Body ID’d as missing woman

Mark R. Madler

A body found in a car trunk in Los Angeles was identified Friday as

the 30-year-old Warner Bros. employee who had been missing for over

two weeks, authorities said.

The cause of death of Sharon Anne Santos was not determined after

the Los Angeles County coroner’s office did an autopsy. The office

was waiting for the results from toxicology tests. Those could take a

few weeks.

A microscopic analysis of tissue to determine if she suffered any

physical attacks was also ordered because the body had badly

decomposed, coroner’s office spokesman Capt. Dave Campbell said.

What had started last month as a missing person case by the

Burbank Police became a homicide investigation after Santos and her

vehicle were found Thursday on a side street in Chinatown.

“Our efforts will not end here,” Burbank Police Sgt. Jay Jette

said. “We will remain devoted to Sharon until the person responsible

is caught.”

The investigation so far has been a difficult one because the

department has so little information to go on, Jette said.

There is hope that evidence recovered from the car will result in

leads, he added.

“I believe that the vehicle will be the strongest point we can go

from to what happened to Sharon,” Jette said.

Santos was last seen by co-workers Aug. 17. She had returned to

her apartment in the 1500 block of Scott Road before her

disappearance. She worked as a financial analyst for Warner Bros.

Entertainment.

The company is offering a $25,000 reward for information leading

to the arrest and conviction of whoever was responsible for Santos’

death. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to

vote Tuesday on offering a $10,000 reward.

Nina Haynes, a longtime friend of Santos, said Santos’ mother,

Edna, and sister, Sandra, were notified shortly after investigators

found her car Thursday.

“We hoped for something better,” Haynes said. “We were actually

more hopeful the past few days when we heard there were different

leads. The family was just devastated.

“We’re now at the point of refocusing and trying to find out who

did this,” Haynes said. “That is a tremendous task right there.”

A prayer vigil for Santos is scheduled for 8 p.m. Tuesday at her

family’s home, 2626 Petunia St., West Covina.

Investigators were lead to the 700 block of New Depot Avenue in

Chinatown after a search of a law- enforcement database, Jette said.

There was a ticket on the car, which police believe had been

parked on the street for several days, Jette said. He could not say

if the ticket for illegal parking was what surfaced on the database

check that led investigators to Chinatown.

Some neighbors said the car was there for at least a week; others

recounted seeing two, possibly even three tickets on the windshield.

Max Neschott, a manager at TC Apartments on the block where

Santos’ car was found, said he and some residents detected a foul

odor coming from the car.

“I couldn’t get to sleep because of the smell,” Neschott said.

Ismael Serrano, a resident of TC Apartments, said that cars come

and go from the neighborhood and he didn’t really pay much attention

to the black Honda Accord.

His mother-in-law, whose apartment in the TC Apartments building

faces the street, complained about the smell, which was dismissed as

coming from a sewer or perhaps a dead animal, Serrano said.

Haynes said that when her husband went to the scene he, too, could

smell an odor coming from the car while standing about 25 feet away.

Anyone with information on the case can call the Burbank Police

hotline at 238-3270.