Victim Found in Box Was Strangled, Coroner Says

A woman whose remains were found stuffed in a cardboard box off Santa Susana Pass Road last week died “as a result of head trauma and strangulation,” coroners said Monday following the release of autopsy results.

“The body was fully intact and she was clothed,” said Scott Carrier, spokesman for the Los Angeles County coroner. “She was in a fetal position in the box. She was not dismembered.”

Fingerprints established that the body was Cohen, Carrier said.

Cohen, 28, of Glendale was reported missing Aug. 11 by her mother.

Glendale police will seek a murder charge against Anthony Roy Shivers Jr. today, officials close to the investigation said. Shivers is a civilian dispatcher for the California Highway Patrol, where he has worked for nearly six years.

Cohen’s body was found Friday morning in a box in a Ventura County ravine, five days after she was reported missing.

A search warrant executed last week at Shivers’ Studio City apartment led investigators to the scene of a fire last week in Ventura County. There, investigators discovered a 2-by-3-foot box containing Cohen’s body.

Investigators allege that Shivers hid the box in the ravine off Santa Susana Pass Road and set the fire to cover the crime. The box was not damaged by the blaze, which was put out by Ventura County firefighters Aug. 10. Firefighters did not discover the box when battling the blaze.

Shivers is Cohen’s ex-boyfriend. Friends say he broke off the relationship a week before Cohen was reported missing.

Shivers was in custody at the L.A. County Jail, where he was transferred after complaining of back pains while in custody in Glendale, said Chahe Keuroghelian, spokesman for the Glendale Police Department.