BAY AREA
More evidence, more questions in killings
Police recover one victim's car -- body officially identified
Police uncovered more evidence Thursday as the investigation widened into the slayings of two young women whose bloody bodies were wrapped in plastic bags and dumped in industrial Richmond and San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.
Sophia Sciutto-Creps, 27, of South San Francisco was officially identified as the woman whose body was found by a gardener Wednesday in Golden Gate Park. Authorities say there were no obvious signs of trauma on her body, but blood was found on her face.
Sciutto-Creps' 21-year-old friend, Kimberly Millen of San Bruno, was found bludgeoned, stabbed and dumped four days earlier in Richmond.
The two women were last seen alive on March 27, and police are tracking their whereabouts that day.
Investigators got a break at 9 a.m. Thursday, when a law enforcement officer discovered Sciutto-Creps' missing 1996 green four-door Honda Civic parked in a space at a housing project in the 1700 block of 26th Street on Potrero Hill.
"A parole agent was out there, and a resident told him, 'Hey, that car was on the news,' " said Inspector Mike Johnson of San Francisco police homicide detail.
The car joins other key evidence now in the hands of investigators, including rubber gloves, identification belonging to the two women and Sciutto-Creps' bloody purse -- all found Monday alongside San Francisco's Lake Merced.
Sciutto-Creps' mother said her daughter, who was married and had a 2-year-old son, had known Millen for several years. Sciutto-Creps had previously worked as a paraprofessional at George Washington High School in San Francisco. On the day she disappeared, she had told her stepson that she was going for a job interview.
Her husband, Nigel Woods, told police that he was concerned about the people she had been associating with.
"Sophie was a very loving wife, and a loving mother -- she was loved and liked by a lot of people,'' Woods told The Chronicle on Thursday. "I did not like the people she was around, and I tried to tell her not to hang around those people.''
But, he said, she was a strong-willed person.
"She felt like she was in good company,'' Woods said.
Woods told authorities that his wife was sometimes gone for more than one day and had been using drugs, including crack and marijuana.
Creps' mother, Irene Creps, has said that her daughter had made some poor choices and that she believes her daughter did not realize the danger involved. She said the only drug she believed her daughter had experimented with was marijuana.
Millen's mother said that her daughter had called her March 27 and told her that she was on the way back with her friend after visiting friends in Oakland.
Richmond police Lt. Mark Gagan said investigators have yet to locate where the two women were killed.
"We don't have any evidence as to where she (Millen) was killed,'' Gagan said. "She could have been killed a hundred yards away or a hundred miles away. It's really hard to know.''
"Normally,'' he said, "as cases go forward, we eliminate people and angles and the evidence paints a picture. In this case, the more evidence that is located, the more witness statements we take, the more questions we have.''
Gagan said that locating the murder scene will be crucial to the case. "Our victim had dozens of stab wounds and blunt-force trauma,'' he said, indicating that it would be very difficult to conceal all the evidence left behind at the murder scene.
E-mail Jaxon Van Derbeken at [email protected].
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