Today a Jeff Jardine called from the Modesto Bee. He was looking for a 1971 Auburn Journal photo and front-page article about Mary Alice Willey, a then-20-year-old San Francisco woman who four months later was found murdered in the Delta-Mendota Canal near Modesto. According to Jardine, a local columnist for The Bee, Willey’s body – with 65 stab wounds -- was found on Sept. 11, 1971 (a fateful day in 2001 as well). Willey’s body was finally identified eight days ago through DNA tests. Jardine said Willey had married Patrick Warren McDowell in a bizarre wedding ceremony held in an Auburn courtroom while McDowell and co-defendant Robert Barr were on trial for robbing Sugar Bowl ski resort in 1970. Anyway, we had the newspaper in our morgue – a minor miracle itself – and we scanned it and sent it to Jardine for publication with his column, which is running in tomorrow’s Modesto Bee. In addition, I asked Staff Writer Gloria Young to pen a story about the body being found and the Auburn connection for the Auburn Journal. Also of interest to me was who was in the courtroom reporting for the Auburn Journal for the May 27, 1971 edition. It was none other than Joe Carroll, former Auburn Sentinel columnist. It’s a small world. We have another very old case coming to trial this month that also may well be solved by DNA evidence. That’s the 1982 Janet Kovacich murder case. I’ll have to check if Sept. 11 is connected to her case. (I’m a bit of a conspiracy theorist.)

Click here to read the original 1971 article, Auburn Journal, May 27, 1971