Just before noon, on Sunday April 19, 1931, twenty-nine-year-old Antonio Espinoza Martinez of Lemon Grove pulled off of Mission Gorge Road and parked his automobile in a flat area at the base of Black Mountain within what is now Mission Trails Regional Park. Martinez was a day laborer born in Mexicali and lived in a neighborhood described as having a “Mexican population with no paved streets or addresses.” 

During the day, the wooded area was a local picnic spot for families and the nearby canyons were often hiked by Boy Scouts and urban hikers known as the Sunset Hikers. In the evenings, however, it hosted a different clientele—a younger party crowd toasting with illegal liquor. A few years before then San Diego State College began the ritual of marking the upper hillside with a large white S. Initially formed by clearing brush and applying lime and whitewash to the ground, the S became more permanent when a local paint store donated gallons of white paint. Large rocks were collected and placed in the form of an S and for decades, the controversial symbol became a landmark. Some years the glowing light from road flares held by college fraternity boys illuminated at night the S. Over time, Black Mountain, also known as Cowles Mountain, also came to be known as S Mountain.

Mr. Martinez, his wife Margaret and their two young boys walked towards a favorite picnic spot and the shade of old oaks. If Martinez carried a newspaper with him, the investigation of the murder of Virginia Brooks was still news. It was a cool morning with the daytime high expected to reach around 68 degrees. 

But before Mr. Martinez could unload the wicker picnic basket from his vehicle, he made a gruesome discovery, one that he later said he never forgot. Amongst the gnarled oak trees and low brush on the canyon floor, was a nearly nude young woman hanging from a tree limb with the shoes on her feet barely scraping the ground. Hurrying his family away from the scene, Martinez drove to the nearest pay phone and contacted the La Mesa Chief of Police, C. H. Mercer who called Chester Gunn, the San Diego County Coroner. The sad saga of the death of seventeen-year-old Louise Teuber had begun.

The March 15, 2023 San Diego Reader carries a longer version of this chapter from my upcoming true crime book. Go to this website link for the published excerpt. sandiegoreader.com/news/2023/mar/15/cover-unsolved-murders-long-ago-2-louise-teuber