Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Body Identified as Murder Victim

The body of a Palmdale woman found last week by a freight train engineer was identified as murder victim by investigators who said the woman was stabbed numerous times and that her throat was slashed “ear to ear,” authorities said Wednesday.

Mary Patricia Tavra, 23, was dropped off by friends at a Texaco gas station at the intersection of 5th Street East and Palmdale Boulevard about 11:15 p.m. on May 6, said Deputy Angie McLaughlin, a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman.

Her badly decomposed body was discovered 12 days later by a Southern Pacific train engineer who saw a body underneath a clump of bushes next to the tracks, authorities said. A coroner’s spokesman said the body was identified through fingerprint records.

After the engineer spotted the body, he notified a ground crew to check the tracks near the intersection of Avenue R-8 and 10th Street East, authorities said.

Richard Victoria, the victim’s live-in boyfriend, said Tavra never returned to the house after the night of May 6, McLaughlin said. McLaughlin said Tavra, who had a criminal record for prostitution, drug use and theft, had used a dozen aliases in the past.