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Victim profile: A
12-year-old
girl named Lorna Lax
Method of murder: Stabbing with knife
Location: San Francisco, California, USA
Status:
Unknown
November 14, 1959 - A 12-year-old
girl named Lorna Lax vanishes in San Francisco. Her beaten,
stabbed and strangled body was found in woods the next day. It was
later discovered that she'd been prostituting herself to local
boys. Clifford Fortner, a 15-year-old, eventually confessed to the
killing and was incarcerated.
Who was Lorna Lax?
On Sunday, November 15, 1959, the same day the
infamous Clutter murders in Kansas captured the nations' attention
(which became the subject of Truman Capote's 1966
In Cold Blood), Lorna Lax,
a twelve year old Kentfield, California girl, was stabbed and hung
from a tree in suburban Marin County. The victim was described as
a "tormented" girl: delinquent and a runaway. According to news
reports at the time, the juvenile knew how to use sex for pleasure
and gain.
So it begs to be asked: how, in the supposedly
repressed sexual environment of the 1950s, did a twelve year old
girl become addicted to sex which, ultimately, cost her her life?
The murderer was a 15 year old boy from the
neighborhood: Clifford Fortner. He rendezvoused with his victim
around midnight, after a football game. Miss Lax had created a "fort"
in the trees not far from her house where she deflowered and
serviced the local boys in her "sex club."
In an allegedly post-coital rage, Clifford beat
Miss Lax with a flashlight, then stabbed her with a steak knife (that
he must have brought with him). He then tied a noose around Miss
Lax neck and hung her from the fig tree under which they had had
sexual intercourse. Miss Lax body was found the next day by the
murderer's brother, Norman Fortner, age 13, who accepted an "invitation"
from Miss Lax to "come see her fort."
After the initial shock of the crime wore off,
the juveniles involved disappeared into obscurity: a person by the
name of Clifford Fortner still resides in Oakland, California, but
the Lax family and Norman Fortner are nowhere to be found.
