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Woman Found in Trunk Was Slain: Police Try to Trace Victim's Final Days

Posted on: Saturday, 3 June 2006, 15:00 CDT

By Mara H. Gottfried, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.

Jun. 3--Darlene D. Darling had been sober for at least four years until the stresses of being unemployed started catching up with her about two months ago. She started drinking again, split with her boyfriend of nine years and, as of Thursday, hadn't been seen for about a week, friends said.

Someone in St. Paul's Summit-University neighborhood called police about 6:20 p.m. Thursday to report a foul odor coming from a car. Officers opened the trunk of a Buick sedan parked in the 600 block of Fuller Avenue and found the body of a woman inside.

On Friday, police identified Darling, 47, as the woman found in the trunk. The medical examiner's office was able to get a fingerprint from the badly decomposed body to identify Darling. She is St. Paul's eighth homicide victim this year. The cause of her death and circumstances surrounding it remained under investigation Friday.

"It didn't matter if she was drunk or sober; in my eyes she was always a good person," said Wanda Kobinski, a friend and neighbor of Darling, who lived for nine years in the 300 block of Jenks Avenue.

Known by friends as "Dee," Darling was devoted to her grandchildren, loved garage sales and was proud of her American Indian heritage.

Darling had been working on her GED and having a hard time finding a job, Kobinski said. Darling recently told Kobinski she was seeing another man but planned to call it off with him.

Police stopped by Darling's longtime boyfriend's house Thursday night, asking about her.

The man found out later that officers had found a body in a trunk, and he rushed over to the scene. It was Darling's vehicle.

"Oh please, please don't let it be her," Brenda Sadek, a neighbor who drove the man to the scene, said Thursday night. They soon learned that it was Darling.

No arrests have been made. Police released Darling's picture and described her as 5 feet 3 inches tall and weighing about 140 pounds, in the hope that people will recognize her and help detectives reconstruct her whereabouts during the past several weeks.

Mara H. Gottfried covers St. Paul public safety. She can be reached at mgottfried@pioneerpress.com.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: Saint Paul Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.)

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