The next day, after she had not returned home, her roommates notified the police. The police questioned the boyfriend and then he along with the police searched with bloodhounds and Explorer scouts the area where he had last seen her. They were unable to find any trace.

The police continued to question the boyfriend from time to time and gave him a polygraph test. Five weeks later, the police decided to play a trick on him. They lied to him by saying that they had found her body along with his fingerprints, proof that he did it. He immediately confessed. He explained that when he had gone back to look for her, he had found her sulking. He had become angry and hit her, knocking her to the ground, leaving her bleeding.

That night, he had come back and had had sexual intercourse with her dead body. He had then buried her in a shallow grave "to give her a decent burial". On at least one other occasion, he had returned to the site, dug her up and had sexual intercourse with her dead body and then had buried her again.

The case was tried in California Superior Court. Bradley Page was found guilty and, due to the heinous nature of the crime, he was sentenced to four years in prison for murder and additional years for rape.

On appeal, the California Court of Appeals reversed the rape conviction, on the ground that sex with a dead body does constitute rape, because the dead body lacks the capacity to consent. The murder conviction stood.

This case because a cause célèbre in California, because it was claimed that the murder confession had been coerced by the police, when they had tricked him by saying that they had found her dead body, when actually they had not.

Hundreds of newspaper articles were written about this case. This case was even featured on the Connie Chung show. Bradley Page did not have to serve his sentence until 1992, because he was allowed to remain out on bail pending appeal. When he did finally surrender himself, there were pickets and signs protesting his incarceration. In addition to claiming that his confession was coerced, the demonstrators complained that four years in prison was too severe a sentence because (1) Bibi Lee was Chinese and (2) she had been a Cal Berkeley student.

I found out about this case by accident. I was browsing through the law library. Some discarded paper back supplements of the California Reporter had been thrown in the trash can, so I pulled them out and took them home. I found the lengthy opinion of the Bibi Lee case in these books. Because of its gory details, I read the entire opinion. When I later often saw this case mentioned in the news media, I found it difficult to believe that anyone would claim that Bradley Page was innocent.

However, never fear. Bradley Page got out of prison in 1994. He only had to serve 2 1/2 years of his four year sentence.

Sam Sloan

• "The Dead Girl", a book about the Bibi Lee murder
• THE PEOPLE vs. BRADLEY NELSON PAGE, Defendant and Appellant. No. A043127 Court Of Appeal Of California, First Appellate District, Division Three. 2 Cal. App. 4th 161, 92 Cal. Daily Op. Service 97, 2 Cal. Rptr. 2d 898, 92 Daily Journal DAR 72, 1991 Cal. App. Decision December 31, 1991
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