THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS

Dallas, Texas, U.S.A.

27 February 1939

POLICE SEEK SLAIN DANCER’S JILTED SUITOR.

Girl Associate of Man, Member

of Strange Campus Purple Cult.

Los Angeles, Feb. 26. A rejected suitor of Anya Sosoyeva, 32, dancer and Goldwyn Follies film beauty, was sought by police Sunday night for questioning about her slaying on the Los Angeles City college campus.

The hunt for the spurned suitor was started shortly after Dr. Frank Webb, county autopsy surgeon, reported that two examinations had failed to disclose that the stately, blonde Miss Sosoyeva had been raped.

Captain D. R. Patton, chief of the police homicide detail, said that Beulah Ann Stanley, dramatics instructor and roommate of Miss Sosoyeva, was questioned at length Sunday and gave a satisfactory explanation of her whereabouts before and since the slaying last Friday night.

An intensive search was instituted for Miss Stanley Saturday night after her mother, Mrs. W. D. Price, Redondo Beach, reported she had promised to come home and did not do so. Mrs. Price expressed the fear he daughter might have been killed by the same man who slew Miss Sosoyeva.

Visits Uncle’s Home.

Police said Miss Stanley spent Saturday night at the home of her uncle, C. J. Boyington, a high school principal. They said she had consented to make a written statement telling all she knew about her roommate.

Detective Lieut. Tom Bryan said later Miss Stanley had given him a list of the male friends of Miss Sosoyeva, whose real name was Susoff. Police began a search for an accountant whom the dancer apparently had lent money on numerous occasions—money the officers said had been supplied by her friends or relatives in San Francisco.

Authorities said Richard S. Murray, an osteopath, had reported that Miss Sosoyeva, Russian-born entertainer, who once was in the Ziegfeld Follies and on vaudeville circuits, came to him about two weeks ago for a physical examination, complaining she was indifferent to the attentions of men.

Mrs. A. L. Miller, associated with Dr. Murray’s clinic, told police she saw Miss Sosoyeva several times in the company of “a large man who I have been told is a member of a strange cult on the Los Angeles City college campus”.

Captain Patton said an investigation was being made of various reports that the secret order, called the Purple Cult, held weird rites at the home of a faculty member [Regina Kahl].

Quarrel With Boy Friend.

Mrs. Esther Cahoon, manager of the apartment house where Miss Sosoyeva and Miss Stanley lived, told officers the slain woman once informed her she had a quarrel with her “boy friend” in San Francisco last November, shortly before she came here, hoping to launch a career which would get her another movie job.