Volume 17 , Issue 30

(1956) Autopsy Shows Girl Was Victim Of Sex Attack

On 15 March 1956, The Clovis News-Journal, Clovis, New Mexico, page 1, headlines reported: "Autopsy Shows Girl Was Victim Of Sex Attack," in the death of a preliminary autopsy report of Mildred Ann Reynolds, who died in a fiery death 13 March 1956 on a rural road East of her Avard Farm in Northwest Oklahoma.

Found on Newspapers.com

Alva, Okla. (UP) -- A preliminary autopsy report showed Thursday that an attractive 22 year old coed was burned alive in her automobile, apparently after a savage sex attack.

Woods County Attorney H. D. Potts said further chemical tests would be needed ignored to confirm that the cremated victim, Mrs. Mildred Ann Reynolds, was raped. But surface appearances indicated she was.

Mrs. Reynolds married only nine months, was the wife of R. D. Reynolds, a high school basketball coach at nearby Avard, Oklahoma. She was attending Northwestern State College and was driving home Tuesday when attacked.

Investigators said someone crowded Mrs. Reynolds' automobile off a country road and caused it to smash into a tree. Plaster casts were made of the second vehicle's tire tracks.

Put Up Fierce Struggle

Tall, dry grass was smashed flat near where her car was found, indicating a fierce struggle took place. One of her shoes, stained with blood, lay nearby.

Mrs. Reynolds' fire-blackened body was in the automobile. Investigators said a highly inflammable liquid had been splashed over the car which was then set afire.

The heat was so intense that one of Mrs. Reynolds' legs was burned off at the knee and the glass in the automobile melted. Dr. A. Max Shideler, who began an autopsy Wednesday, said the heat also apparently fractured her skull.

Officers took statements from Reynolds and a 20 year old nephew of Mrs. Reynolds who lived with the couple. The nephew, Jim Huckabee, was apparently the last person to talk with the pretty coed, except for her killer.

Two Men Being Freed

Two men were jailed briefly Wednesday night, but officers said they could not connect them with he death. Oklahoma Crime Bureau agent Sid Wilson said one man was an ex-convict, picked up hitchhiking near Alva.

The other was an elderly local man, arrested after a complaint from a father that the man approached his young daughter as she got off a school bus and offered her a ride in his automobile.

Officers said both men whose names were withheld, would be released.

Reynolds, 26, spent much of his time waiting outside the local sheriff's office to hear fresh news of the investigation into his wife's death. The coed was described by college officials as "rather shy" but a good student.

She was five feet, two inches tall and weighted 100 pounds.
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