A Look Back:

At first, police thought the man who stabbed pretty Oleta Hatcher to death at a Costa Mesa motor court in 1956 must have been a knife-wielding maniac, driven to kill by a full moon, or a loud drunk who said too much about women from Texas one night in a Newport Beach bar.

In the end, a tall dishwasher from Georgia who had been kicked out of the Army for stealing confessed to stabbing the young Army bride in the chest with a butcher knife before sexually attacking her, the Los Angeles Times reported April, 22, 1956.

A Texas native, Hatcher was 18 and in love with Harold Johnson, a 19-year-old private in the Army stationed at Santa Ana Army Air Base, which once sat on the site of the OC Fair and Events Center.

Although their parents believed the Texan couple had been married two years earlier, Hatcher and Johnson had never made their marriage official. Hatcher left the couple’s 2-month old son, who was born premature, in a hospital in Houston to travel to Costa Mesa in March 1956 to legally marry Johnson, according to an L.A. Times article dated April 1, 1956.

The young couple were broke when Hatcher arrived from Houston. The Red Cross gave them $10 for food and paid their rent for two weeks at a Costa Mesa motor court cottage near the air base, the Times reported.

The motor court, once at 350 Avocado St., just off Fairview Road, has since been replaced by condominiums.

On the night of the killing, a friend dropped Hatcher off at the motor court cottage after visiting Johnson at the air base. The private was pulling the late guard duty shift.

Johnson found his young bride dead with stab wounds to the chest when he returned in the early hours of March 29, 1956, according to contemporary news accounts.

Costa Mesa detectives first thought the crime must have been linked to the slaying of 18-year-old Barbara Jepson, of Van Nuys. Both women were stabbed to death and lived near Army air bases.

The press was quick to dub the perpetrator “the full moon killer.”

“Both women were murdered just after a full moon, leading some officers to believe they are seeking a man who goes into a murderous frenzy at that time,” The L.A. Times wrote.

Police also investigated the possibility that a talkative Army sergeant at a Newport Beach bar killed Hatcher.

“This man reportedly told Bryce Eastmen of Newport, ‘I’ll tell you how to handle those Texas women — you stick a knife in ’em,’” the Times reported.

John Calvin Tipton, a 20-year-old who had been kicked out of the Army a few weeks before the slaying, eventually confessed to stabbing and raping Hatcher, the Los Angeles Times reported April 22, 1956.

Tipton had recently moved from Lompoc to meet up with an old Army friend. He was staying a few doors down from Hatcher and Johnson at the motor court and had been drinking the night he saw Hatcher enter her cottage alone. He picked up a butcher knife and walked over to Hatcher’s door, which he found unlocked, the Times reported.

“He said she started toward him as he walked in, then stumbled back against the bed and fell on it,” the Times reported. “He said he stabbed her then, ‘Because I was afraid she would scream, not because she was resisting me.’”

Johnson broke down and cried when told of Tipton’s arrest, according to contemporary news reports.

Tipton was convicted and sentenced to death for raping and murdering Hatcher. Law enforcement officials found no connection between him and the Van Nuys slaying.

Tipton met his fate in a California gas chamber Sept. 26, 1958, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.