Mimi Boomhower, 48, vanished from her Bel Air home on Nimes Road after a final confirmed phone call between 7:00 and 8:00 p.m. on August 18, 1949. A socialite known as the Merry Widow after her husband’s death, she had reportedly been in financial trouble and told her business manager she was meeting a man that evening. She missed an 8:30 p.m. call and was not seen again.

When police checked her house days later the lights were on, a salad sat uneaten on the dining table and a dress lay on the bed; her car remained locked in the garage. Friends and the gardener reported suspicious men seen around the property, and a week later her white calfskin handbag turned up in a Wilshire Boulevard telephone booth with a penciled message saying Police Dept. - we found this at beach Thursday night. The purse held identification and keys but showed no signs of having been at the beach. Investigators believed she was murdered and at least one handwriting expert later linked the note to a suspect in another famous Los Angeles case.

No suspects were officially named, her body has never been found, and the case remains unsolved.