THE OMAHA WORLD-HERALD

Omaha, Nebraska, U.S.A.

27 February 1939

(page 2)

Three Sought in Slaying.

Negroes Suspected in Dancer’s Death.

Anya Sosoyeva . . .her death a mystery.

Los Angeles, Cal., Feb. 26—Three Negroes were hunted tonight as possible suspects in the murder of beautiful Anya Sosoyeva, 32, Russian-born dancer and former Ziegfeld Follies performer, on the Los Angeles city college campus Friday night.

The Negroes were seen stealing lumber from behind a sign shop a few hours before the killing, police reported. The stolen lumber included some similar to that with which the young dancer was bludgeoned to death on Friday night.

The death club was covered with green paint. So was the stolen lumber.

Reports that Negroes previously had frightened girls in the vicinity of the campus came from several sources.

Detective Lieutenant Tom Bryan said Beulah Ann Stanley, dramatics instructor and roommate of the dancer, had given them a list of male friends of Miss Sosoyeva, whose real name was Nina Susoff. Police began a search for an accountant whom the dancer apparently had often lent money.

An earlier theory that criminal assault was the motive was abandoned when physicians reported today they had been mistaken in their first examination.

Mrs. A. L. Miller, associated with an osteopathic clinic the dancer had visited, 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 reports that the secret order, called the “Purple Cult,” held weird rites at the home of a faculty member [Regina Kahl].