January 5, 1969
Hollywood — Slain coed Marina Elizabeth Habe was laid to rest Saturday with a single question hanging over the 350 mourners at her funeral, the priest who eulogized her and sheriff’s investigators — why was she killed?
“We are all bewildered that Marina should be the victim of a senseless, brutal murder,” said the solemn requiem Mass for Miss Habe in Good Shepherd Roman Catholic Church, Beverly Hills.
Standing before the 17-year-old stabbing victim’s flower-bedecked coffin, Father Acton, an assistant at St. Genevieve’s Church, Van Nuys, who had known Miss Habe when he served at Good Shepherd Church, declared:
“we wonder about a society, the products of which can be at large in our midst and capable of such heinous crimes. There you have the perfect formula for bitterness, resentment, hatred, perhaps despair. This we must guard against.”
Investigators wondered, too. An answer to the question “why” might lead them to the identity and arrest of the killer of killers who last Monday abducted the University of Hawaii coed home for Christmas vacation and dumped her body in heavy brush off Mulholland Drive.
The girl’s body was found there last Wednesday. She had been stabbed repeatedly in the chest and beaten about the face, the coroner’s office reported. An autopsy established that the girl had not been raped.
While Miss Habe was being mourned at the 35-minute mass, sheriff’s homicide investigators pressed the search for her slayer. It was a major effort that, according to Sheriff’s Lt. Harold White, has failed so far to crack the case. “We’re trying very hard,” said White Saturday.