"A triple homicide on Oct. 12, 1978, turned a normally quiet Vista Las Palmas neighborhood at the base of the San Jacinto Mountains into a gruesome crime scene populated by Palm Springs police investigators.
The family's maid, Frances Williams, lay disfigured in a pool of blood.
She had been shot once in the head.
The oven was on and the dinner table set.
Sophia Friendly, matron of the home, lay in the hallway gripping her glasses. The killer had fired from behind as she fled, leaving an exit wound on the bridge of her nose.
Her second husband, Edward Friendly, sat sprawled in a chair in his study. The television blared. Edward, going deaf, may not have heard the killer approach.
He died from one shot to the chest and one to the top of his head, splitting his skull like an ax.
The killer escaped unseen from the Friendly home, at the intersection of Camino del Sur and Abrigo Road, at dinner time. Twelve hours later, a pool man discovered the crime scene.
Police interviewed neighbors, but nobody heard gunfire. Entry into the house wasn't forced. Four casings from a .45-caliber handgun were collected.
The killings appeared to be the work of a "professional assassin," police said. Palm Springs called it the "worst crime in the (city's) recent history."
Slowly, detectives pieced together a theory, but evidence beyond circumstantial was elusive. The days slipped by and then decades passed. Although detectives say they know who pulled the trigger, the case has never been solved. Palm Springs police consider the Las Palmas slaying an open but inactive case." (
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