Read Online Journey into Darkness by John Douglas, Mark Olshaker - Free Book Online
Authors: John Douglas, Mark Olshaker
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Tarr in the bedroom under a bloodcovered towel.
By this point the media had dubbed him the “Clairemont Killer.”
We expected this could signal a cooling-off period in which he’d lie low for a while and recover his nerve. And we expected this to be the end of his activities at this particular apartment complex. He might even move to another city on the pretext of a job offer or visiting relatives or friends. But it was unlikely he’d stop altogether. Most of these guys have no burn-out point.
He did surface again, almost two months later, at a different location, but still an apartment complex in the same general vicinity where he obviously felt most comfortable. Then there were no more similar killings until the middle of September, when two women, Pamela Clark and her eighteen-year-old daughter, Amber, were killed in a house in the nearby area of University City. Even though these last victims had been mother and daughter, Pamela Clark was youthful-looking and very attractive. All of the six women fit a general physical profile, and in photographs Amber Clark looked remarkably like the previous victim, Janene Weinhold.
In the largest manhunt in the city’s history, San Diego police worked intensively for thirteen months to find the one subject they were convinced was responsible for all six grisly and sadistic deaths.
The break came early in February of 1991, when Geralynd Venverloth returned home from a Family Fitness Center health club and was going into the shower when she heard her doorknob jiggling. Looking through the peephole, she saw a black man trying to open the door. She managed to slip the dead bolt and he fled. But then several mornings later, Venverloth saw the same man dropping off her associate, Charla Lewis, at work.
His name was Cleophus Prince, Jr. Police arrested himafter staking out the health club and booked him for burglary. They found several knives on the floor of Prince’s 1982 Chevy Cavalier. But they had to release him on his own recognizance for lack of evidence. They did, however, get blood and saliva samples, which were sent to Cellmark Diagnostics in Maryland for DNA analysis. Three weeks later, the results came back with a match for Janene Weinhold’s attacker.
Police went to Charla Lewis’s apartment, where Prince had been living. It was next door to where the fourth victim, Elissa Keller, had lived. Prince had skipped town, and gone back home to Birmingham, Alabama. But at the apartment, detectives found a gold opal ring identical to the one Holly Tarr’s father had given her on her sixteenth birthday. The ring’s manufacturer told police that only sixty-three such rings were made, none distributed in California.
On Sunday, March 3, 1991, police in Birmingham arrested the twenty-three-year-old black former Navy mechanic, who had lived in the Buena Vista Garden Apartments complex at the time of the first three murders. He had been arrested for theft and had been released on bail just before San Diego PD called. At Prince’s residence, detectives found another ring that looked like one described as belonging to Elissa Keller and shoes that matched prints found at several of the scenes. The San Diego Sheriff’s Department began investigating him in relation to the unsolved murder of Diane Dann in May of 1988. And Homewood, Alabama, police wanted to talk to him about the unsolved murder of twenty-three-year-old Toni Lim in March 1990. Both slayings bore some of the same characteristics as the stabbing deaths of the six women in the main series.
The key to the case was the DNA match between semen found on the clothing of the second Buena Vista victim, twenty-one-year-old Janene Weinhold, and blood and saliva samples they got from Prince. But what about the other five murders?
San Diego police asked us to reexamine the six cases to see if it was reasonable to conclude that one individual had committed all the murders. Several people, including prosecutors Dan Lamborn and
By this point the media had dubbed him the “Clairemont Killer.”
We expected this could signal a cooling-off period in which he’d lie low for a while and recover his nerve. And we expected this to be the end of his activities at this particular apartment complex. He might even move to another city on the pretext of a job offer or visiting relatives or friends. But it was unlikely he’d stop altogether. Most of these guys have no burn-out point.
He did surface again, almost two months later, at a different location, but still an apartment complex in the same general vicinity where he obviously felt most comfortable. Then there were no more similar killings until the middle of September, when two women, Pamela Clark and her eighteen-year-old daughter, Amber, were killed in a house in the nearby area of University City. Even though these last victims had been mother and daughter, Pamela Clark was youthful-looking and very attractive. All of the six women fit a general physical profile, and in photographs Amber Clark looked remarkably like the previous victim, Janene Weinhold.
In the largest manhunt in the city’s history, San Diego police worked intensively for thirteen months to find the one subject they were convinced was responsible for all six grisly and sadistic deaths.
The break came early in February of 1991, when Geralynd Venverloth returned home from a Family Fitness Center health club and was going into the shower when she heard her doorknob jiggling. Looking through the peephole, she saw a black man trying to open the door. She managed to slip the dead bolt and he fled. But then several mornings later, Venverloth saw the same man dropping off her associate, Charla Lewis, at work.
His name was Cleophus Prince, Jr. Police arrested himafter staking out the health club and booked him for burglary. They found several knives on the floor of Prince’s 1982 Chevy Cavalier. But they had to release him on his own recognizance for lack of evidence. They did, however, get blood and saliva samples, which were sent to Cellmark Diagnostics in Maryland for DNA analysis. Three weeks later, the results came back with a match for Janene Weinhold’s attacker.
Police went to Charla Lewis’s apartment, where Prince had been living. It was next door to where the fourth victim, Elissa Keller, had lived. Prince had skipped town, and gone back home to Birmingham, Alabama. But at the apartment, detectives found a gold opal ring identical to the one Holly Tarr’s father had given her on her sixteenth birthday. The ring’s manufacturer told police that only sixty-three such rings were made, none distributed in California.
On Sunday, March 3, 1991, police in Birmingham arrested the twenty-three-year-old black former Navy mechanic, who had lived in the Buena Vista Garden Apartments complex at the time of the first three murders. He had been arrested for theft and had been released on bail just before San Diego PD called. At Prince’s residence, detectives found another ring that looked like one described as belonging to Elissa Keller and shoes that matched prints found at several of the scenes. The San Diego Sheriff’s Department began investigating him in relation to the unsolved murder of Diane Dann in May of 1988. And Homewood, Alabama, police wanted to talk to him about the unsolved murder of twenty-three-year-old Toni Lim in March 1990. Both slayings bore some of the same characteristics as the stabbing deaths of the six women in the main series.
The key to the case was the DNA match between semen found on the clothing of the second Buena Vista victim, twenty-one-year-old Janene Weinhold, and blood and saliva samples they got from Prince. But what about the other five murders?
San Diego police asked us to reexamine the six cases to see if it was reasonable to conclude that one individual had committed all the murders. Several people, including prosecutors Dan Lamborn and
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