Hollywood dreams: The murder of Juliana Redding

None of Redding's friends knew that anything was wrong, at first, at Redding's apartment. However, when they were still unable to contact her on Sunday, March 16, 2008, after repeated attempts, some of those friends notified Redding's mother in Tucson and expressed their concern. A short time later, after being unable to reach Juliana by telephone, Redding's mother notified police in Santa Monica that she and others had been unable to contact her. She was assured that officers would stop by her apartment to conduct a welfare check.

Lt. Alex Padilla

"Friends had been trying to contact her," Lt. Alex Padilla, spokesman for the Santa Monica Police Department (SMPD), said. "They called her mom, she called our department."

It was shortly after 6 p.m. that day when officers arrived at the apartment complex, according to Padilla. Finding a small amount of blood on a sidewalk outside Redding's Apartment A, officers quickly decided they needed to gain entry when no one responded to repeated knocking at the front door.

Once inside, an officer quickly learned why no one had been able to make contact with Juliana: She was dead. Although police did not divulge the precise location where they found her body, it was clear to them that her death was the result of a homicide. Homicide detectives, who arrived a bit later, concluded that she had not been dead for more than two days.

"There were obvious signs of trauma," Padilla told ABC News. "At that point, we started interviewing neighbors about who'd seen her last. Now we're trying to put the pieces together."