Body in Surf Leads to Many Questions

Police believe that a body discovered in the Hermosa Beach surf more than a week ago is that of a Connecticut psychotherapist and business consultant who emptied her bank account and made funeral arrangements for herself before hopping a plane to California, authorities said Monday.

Three Lomita teenagers walking on the beach near 14th Street Saturday night found a black purse that authorities believe belonged to the woman. It contained more than $8,000 cash, a cashier’s check for $7,000 and credit cards and paperwork indicating that the bag belonged to a Jayme Rolls PhD, of New Canaan, Conn.

An airline ticket and receipt for a one-way ticket from John F. Kennedy Airport in New York to Los Angeles International Airport dated May 30 was also discovered in the purse, along with a horoscope for Aquarius, Rolls’ sign, which said: “In May you will arrive at a turning point and the debate you’ve recently been having with yourself finally will culminate with you knowing exactly what you need to do.”

The teenagers’ discovery has raised more questions than it answered, leaving police to investigate whether a 46-year-old woman who feared the ocean took her horoscope too seriously and traveled to the West Coast to end her life, accidentally drowned or if the dead woman is someone other than Rolls.

“This is a tentative identification, but we’re 99% sure that the woman is Jayme Rolls,” said Officer Paul Wolcott. “We’re trying to piece the last steps of her life together and figure out how she came to be in California when she told her family she was going to Florida.”

Police don’t know much about Rolls, but they say she’s one of the biggest mysteries Hermosa Beach has ever seen. Two surfers discovered the woman in the water May 31 near 24th Street and pulled her ashore. She was found barefoot in a purple sweatsuit with no identification.

On May 29, a surfer reported seeing a body on the southern portion of the beach and a three-hour search was conducted, but no body was found. Police believed the case of the missing body had been solved, but when Rolls’ purse showed up with a plane ticket indicating that she didn’t arrive in California until May 30, it raised more questions.

Wolcott said it is unlikely that there is another body, but when Rolls arrived in Los Angeles is unclear. If she was in fact on United Airlines Flight 15, which landed at 8:51 p.m., it means that she was in California for less than a day before she was discovered face-down in the ocean.

Upon finding the purse, Wolcott said, Rolls’ family was contacted. He said her father, whose name was not released, had indicated that he planned to report Rolls missing Monday because he had not heard from her in a while. He told police that his daughter had lived in the Los Angeles area at one time and that he had believed she was in Florida on business.

Rolls’ father went to her apartment, where he discovered a note that leads police to believe the dead woman is Rolls, Wolcott said. He added that the note was not written to anyone in particular and was too vague to be considered a suicide note.

Additionally, Rolls’ father told police that his son had informed him that Rolls, who had been married four times, had recently made funeral arrangements for herself, Wolcott said.

According to a December article in the Westchester County Business Journal, Rolls was the president of a consulting agency that specialized in organizational transformations and a faculty member at Manhattanville College in Purchase, N.Y. Rolls believed that the essentials of leadership were knowing oneself and that would provide “insight and strength in all phases of living.”

“Most professionals feel a strong need for human renewal,” Rolls once wrote. “Recent studies show that almost 70% of the work force feels stressed out by the demands of technology that moves faster than we can absorb. It is the job of leaders to help people deal with this battle-born wear and tear.”