One of Two Teenagers Slain in Forest Identified
Both Youths Were Nude and Had Been Strangled but Police Unable to Link Murders to 29 Others
by Jerry Hicks
One of two teenage boys found dead along Ortega Highway in the Cleveland National Forest this weekend was identified Monday as Russell Duane Rugh II, 15, of Garden Grove. Both youths, who were found nude, had been strangled. But police officials said there was no direct evidence to link the killings to the murders of 29 other young men whose bodies have been found along highways in Southern California over the past seven years. “There are some glaring similarities,” said Lt. Wyatt Hart of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.
“But we’re not even sure if those other murders were committed by the same person.” The Rugh boy was last seen enroute to his after-school job about 4 p.m. Friday near Beach Boulevard and Trask Avenue. The second victim has not been identified. The bodies were found by hikers about noon Saturday about 20 miles east of San Juan Capistrano in the Lower San Juan Campgrounds. Neither of the bodies showed any evidence of sexual molestation, nor was there evidence of any significant trauma, Hart said.
However, police consider it likely that the murderer was a homosexual who had picked them up while they were hitchhiking. The youths were killed sometime Friday night or early Saturday morning, Hart said. But police do not know if they were killed at the same time. “We don’t know if there was more than one person involved in the crime,” Hart said. The sheriff’s office has issued a description of the second victim in attempt to discover his identity: white, 5 feet, 11 inches tall, 16-18 years old, sandy-colored shoulder-length hair, brown or hazel eyes, a small blue lightning bolt tattoo on his right shoulder, a small burn scar and several smaller scars on the back of his right hand, white spots on both hips, and two crooked upper front teeth.
The sheriff’s office is also seeking information from anyone who might have seen the Rugh youth get into a car in the Beach Boulevard-Brook-hurst Street area between 4 and 5 p.m. Friday or from anyone who was on the Ortega Highway Saturday morning in the area where the bodies were found. Hart said that Rugh, a ninth-grade student at Westminster High School, often took the bus to his part-time job at a fast-food chicken restaurant near 17th and Brookhurst streets. But he had called his employer and told him he was running late Friday. The sheriff’s office believes he then attempted to hitchhike to work and was headed southbound on Beach or eastbound at Beach and Westminster Avenue toward Brookhurst.
He was last seen by his younger brother and was alone at the time, Hart said. He was wearing a beige-and-blue, long-sleeve, terrycloth, pullover shirt; light blue trousers, and brown-and-beige, slip-on tennis shoes. Police have not found the clothing of either victim. Hart said police do not believe the Rugh youth and the other victim knew each other or had been together before they were picked up by their attacker. The bodies of two other young men were discovered along Ortega Highway one last November and the other last December not far from where the two boys were found Saturday. In both of the previous cases the youths had been strangled and were nude. Several of the 29 young men dumped along highways in Orange, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside and San Diego counties were found to have Valium, Tylenol or chloral hydrate in their bloodstreams. Hart said it would be five to 10 days before tests on Rugh and the youth found with him will show if they had been drugged.
The Rugh youth lived with his mother, Sandy Miller. He is also survived by his father, Russell Rugh, a pressman at the Los Angeles Times Orange County plant. Funeral services will be at 2 p.m. Thursday at the Peek Family Colonial Funeral Home in Westminster. Burial will be in Westminster Memorial Park.
