3 Killings at Beach a Puzzle to Authorities

SANTA CRUZ — Investigators were puzzling Thursday over why two women and a man from Colorado ended up dead from shotgun blasts on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

A Sheriff’s Department spokesman said investigators believe David Bachman, 26, killed Melinda Leippe, 19, and Brenda White, 19, then himself. The women were shot in the back of the head, said spokesman Kim Allyn, who termed it a “double homicide-suicide.”

There was no suicide note found on the bluff overlooking Bonny Doon Beach, about seven miles north of Santa Cruz, where passersby found the bodies in a circle just before sunset Tuesday.

Investigators were not sure how long the three had been in California and had not concluded whether they shared a suicide pact. There were no signs of struggle. Records show the three lived together in a Littleton, Colo., apartment. Neither Leippe nor White attended Columbine High, the Littleton school where in 1999 two teenagers shot and killed 12 students and a teacher, school district officials said. White also has lived in South Lake Tahoe, Calif.

Donielle Dutton lived in an apartment next to Bachman and Leippe during the summer of 2000. Dutton called the two “nice and quiet” and said Bachman “was into ‘Dungeons and Dragons’” and other fantasy games, the San Jose Mercury News reported.

Coroners were to perform autopsies on the two women Thursday.

The public has free access to the horseshoe-shaped, privately owned beach, which is known for nude sunbathing and rave parties. Authorities are called there periodically on reports of drug use, sexual assaults and violence.

“In the past we’ve had homicides there, but not very many,” Allyn said. Most incidents are “parties and just some real dangerous drifters.”

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