By Eliza Ridgeway

Beyerly

The first big break in a murder mystery that began 28 years ago in Los Altos came last week in Loveland, Colo.

A police SWAT team - joined by investigators from Santa Clara County - arrested Loveland resident Scott Schultz Aug. 23 for the murder of Laura Beyerly of Los Altos.

Not many people in Los Altos may remember Beyerly. The Los Altos High School student was active and social, but her disappearance in March 1978 didn’t make much of a ripple - at least not as it would today.

Local newspapers, including the Town Crier, gave her story limited coverage. Police, suspecting she had run away, didn’t investigate her case until Beyerly had been missing for months. She had been known to hitchhike and had run away from home in the past, but her mother vehemently insisted this time, it was different. When her body was found more than a year later in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the investigation of her murder didn’t lead to an arrest.

Beyerly’s family and friends held out hope that the case would be solved. Her parents worked with a private investigator and a psychic. The family filed a $1 million lawsuit against the Los Altos Police Department for negligence. But over the time, memories faded. Her father, Rear Adm. L.F. Beyerly, died in 1979. Her mother, Grace Beyerly, died in 1996. Police files were lost or

misplaced.

The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office has a “cold case” unit dedicated to such cases. When Investigator Michael Schembri and Deputy District Attorney Charles Constantinides picked up Beyerly’s file last November, they started the case from scratch. They contacted witnesses and Beyerly’s friends and re-examined the forensic evidence. The details of the cause of death still have not been released.

No particular attention was paid to her former boyfriend, Schultz, who was 17 when Beyerly disappeared. But when the case was reopened, Schembri saw increasing evidence bringing Schultz, now 45, to his attention.

Beyerly had just broken up with Schultz when she disappeared. Her mother reported a fraught, middle-of-the-night phone call between the pair. Witnesses reported seeing Beyerly talking to him before she disappeared from the high school parking lot. And her body was found off an isolated logging road near property owned by Schultz’s uncle.

“We wouldn’t file charges unless we were sure we could prove he did it,” Constantinides said.

Schultz was taken into custody without incident. Schembri said that Schultz reacted to the arrest with surprise. Much of the information behind Schultz’s arrest is not yet public because the case will begin in juvenile court, which has higher standards of privacy than adult courts. Schultz was 17 and a Sunnyvale High School student, at the time Beyerly was murdered.

Now that Schultz has been arrested, the district attorney’s office will seek to extradite him to California, where he would undergo a fitness hearing to be tried as an adult. Investigators have not detailed the evidence that will be used to try Schultz, but after his arrest Aug. 23, police searched his home, according to Schembri.

Former Los Altos resident Mary Kresse responded to the news of Schultz’s arrest this week with surprise and exhilaration. Kresse befriended Beyerly when both girls were in the eighth grade, and she vividly remembers the events of 1978 and 1979. She has been persistent in efforts to keep the case open.

“My mom died in October, and when she was dying, she said the case was going to get resolved - and she was right,” Kresse said. “I truly do believe (her mom and Beyerly) worked together in heaven.”

Kresse was as mystified as other Los Altos residents when Beyerly disappeared. “My first intuition was that she got picked up by a hitchhiker and something went wrong,” Kresse said. “(Schultz) was Mr. Macho, but I didn’t think that he would have murdered her.”

The district attorney’s investigators hope that with the news of Schultz’s arrest, other friends and witnesses will come forward with additional memories of Beyerly’s last days.

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