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As was her usual habit, 44-year-old Carola Hartog walked her Golden Retriever Chee-Chee along Dunes Beach near Half Moon Bay on the afternoon of Sept. 17, 1957. A mother of three living on El Portal Avenue in Hillsborough with her husband and three children, Carola never suspected something sinister in such familiar surroundings.
At some point during her walk, she was approached by, as she described later, a “wavy-haired dark-complexioned man” in an orange striped shirt.
She went on to say that he told her: “You are going to die. I am going to kill you because I don’t want you to identify me.” At some point, he choked her into unconsciousness. When she came to, her hands were loosely bound and she saw the man drive off in an old green car, heading north on the Coast Highway. Her dog was later found locked in a public restroom on the beach. Carola somehow managed to stagger to her car and drive to a nearby house for help. The sheriff’s office was called, and arriving deputies found her sliding in and out of consciousness. The Times reported: “She told sheriff’s deputies that she had been choked, bound and robbed (of $12), but did not mention (being stabbed). The tiny wounds were not discovered until after she had been admitted to the hospital some two hours after the assault.”
She died at Mills Hospital approximately four hours after being attacked.
She had indeed been stabbed three times in the heart by what seemed to be a screwdriver or an icepick. Sheriff Earl Whitmore immediately grumbled to reporters: “We don’t have a thing. Up until now we have a complete blank… This is going to be one of the toughest cases we’ve ever had in San Mateo County. We do not expect any early solution.” But he put in every effort to solve the difficult case. He canceled vacation leave for his staff who were working on the case. Despite the fact that Carola’s money had been taken, Whitmore doubted it was a simple robbery but could not come up with another motive.
Carola seemed to have no enemies. She was well-liked in the community and volunteered for the Peninsula Humane Society and the NAACP. And, as Whitmore told reporters, “There is no indication of any sex motive at this time.”
There were puzzling aspects to the case. Whitmore and his team believed that Chee-Chee had actually been locked in the restroom before the physical attack had taken place. But Carola never mentioned this to law enforcement, although she did ask after the dog periodically in her final hours. Also, according to one newspaper article, a bottle of scotch with Carola’s fingerprints was found on the beach near two paper cups with traces of the liquor in them. Had she been drinking with someone before being attacked?
Several men were suspected of the murder, but authorities could find no evidence against them or the suspects had solid alibis.
On the 27th, law enforcement got a promising lead. A man called the San Carlos police and said: “I am the one who killed the woman at the beach. And I will do it again, again, again.” The man then hung up, and the call was traced to a pay phone at the Carlmont Shopping Center. A second call came in from the same voice from the pay phone at a gas station at the intersection of Ralston Avenue and Sixth Avenue. No trace of a man was found in either location, and law enforcement eventually dismissed the calls as the work of a crank.
Sheriff Whitmore eventually stopped the active investigation saying: “We are just about at the end of the rope. We have no good leads to work on.”
The case went cold and has never been solved.
