Ruth Quinn had lived in her cozy home at 511 Pomona Avenue since 1968. The structure, which is largely extant today, has two bedrooms and one bathroom, a rusty screen door and a carport. “I love the house and patio, as you know,” she wrote to her landlord in 1969. “I hope most sincerely that I will never have to leave—except to my last resting place at [Fort] Rosecrans [Cemetery].” How prescient she was.

On this early spring day, March 16, 1975, Ruth had attended the morning Mass at Sacred Heart. A creature of habit, she showed up faithfully every Sunday, usually occupying the same pew. She was always formally dressed, with her gray hair on top of her head, clipped into place, with a few stray wisps framing her face. Parishioners knew her from behind. Ruth was devout, and her faith had provided routine and comfort throughout her seventy-four years—a life that had served up a heavy burden of tragedy. But this only deepened her faith.

After Mass, she joined her fellow parishioners for a church breakfast. In the Lenten season, Ruth routinely went back for a second Mass, which she did this Sunday after a visit to the Coronado Library, where she had served as the acting city librarian, the last position she held before she retired in 1959. 

She was never seen or heard from again.

Around 6:57 p.m., as the sun was setting, a few beachcombers lingered and stared at the ocean, waiting for the elusive green flash—that lightbulb moment some claim to see at the second the sun dips below the horizon. As it did so, many residents on Pomona Avenue and Glorietta Boulevard noticed the playing of taps at the nearby Naval Amphibious Base. This was a nightly ritual.

By the time the bugler finished his last note, Ruth was probably already dead. She lay supine in her bed, clad in a purple dress and leather belt, wearing black high-heel shoes and brown nylon stockings, a gold watch on her wrist and gold earrings in her ears, a plastic hair comb and hair clip in her hair. She was partially covered with a bedspread. Her right arm was resting on her belly. Her left hand and the left side of her face were smeared in blood, and the bedding underneath her body was soaked with blood. Lying next to her was a pillow, punctured with bullet holes and flecked with powder burns. And in a bowl on her bedside table was a small crucifix with Jesus nailed to the little cross. It was turned over, so the figure of Jesus was not facing her killer.