Names Sought of 2 Boys Found Slain on Trail : Crime: Youths, 14 to 16 years old, are believed to be Latino. Both wore black swim trunks and had been shot in the head.

The two teen-age boys were found sprawled in the brushy, willow-shaded fringes of the Backbone Trail in the Santa Monica Mountains. Both were shirtless, both wore black swim trunks and both bore the marks of their deaths--bullet wounds to the head.

On Saturday, a day after their bodies were found, Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives said they still have no clues to the boys’ identities, only that they were 14 to 16 years old.

Hikers found the boys about 9 a.m. Friday in a creek bed at Malibu Creek State Park near Piuma and Malibu Canyon roads, sheriff’s deputies said.

Each had been shot once in the head with what investigators believe was a small-caliber handgun. One was also shot in the back.

“Without somebody telling us who they are, we have no way of knowing,” said Sgt. Ron Spear of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. “Without knowing who they are we can’t find out who their enemies were.”

One of the teen-agers wore a gold chain with a religious medallion and half of a heart. The other wore a silver, scorpion-shaped ring and silver-toned wristwatch, he said.

Both boys appeared to be Latino, coroner’s Investigator Tom Schwabe said.

Spear said the teen-agers had been dead 12 to 24 hours when their bodies were found. They may have been dragged 10 feet from the nearby hiking trail, Spear said. Anyone with information is asked to call the Sheriff’s Department at (213) 890-5500.

Coroner’s officials removed the bodies from the southeastern reaches of the 8,000-acre state park.

“There’s several puddles, depending on the amount of water that runs through the creek--which isn’t much right now--that could be considered swimming holes,” said Terry Brann, supervising ranger. “On a real busy day, you might see 15, 20 people there.”

Visitors to the area, often Latino families, come to swim and picnic, Brann said. Rangers do not patrol the area often, working instead in the busier areas of the park, he said.

Gang members sometimes cause problems in nearby Tapia Park, just across Malibu Canyon Road from the murder scene, but there have been no incidents around the swimming site, Brann said.

Mary Vadnais of West Hills said she and two friends were riding horses about 11 a.m. Friday on a branch of the Backbone when she saw police cordoning off the scene.

“Everybody says, ‘I can’t believe it happened here,’ ” Vadnais said. “But I think it happens everywhere. It’s just you don’t hear about it unless it’s O.J. Simpson.”

Karen Moir, who lives on nearby Crater Camp Drive, said: “You live out here with no stoplights and no sewers and no sidewalks. . . . It’s just a real shocker. It’s not the kind of neighborhood where you find murders.”

Teen-agers often stay at two nearby camps, but no one has been reported missing since the bodies were found, said officials at Camp Mount Crags and Camp David Gonzales.

Camp Mount Crags, run by the Salvation Army, is holding an annual family camp-out this weekend for visitors ranging “from tiny babies to senior citizens,” an official there said.

Officials at Camp David Gonzales, a Los Angeles County probation camp that houses about 130 juvenile offenders behind 14-foot walls, count heads eight times a day and has not had an escape in nearly a year, said Kenneth Brouard, supervising deputy probation officer.