Hunt Pushed For Sniper Slaying Clues
San Diego Union · February 8, 1964
Guns Tested, Copters Scan Roofs; Police Chief Lauds Public Aid
Police yesterday used ballistics tests, helicopters and old-fashioned shoe leather in an effort to uncover clues to the sniper slaying of a young Navy couple in Ocean Beach Wednesday night.
Police Chief Wesley Sharp said the shootings apparently were committed by a psychopathic killer. For this reason it is important for the public to provide information which may help police uncover clues, Sharp said.
The chief assigned several additional uniformed units to the Ocean Beach area for several days. He said they would insure greater protection for residents worried about being on the streets at night.
Six detectives yesterday checked information supplied by citizens in response to Sharp’s appeal for assistance Thursday.
“The response is gratifying,” Sharp told a reporter. “The citizens can save us hours of house-to-house work. We will sift through every lead a citizen furnishes and hope that one will zero us in on the killer.”
GUNS SOUGHT
Twenty-five other detectives canvassed Ocean Beach door-to-door. They asked residents to voluntarily surrender guns of .22-caliber for ballistics testing by police.
A .22-caliber gun killed Johnny Ray Swindle, 20, and his bride of 18 days—Joyce Ann, 19, as they strolled on a patio walk above the ocean at the foot of Narragansett Avenue. Swindle was shot four times and his bride thrice.
The lack of a motive or other tangible clues makes the finding of the death weapon doubly important, Detective Inspector O. J. Roed said.
Forty weapons were turned over to police and checked yesterday. None appeared to be the death gun.
ROOFS SCANNED
Two detectives scanned roofs in Ocean Beach from a Coast Guard helicopter on the chance that the killer threw the weapon on a roof. A search of the ocean off Narragansett by Navy frogmen from the Amphibious Base has failed to find the gun.
Two detectives from the Santa Barbara County sheriff’s office arrived here yesterday with a bullet used in the slayings of a young Lompoc couple on a lonely beach near Gaviota last June 4.
