked on a lightly traveled road in New Mexico Tuesday, and authorities were searching for three men seen hitchhiking nearby.

The three are presumed to be the same trio that witnesses reported seeing May 28 running from a restroom at the Malibu beach, where Jacqueline Kirkham, 43, was stabbed in the chest, Maj. Frank Taylor of the New Mexico State Police said.

Witnesses in Malibu described the three as about 15 to 18 years old and said they drove off in Kirkham’s 1990 Nissan 240 SX.

Taylor said Kirkham’s car was found abandoned along a state road in a heavily forested area about 20 miles north of Santa Fe.

“The car had apparently rolled over, and we found blood inside,” Taylor said.

“When we came out to look at the car, other people in the area reported seeing the hitchhikers, who were headed north,” he said. The car also had been headed north, he said.

Taylor said local radio stations and newspapers have been informed that the three are considered “extremely dangerous and probably armed with a knife and everyone should steer clear of them.”

He said a helicopter, a small airplane and patrol cars were searching for the three suspects.

Los Angeles Sheriff’s Deputy Ike Aguilar said other deputies were en route Tuesday to New Mexico to check the car for fingerprints and blood types.

He said four Los Angeles-area men who escaped from a California Youth Authority facility in Camarillo, about 25 miles north of Zuma Beach, two days before the stabbing remain prime suspects, “although we have nothing to directly link them to the crime.”

The four, three of whom are convicted killers, have been identified by CYA authorities as Jose Dubon, 20; Osvaldo Pineda, 19; Carlos Ramirez, 21, and Ismail Solis, 20.

A CYA spokeswoman confirmed Tuesday that the four remain at large.

Kirkham, a divorced mother of two, went to Zuma Beach nearly every Tuesday, her day off from selling women’s shoes at the Robinson’s department store in Northridge, her fiance, Steve Williams, said.