Family Gets Murder Clue in the Mail : Crime: Police are hoping that the person who mailed Rachel Lopez’s ID might have information about her killer and will step forward.

For nearly a year, Maria Lopez of Highland Park has been praying for clues that would explain her 34-year-old daughter’s mysterious disappearance and death.

The latest one arrived in the mail two weeks ago.

Someone--a good Samaritan or maybe someone connected to the killing--anonymously sent a California identification card belonging to the victim, Rachel Lopez.

The single mother of a 13-year-old boy was last seen leaving her Highland Park apartment Oct. 13. Her mutilated torso was found by hikers four days later near Highway 330 in the San Bernardino National Forest, and other body parts were recovered in the area in the following weeks.

The investigation has been at a standstill for lack of new leads.

But detectives think the person who mailed Rachel Lopez’s ID might be able to help solve the case. Family members and sheriff’s officials are making public appeals asking that person to come forward.

Anyone with information should call Detective Frank Gonzales or Sgt. Pete Ortiz at (909) 387-3589.

“We just want the help, some information,” said Maria Lopez, 65. “I only wish somebody would have put something (more in the envelope) or wrote something.”

“We don’t need no flakes,” said the victim’s 29-year-old sister, Carol Martin. “We just need somebody who knows the truth, somebody who knows what happened that night.”

Gonzales said no fingerprints were found on the card or the envelope. It was addressed to Rachel Lopez’s apartment in the 200 block of North Avenue 56.

Because the letter carrier knows the Lopez family, he delivered it instead to the victim’s mother, who lives a few blocks away, Gonzales said. Maria Lopez contacted detectives and gave them the unopened envelope.

The letter has a 29-cent “Love” stamp on it, postmarked in the City of Industry.

Gonzales said the sender most likely is someone with a good heart who wanted to return Rachel Lopez’s property. But he hasn’t ruled out the possibility that the person could be connected to the case.

“There’s a real remote possibility that someone associated with her disappearance mailed it back,” he said. “Our main objective is . . . to talk to this person about the identification card, where it was found. It could lead to other property belonging to Ms. Lopez.”

Meanwhile, Lopez’s family members and friends remain optimistic that those responsible for the slaying will be caught.

On the night of her disappearance, Lopez told her son, Anthony, that a friend was driving her to an unspecified market to buy dinner, family members said. Lopez, a sales clerk and part-time beautician, left with her purse and was dressed in a white tank top and blue jeans with sandals. She didn’t say who the friend was.

Family members reported her missing to the Los Angeles Police Department’s Northeast Division on Oct. 16 after they spoke with Anthony.

“He didn’t tell anybody his mother was missing because he was afraid the police would take him away to a foster home,” said the boy’s aunt, Carol Martin. The boy now lives with Maria Lopez.

“That’s very unlike Rachel. She never left her son,” Martin said. “She used to go out, I’m not denying that. . . . But she knew where her son was when she wasn’t home.”

“She didn’t have any enemies,” added Maria Lopez.

During the next five months, family members and friends distributed more than 800 flyers about Rachel Lopez’s disappearance throughout the San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys--unaware that San Bernardino County deputies had found a female torso with the name “Lynette” tattooed across the pelvis.

Family members heard about the discovery in March after a television news report was broadcast about the baffling case. They eventually met with detectives and identified the victim as Rachel Lopez. The tattoo is the name of her best friend, Lynette Lucero.

Lucero said the only friends she and Lopez had in San Bernardino County are Rialto residents who have no information about the killing.

“She was always a happy person,” Lucero recalled. “She always had a smile on her face.”