Hollywood — The pretty 17-year-old daughter of an actress and a novelist, home on Christmas vacation from college, was found slain late Wednesday at the bottom of a thickly wooded ravine.

Dark-haired Marina Elizabeth Habe, daughter of Hans Habe of Zurich, Switzerland, and Eloise Hardt, was last seen when she left on a date Sunday night.

“She was definitely murdered,” said Sheriff’s Lt. Norman Hamilton who was at the scene when the body was recovered. However, he said the cause of death would not be announced until after a coroner’s autopsy. Witnesses said there were no visible marks on the body.

“A lot of detectives have some ideas on this,” he said, “and we want to hold off until we can investigate them… It’s important that this body be properly examined.”

No arrests were made, but Sheriff’s Lt. Harold White said an alarm had been issued for a car seen near the girl’s home early Wednesday morning. He said the male driver tried to molest a woman.

The girl’s home in the Hollywood hills is located about four miles from the ravine where Marina was found. Officers said the ravine, clogged with thick brush, is off Mulholland Drive, a road known as a lovers lane.

Plush homes dot the hills. Nearby are houses owned by singer Robert Goulet and former presidential press secretary Pierre Salinger.

A search party found Marina’s body about 30 feet down a slope. Searchers went there after a woman walking on Mulholland Drive reported finding a purse. In it were Marina’s compact, credit cards and a small amount of money.

Searchers said the ravine was so overgrown with brush that a helicopter circling the area for days did not spot the body of the petite, blue-eyed girl, aspiring to be an actress.

Marina’s body was still clad in the brown slacks and fur-trimmed coat she wore when she left to visit John Hornburg, 22, a family friend, in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles Sunday night.

Sheriff’s Lt. White said the girl had been dead since early Monday morning.

Hornburg said he and Marina met two other couples at a night club on Santa Monica Boulevard about 8:30 Sunday night. They returned to his home about 11:30, and Marina left by herself about 3:15am. She was headed home – usually a 20-minute drive.

The girl’s mother, an actress who last appeared in the film “Games”, said she heard noises outside at about 3:30 a.m. She heard a loud muffler and saw a man about 20 years old standing next to her daughter’s small foreign car in the driveway.

Suddenly, Miss Hardt said she saw a black sedan back out of the driveway. It stopped and the man climbed into the passenger side shouting something like: “Let’s go,” the mother said.

A search was begun, and relatives said they suspected the girl might have been kidnapped.

Marina’s parents were divorced more than 10 years ago and the mother is remarried. The girl lived with her mother until after she was graduated from Los Angeles high School last May. She was home on Christmas vacation from the University of Hawaii.

The girl’s father was reported en route from Zurich. Habe, 57, was a prominent newsman before he became a novelist. He is a former editor in chief of Der Morgen, a Vienna newspaper, and covered the League of Nations from 1936 to 1939. He has written 18 novels, including “The Countess” and “The Mission.”

Marina was described by her friends as “very quiet.” They said she planned on a career as an artist. Investigators said she was “apparently a well adjusted girl…well thought of by her friends.” “She was apparently a nice kid,” they said, “not a hippie type.”

Her father, a native of Hungary who grew up in Vienna, escaped from Nazi imprisonment during the war and came to the United States. He married Eleanor Davies, daughter of former Ambassador Joseph E. Davies, but they were divorced after they had a son.

Habe joined the U.S. Army and in 1945 was stationed in West Germany to organize the postwar German press. He founded 18 newspapers, returned briefly to the United States to work, and then was an editor in Germany from 1949 to 1952.