March 29 2022
Authorities take new look at 50-year-old Coastside killing that still shocks conscience | Local News Stories | hmbreview.com
''Those with an even longer memory hope to one day hear similar success in solving the riddle of the death of Linda Diane Uhlig, who was brutally killed and dumped in a Coastside drainage ditch 50 years ago this week.
Uhlig was 19 at the time of her murder. She had been an honor roll student at Colby High School, in Colby, Wis., before moving to an apartment on 29th Street in San Francisco where she was able to live on her own upon graduation. She landed a job with the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co.''
''Her new life in the Bay Area didn’t last long. Her mutilated body was found by a worker on March 28, 1972, on the side of Purisima Creek Road, south of Half Moon Bay.
At the time, investigators told the press that robbery could be the motive, but the horrific scene would seem to point to something else.
Upon arrival, investigators found Uhlig’s remains in a ditch alongside the rural road. Her skull had been smashed and, according to press reports at the time, it appeared the assailant tried and failed to decapitate her, perhaps with a machete or ax. Just as macabre, newspaper reports say that her torso had been cut deeply, perhaps with a pocketknife, in what a Sheriff’s official at the time said might be an attempt to cut her in half.
Investigators noted that a pool of blood was found about 30 yards away. They theorized she was killed elsewhere, perhaps dragged from a vehicle and left by the side of the road.''
