Teacher Murdered in Cambridge Apartment

A young school teacher was fatally stabbed as she entered her darkened first floor Cambridge apartment Monday night.

Linda Marshall, 25, was attacked at 11:50 p.m. when she returned from a friend's room upstairs in her Centre St. apartment house. Police think the assailant entered through the bathroom window and hid behind the bedroom door.

A trail of blood led from the bedroom door into the hallway and up the stairs. David Edsall, who lives on the second floor, heard Miss Marshall screaming and found her on the landing. An ambulance carried her to the Cambridge City Hospital, where she was pronounced dead on arrival.

Police are seeking the murderer from a description provided by an unidentified witness. They are also working with fingerprints found in the victim's apartment. No murder weapon has been found.

Miss Marshall was a second grade teacher at the Fairbanks School in Sudbury. William West, the school's principal, said of Miss Marshall, "In all my days of teaching, I've never seen a teacher give more loving care to children."

Last May a Harvard graduate student, Jane F. Balkan, was stabbed repeatedly less than two blocks from the site of Monday's slaying, Miss Balkan survived the attack.