A 37-year-old mother of three was found bludgeoned and garrotted near an oil field in Long Beach, California, on May 12, 1947, according to an Associated Press report. She was identified as Mrs. Laura Elizabeth Trelstad, and her death set off a search for a killer that, as far as the available record shows, was never resolved.
The AP account, republished by goSkagit, identifies her as Mrs. Laura Elizabeth Trelstad, though other historical accounts have referred to her as Laura Eliza Trelstad, a discrepancy that has followed the case for decades. According to a detailed reconstruction from frontpagedetectivesonline.substack.com, an oil-company patrolman named Bert Winfield was driving toward his post at first light that morning when he noticed something lying in the dirt beside an access road. That something was Trelstad's body, and the discovery would soon dominate Los Angeles-area headlines.
A Grim Scene Beside an Access Road
Trelstad lived only a short distance from the oil fields where she was found, the same account notes. She was discovered wearing a black three-quarter-length coat and a single white open-toed shoe, with a cotton garrote around her neck, according to details preserved on 1947project.blogspot.com. Her second shoe was never recovered at the scene, and it became a focal point for investigators trying to piece together her final hours.
Detectives believed the oil field itself was probably not where the killing took place. Tire impressions and marks in the dirt indicated it was more likely a dumping site, the same reconstruction reports, suggesting Trelstad had been killed elsewhere before her body was left beside the access road. That distinction shaped how investigators approached the case in the days that followed, though the surviving record does not establish where the actual killing occurred.
A Family Left Behind, A City on Edge
Trelstad and her husband, Ingman, had three children — Audrey, 8, Janet, 7, and Thomas, 3 — according to the period account. Police asked the public to help locate her missing white shoe and specifically requested that anyone who had seen Trelstad at a dance the night before come forward, hoping such witnesses could help trace her movements before she died.
The killing landed amid a string of violent attacks on women that had already unsettled Los Angeles-area newspapers, which were asking whether the so-called Werewolf had struck again, per the same reconstruction. That framing linked Trelstad's case to a broader climate of fear gripping the region at the time, even as investigators worked her case on its own terms.
Accounts differ on some of the specifics surrounding her death. One record states Trelstad had been sexually assaulted before she died, while another describes her as beaten, raped and strangled — details that do not fully align with the bludgeoning and garrotting described in the original AP report. A memorial page on Find a Grave also places her body in a Signal Hill oil field, differing from other accounts that describe the scene as an oil field in Long Beach.
What became of the investigation, whether anyone was ever arrested, and how the case was ultimately resolved are not established in the surviving record reviewed for this report. Nearly eight decades later, the circumstances of Laura Trelstad's death remain a documented but incomplete chapter of Southern California crime history.
