Woman Was Sexually Assaulted

A 44-year-old Port Hueneme woman who firefighters found strangled in the bathtub of her burning condominium had also been sexually assaulted, authorities said Friday.

Cindy Burger was the second woman choked to death in the small seaside city within the past three months and the fourth homicide victim this year, authorities said.

Burger’s body was found early Thursday as firefighters battled a two-alarm blaze that gutted much of her two-story condominium.

Chief Medical Examiner Ronald O’Halloran determined that Burger was sexually assaulted based on examinations performed Friday, Senior Deputy Coroner Craig Stevens said.

Port Hueneme Sgt. Fernando Estrella said detectives have little other information in the case because the fire, and firefighters’ efforts to stop it from spreading to neighboring condominiums, virtually destroyed all evidence at the crime scene.

“It looked like a bomb had hit this house,” Estrella said.

Detectives said they have no reason to believe Burger’s death is related to another death-by-strangulation earlier this summer. But they have not ruled out that possibility.

On June 1, the body of Norma Rodriguez, a 32-year-old mother of two, was found strangled on the floor of her living room in the 100 block of East B Street.

Port Hueneme detectives spent most of Thursday night and early Friday sifting through the ashes of Burger’s charred condominium in the 2500 block of Outlook Cove. The fire is now being investigated as an arson.

On Thursday, Ventura County fire investigators said the blaze appeared to have started at the foot of Burger’s bed on the second floor. Her body was found in a first-floor bathroom and there were no signs she had been burned, Estrella said.

A neighbor, William Smith, 34, said he thought the death suspicious because if she had run to the bathroom from the bedroom she would have passed her front door. “I feel this was an inside job,” he said. “The person that did this, I think she knew him or her.”

Eddie Estrada, 15, who lives next door to Burger, said he heard someone get out of a car in the alley behind Burger’s unit between 3:30 and 4 a.m. the night of the fire. Then, Estrada said, he heard voices talking and a woman scream several times.

About two hours later, Estrada woke up when smoke began drifting into his open window and neighbors were trying to break into Burger’s condominium to save her.

Police and neighbors described Burger as a quiet woman who kept to herself. Smith said she always dressed professionally and decorated her apartment with Victorian furniture. She worked as a manager at Gold Coast Acura in Ventura, owned by her father. She was not married and had no children, friends and neighbors said. Two cats belonging to Burger were saved by firefighters.

In addition to the two deaths by strangulation, Port Hueneme police remain baffled by the slaying of an 87-year-old deaf woman who was stabbed to death June 27 in a high-rise apartment complex for senior citizens.

Estrella said the tiny Police Department is overwhelmed by simultaneous investigations of three unsolved homicides.

“I’ve been here 23 years and I can’t recall three homicides right in a row that are so puzzling,” he said.