Chapter One: The Coburn Mystery [Original Draft]

By June Morrall

The San Francisco newspapers splashed the murder story across the front page; there were photos of Sarah and the house where she had lived in Pescadero.

Sarah Coburn’s murder came at an inopportune time for Franklin Swart, the busy San Mateo County District Attorney. The San Francisco police were poking their nose into the Inez Reed affair [a nasty case involving a botched abortion], and Captain Duncan Matheson, chief of the San Francisco Detective Bureau would be sitting next to him in the courtroom, breathing down his neck.

There had been a longtime rivalry between the two police departments–with the San Francisco police believing themselves vastly superior to their counterparts in San Mateo County. The cops from the City were growing impatient with progress on the Inez Reed case, one which they thought they could solve much faster, if only they could lose the cops from San Mateo where the murder occurred.

SF Police Chief D.A. White gloated: “If we can get the body [of Inez Reed]…

[Note: this stops here and I change gears to begin the story again…see next post…]

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