Murder Case Is Even More Baffling Without a Body

This is the kind of case homicide detectives dread. There are no witnesses. There is no crime scene. There is no way to determine the cause of death. There isn’t even a body.

There are just two arms that washed up on the beach, one on the wet sand in Venice, and the other 3 1/2 hours later near a boat slip in Marina del Rey.

This is a problem case, and has been from the beginning, because the arms surfaced in different law enforcement jurisdictions. The Los Angeles Police Department began investigating the killing Dec. 7 after one arm was discovered in Venice, and the Sheriff’s Department began its own investigation when the other arm was found in its territory.

After it was discovered that both agencies were working the same homicide, the LAPD’s Major Crimes Investigation Section took over the case. Major Crimes is a unit that investigates the arcane, complex cases that overworked detectives in division stations often do not have time to pursue.

But even for an elite unit such as Major Crimes, the case is particularly frustrating. In most murder cases, investigators comb through a crime scene and sometimes glean fingerprints, clothing fibers, strands of hair and other clues that can lead them to the killer. In most murder cases, investigators can learn the time of death--often by studying liver temperatures--and other details of a murder.

In this case, not only is the body missing, but detectives do not know how the arms ended up in the ocean. They could have washed down the Ballona Creek storm drainage channel after heavy rains and drifted north with the current. Or they could have been dropped at sea.

“This is such a tough case because there’s so much we don’t know,” said Lt. John Zorn, who is heading the

investigation. “We need a break . . . like that one golden phone call from someone who knows.”

*

Although detectives are hampered in their search for the killer, at least they have been able to identify the victim. Because the arms had only been in the water about a day, they were able to discern fingerprints. And because the victim, Cheryle Gossett, 48, had once been arrested for an outstanding traffic warrant, she had fingerprints on file.

Gossett, who was unemployed and lived with a son in Southwest Los Angeles, left the house at 10 a.m. Nov. 28. She planned to run a few errands and then spend the day caring for her elderly mother. She drove off in her burgundy 1973 Toyota Celica, and her family never saw her again.

“Detectives want to solve every case, but I’d say there’s even more of a motivation with this one. Maybe it’s just . . . “ Zorn pauses mid-sentence, searching for the right words and says softly, “ . . . just seeing someone left without dignity.”

Whenever a woman is found mutilated in Los Angeles, detectives say it evokes the city’s most notorious murder investigation--the case of the Black Dahlia. In 1947, the nude corpse of Elizabeth Short, a 22-year-old aspiring actress, was found sliced in half at the waist in a weed-choked lot off Crenshaw Boulevard. Her organs had been removed and her body drained of blood. Short was named the Black Dahlia because of her tight-fitting black dresses and her dyed-black hair, which she wore in a swirling bouffant.

The killing produced more than 500 confessions over the years, all of which were discounted, and detectives accumulated more than 6,000 pages of reports. The case remains unsolved.

*

Zorn hopes that his investigation is more successful. And he hopes that the case does not end up like the last LAPD investigation involving dismemberment. Two legs were found beside the San Diego Freeway four years ago by a Caltrans cleanup crew, and detectives never were able to identify the body. They could only determine that the victim was a woman from the flecks of polish that remained on a toe.

Coroner’s pathologists are as frustrated by the Gossett case as the detectives. Their job is to determine “the cause, the manner and the mode of death,” and when they have a corpse they can do this 99% of the time, said Scott Carrier, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County coroner’s office. Without a body they can determine very little.

Detectives recently placed a “want” on Gossett’s car in a statewide computerized system and sent out a national law enforcement Teletype describing the crime. They are interviewing friends and family members, studying the detailed patterns of Gossett’s life and trying to determine who might have had a motive to kill her.

In coming weeks, detectives will widen their search for Gossett’s car. They will study tidal charts and try to find out how the arms ended up in the ocean. And they will continue to hope for that one golden phone call that could lead them to the killer.