Sisterhood Candidate Found Strangled In Park WHEELING, W.Va. (AP) - The nude body of a 26-year» old woman preparing to be a nun was found in a field here Monday afternoon. Police believe she was strangled tnd raped. Roberta Elam was found about 75 yards from the Mt. St. Joseph Mother House where she was a pre-novitiate candidate for the Sisters of St. Joseph. Miss Elam was sitting on a bench facing the Speidel Golf Course at Oglebay Park and may have been praying when she was attacked, police,said. "We feel that the subject came through the woods behind her. pulled her backwards over the bench and carried her approximately 30 feet" to a fence, according to detective Norm Sayre of the Ohio County Sheriff's Department, "There we/e golfers over at Oglebay Park golfing range and this way he would have been out of view of my golfers;" Sayre said. Police haven't found anything that may have been in the strangulation and believe the assailant may have used his bare hands on Miss Elam, who comes from Allendale. N.J. Miss Elam had been wearing bluejeans. Her body found at 1:50 p.m. by a caretaker and the attack is to-have taken place between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., Bloodhounds were at the scene trying to track evidence, police said. · The bruised body was taken to a Wheeling hospital an autopsy will be performed, police said. At the time of the slaying. Miss Elam "was is called a silent retreat at the mother house - a contemplation," according to Frank Sweeney, director communications for the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston.