THE RICHMOND-TIMES DISPATCH

Richmond, Virginia, U.S.A.

27 February 1939

(page 5)

Police Hunt Ex-Suitor of Dancer.

Los Angeles (AP)—A rejected suitor of Anya Sosoyeva, 32-year-old dancer and Goldwyn Follies film beauty, was sought by police last night for questioning about the slaying on the Los Angeles City College campus.

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

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

To Tell of Roommate

A search was instituted for Miss Stanley after her mother, Mrs. W. D. Price of Redondo Beach, reported she had promised to come home and did not do so.

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.

Authorities said Dr. Richard S. Murray, an osteopath, reported 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].

Once Married

Mrs. Esther Cahoon, manager of the apartment house where Miss Sosoyeva and Miss Stanley loved, told officers Miss Sosoyeva 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.

Investigation disclosed Miss Sosoyeva married Laurence Tulloch, actor and writer, when she was very young. He twice was tried for the fatal shooting in his San Francisco apartment of Mrs. Gertrude Hawkins Lavine, divorcee, but both juries disagreed. Tulloch died in 1932.

Miss Sosoyeva was killed by a blow directed with a 2 x 4 plank. She managed to staggered to the college auditorium, where she was to have appeared in an amateur play, and collapsed in the arms of a member of the cast, Wally Myar. Myar said she was unable to identify her assailant and cried out that "someone hit me over the head."