California: Valley Press, Wednesday, July 16, 1997
SLV grad murdered
By Garth Merrill
Friends and family say Andrea “Annie” Born was everybody’s friend. The 20-year-old San Lorenzo Valley High graduate who wrote poetry in a journal she kept by her bed and who had an affinity for angels had a reputation for writing cards and letters to almost everyone she knew—including a recent thank-you card to her pal just for being her best friend.
“She was a dear girl,” said Diane Dearinger of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Ben Lomond, where the former Brookdale resident sang in the choir and still attended services when she came home to the Valley on leave from classes at Fresno State University.
“She was just a beautiful, dynamic girl,” Dearinger said. “She was very, very popular. She had it all.”
The last time any of her friends say they saw Born was early evening on July 4, as she left her Ashlan Avenue apartment in Clovis with a man she had dated for a year and a half—with the expectation they would see her again at a Fourth of July barbecue later that night.
But about six and a half hours later, at 11:30 p.m., two California Highway Patrol officers saw what they thought was the burning remains of a stolen car, stripped, dumped and ablaze in an almond orchard off of Highway 99. It was Born. The Madera County coroner later determined she had been shot in the head.
Born was identified on July 7 from dental records, after her best friend filed a missing person report and urged authorities to follow up on it when she became concerned. Born had not only missed the barbecue, but also failed to report on Saturday morning to one of the two jobs she held down.
Authorities are still searching for the murder scene, and clothing and tissue samples have been sent to the lab of the state Department of Justice to identify the fuel used in the burning, Turk said.
Born was well known in the San Lorenzo Valley, having also attended Quail Hollow Elementary School and SLV Junior High. As an actress, she had the title role in local youth theater production of “Peter Pan” in 1988 and had the lead role in “Once Upon a Mattress” in 1990. At the SLVHS graduation ceremony in 1994 she sang an a capella version of “In My Life.”
“She was such a great little actress and singer,” Dearinger said. “She loved it.”