EXETER, England -- A headless corpse discovered in a wooded lovers' lane was identified Sunday as a California woman who married into one of Britain's richest families, police said.
A 33-year-old man was taken into custody and charged with murder after the bullet-ridden body of Monica Telling, 27, was identified.
The suspect's name was not released.
Mrs. Telling's body was found last weekend in a secluded woods near Exeter, 172 miles southwest of London.
She was married to the second cousin of Lord Samuel Vestey, a millionaire whose vast holdings include a butcher shop chain in Britain and huge farms in several countries.
Her father, Louis D. Zumsteg of Santa Rosa, Calif., told UPI that Exeter police notified him of his daughter's death early Sunday. He said the family was in a state of shock.
Police had been unable to identify the victim until one of her friends recognized a police description of an unusual T-shirt found on the corpse.
The friend told police that Mrs. Telling, who had been missing for some time, had a similar shirt, which pictured a camel and the words 'souvenir of Maroc' in Arabic.
Acting on the tip, police searched a garage in High Wycombe, 30 miles west of London, Saturday and found the head. Police theorized the woman had been killed in High Wycombe and her body driven to the secluded woods on the edge of the Exeter Forest to be dumped.
Forensic experts said Mrs. Telling, an attractive, active member of Britain's high society, had been shot four times in the back and that one of the shots had decapitated her.
Police said it was possible she had been killed some time ago and the body kept in a freezer or cold storage.
