JANE BENNINGTON

 

from the OC Register, November 28, 1999:

 

The 1977 sexual assault and murder of Jane Bennington, 29, in her Corona del Mar apartment appears to have been committed by a stranger.

"All indications are that she did not know the person who attacked her," said Newport Beach Detective Thomas Fischbacher, who is investigating the case. Bennington was killed Aug. 2. Police suspected that her boyfriend committed the crime, but he was later cleared of suspicion in that case and sent to prison for an unrelated bank robbery, Fischbacher said.

 

Bennington had gone to a local club the night before her murder and was last seen alive by her female roommate. The roommate returned home and found a sliding-glass door to the apartment ajar.

 

She went to bed and discovered Bennington's body after she awoke.

 

Bennington had been strangled and hit on the head.

 

Investigators reopened the case in 1996 because it appeared to fit the pattern of crimes later attributed to ex-Marine Sgt. Gerald Parker. Parker was convicted in 1998 of six Orange County murders committed in the late 1970s.