Search Begins for Slain Woman’s Relatives, Will

As a judge Friday set a July 23 arraignment date for 15-year-old Samuel Moses Nelson, who is accused of bludgeoning his 72-year-old neighbor Jane Hoyt Thompson to death, a different branch of Orange County government began seeking another form of justice for the Laguna Niguel woman.

Thompson -- who worked in the entertainment industry, including Broadway theater, Hollywood movies and television, and as an interior designer -- died with no known relatives, authorities say.

The Orange County Public Administrator/Public Guardian’s office will search for relatives or a will.

If neither is found, the county will make burial arrangements, which do not include funeral services, and Thompson’s assets will go to the county. Such cases are rare, said Linda Martinez, a probate attorney who works for the Orange County Superior Court.

Thompson “probably doesn’t have any immediate relatives,” Martinez said, “but unless everyone [in her family] was a single child and no one had [any children], there’s probably somebody out there.”

Thompson died June 25, when someone entered her home through a back door. Thompson was asleep on the couch in front of the television and apparently startled the intruder when she awoke. She was hit more than a dozen times with a finishing hammer.

On Tuesday night, sheriff’s officials arrested Nelson, whom they suspect of burglarizing Thompson’s house on two previous occasions. The boy has been charged with first-degree murder and multiple burglaries. He will be tried as an adult and faces life in prison if convicted on all counts. The teenager is being held at Orange County Juvenile Hall in lieu of $1 million bail.

Until the public guardian’s office finishes its search for a will or relatives, Thompson’s body will remain at the coroner’s office.

And though no relative has been found, Thompson had family of a different kind: close friends who are planning a memorial service and have vowed not to let the county give Thompson a “pauper’s funeral.”

“What we don’t want said is that she is friendless,” said Marian Rees, who knew Thompson for 40 years.

But for nonrelatives to assume responsibility for Thompson, they must petition the court. Martinez said judges rarely give permission for friends to bury their loved ones.

Rees says she and others are willing to make the effort. Jane had a “vast, vast community of friends,” she said.

“We are her extended family and we are not legally recognized -- and in that the law is very cold.”

Rees said that circle of people, including friends in St. Louis, have hired a probate lawyer to seek permission to arrange Thompson’s funeral. She choked back tears as she described her oldest friend as a generous and well-traveled woman who had a gift for interior design.

“This woman is not alone,” Rees said. “It is really devastating to say that she is an ‘unclaimed body.’ That’s very hard.”

Carefully crafted procedures dictate the county’s actions in cases like Thompson’s, said Nancy Padberg of the public guardian’s office.

“We will not release the body until we are sure we have done an exhaustive search” for relatives or a will, Padberg said. “We want to be sure we are taking every precaution [and] that we are not doing something the family ... or [the deceased] would object to.”

She added: “We are bound by the code as to whom we can turn that sort of responsibility over to.... It needs to be a blood relative.”

To find those relatives, county workers often search genealogical databases. Those trees can go back quite a way, probate attorney Martinez said, even to the offspring of a person’s great-great grandparents. In some cases, researchers will turn to the distant relatives of a spouse.

When no relatives can be located, the county takes over burial arrangements. This occurs not only with the homeless and those who die with no heirs, but also with families who, for whatever reason, can’t handle the responsibility, Padberg said. In the last 12 months, the county has buried 1,355 people.

Padberg said each person is buried in an available plot in a cemetery chosen from a rotating list.

Coffins, headstones and inscriptions are chosen on a case-by-case basis, Padberg added, and the budget is set according to size of the person’s estate.

If a person has no assets, the county will use money from a general relief welfare fund. Since July 2003, it has provided 102 people with such services -- typically a $425 cremation, unless prohibited by the person’s religion or expressed wishes.

“We would try to go with the most respectable and reasonable burial,” Padberg said. “You try and get the most inexpensive coffin and the most inexpensive plot and then go forward.”

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Times staff writer Mai Tran contributed to this report.