By Eliza Ridgeway

Laura Anne Beyerly attended first-period physics class at Los Altos High School the morning of March 28, 1978. The 17-year-old was wearing a flowered black shirt, black pants and brown platform shoes. After class, witnesses noticed her talking to her ex-boyfriend, Scott Schultz, in the school parking lot. She had stayed up all night arguing with him, according to her mother’s statement. And then she was never seen alive again.

Michael Schembri, an investigator for the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office, has reopened Beyerly’s case because he believes her murder can be solved. After his retirement from the San Jose Police Department, Schembri continues to chase down crimes nearly forgotten and still unsolved.

Schembri described Beyerly as an athletic young woman with good grades. Before she died, Beyerly enjoyed scuba diving and synchronized swimming, and considered a future in marine biology. On the day she vanished, she had planned to get a permanent then go to a classmate’s to study.

Until her skull was found a year later, Los Altos was divided by two theories: had the girl run away or did her disappearance have a more sinister cause?

Investigators initially labeled Beyerly, who had left home before, a runaway. The police captain in charge of the case, Jack McFadden, was quoted in the Town Crier in August 1978: “She’s probably just walking around someplace where nobody knows her.” He said that her body would likely have already been found if it had been left in the Santa Cruz Mountains, a common end point for murder victims in the ’70s.

“Santa Cruz at that time was getting about a body a month,” Schembri said.

Beyerly’s remains were found at the end of a remote logging road in the Big Basin area in April of 1979, and identified by dental records in July. No conclusive cause of death was determined at the time, but Schembri said her bones have been re-examined and contribute to his case.

Beyerly’s parents, Rear Adm. and Mrs. L.F. Beyerly of S El Monte Ave, filed a $1 million suit against the police department alleging police negligence. The Beyerlys also hired a private investigator and a psychic to pursue the case independently.

While Schembri said that the police department at the time could have handled the case better, he added, “The PD even now would have a difficult time with this case. When a chronic runaway disappears, where are the signs of foul play?”

Beyerly’s father died in 1979 and her mother in 1996, but the case was not entirely forgotten. It came across Schembri’s desk last November as a result of the persistence of Beyerly’s high school classmate, who felt the case hadn’t gotten its due for the last three decades. Schembri said he reads many old files every year and pursues cases that seem to offer new avenues of investigation.

“The mom was pretty adamant that (Beyerly hadn’t run away),” he said. “That to me is a red flag - she talks to her boyfriend until 5 a.m. and then disappears. She was a straight-A student, very intelligent and trying to make a change in her life.”

Schembri said that he has gotten “a major hit on a major lead,” and believes this case can result in an arrest warrant, even now. Since November, he has combed old police files (those that hadn’t been lost) and interviewed witnesses for their recollection of events long past.

Schembri hopes that Los Altos residents might remember something from that March, 28 years ago.

Anyone with information pertaining to the case, call Schembri at (408) 792-2682.