39 year old cold case murder may be solved: 2012

Mary Elaine Costa 1948-1972

Mary, aka: Cha Cha, was only 23 years old when her life was snatched from her and her 7 year old son, Jim Stellflug.

Her small body lay on the desolate floor of the desert just an arms throw from the famous city of Palm Springs, California. Clad in one of her pretty flowered dresses that she loved so much and near by, a rock with blood on it. The newspaper said she had a fractured eye socket.

The newspapers state that she worked at a bar in Palm Springs. They also state that she was a prostitute.
This puzzles me. She had the personality that attracted people. Mostly men. There was always a man that wanted her hand on their arm. If that makes a woman a prostitute, then there are a heck of a lot of prostitutes out there!

When a man brings a woman flowers, she takes them, well. . .is she a prostitute?

I had left Palm Springs to see my mom and secured a job while I was there. One day I called Cha Cha and they told me she was found dead. I don't remember how it went, whether I called the detective on the case at that time or if he called me.

I took the Greyhound in to Palm Springs to talk with the detective. Think I was only there 2 days. On the first day, I showed them the place she lived, a place Cha Cha took me to a party at and a bar where she knew people. It seems to me that it was the next day that the detective told me they had arrested a man and he showed me a picture of him. I had never seen him before.

Back at home, I had called the detective a few times. He said that someone had claimed her body and put her on a train to somewhere. Okay. The case was solved.
At times after I got my computer and first got on the internet, searching was free. I searched cemetaries for her name. I never found her name nor had I come close to finding a name close to hers.

More than a year ago, my husband told me that there were two detectives at the backdoor wanting to talk to me. I shut off the vacuum cleaner and went to the back porch. I asked what it was about. They said it was something good.

Can you imagine how I felt when they told me that they were working a cold case file of my friend, Mary Costa?
"What do you mean? That was solved back in 1972!"

When they got up to leave I asked why that detective told me those lies. They had no idea.
I said, "he even showed me a small jail photo of a man that was supposed to have committed the murder!"

I'm glad that they didn't lie to her son's grandparents. Or this case would never have been brought this far. Two years ago, her son, Jim Stellflug, got the case reopened. He didn't give up and let it go.

Here are the photos of the man they have in custody for her murder. I took the picture of him off the newspaper on the internet and de-aged him to see what he may have looked like back in 1972. While I was working on the photo, I thought that perhaps I would recognize him, but I do not.
I put his photos here because if he had committed other crimes there in Palm Springs, perhaps someone will come forward and announce it.
I am worried that after all these years, he may get a shorter sentence. I have no idea how these things work.

I am also inserting the web sites of the newspapers concerning this episode. It has addresses and phone numbers to contact if anyone knows anything about him and or the crime.

My hat is off to Kate.McGinty@thedesertsun.com for not repeating what the other reporters declared about her.

Thank you Kate.

The man arrested for the crime: Michael Jerome Hayes.