Warning Issued to San Diego Gays After Three Balboa Park Murders

Police are warning this city’s gay community to take extra precautions after recent murders in Balboa Park linked to a killer who may be targeting homosexuals as his victims.

The bodies of three men--all victims of multiple gunshots--have been found in the sprawling downtown park since mid-November.

Investigators said it appeared that two of the men were gay because of statements made by friends and relatives, and police also believe the victims were homeless.

Warning on Strangers

“My advice is, were I a homosexual male, and were I accustomed to going to Balboa Park in pursuit of sexual liaisons, I would be very, very cautious of being approached by strangers,” said Lt. Phil Jarvis, who directs the homicide division of the San Diego Police Department.

“We have no idea who we’re looking for,” Jarvis said. “We don’t have a description. We don’t have a race. We don’t have a sex. The assumption is that the killer is male, but we don’t know that. Based on our total lack of information, we’ve told homosexual men to be cautious about dealing with anybody in that part of the park.”

Jarvis said the body of the first victim, 31-year-old David Siino, was found Nov. 19 in an area known as Redwood Circle. It lies off Balboa Drive, north of Laurel Street and just north of the lawn-bowling court. He said homosexuals refer to the area as “Queen Circle” because of its popularity as a cruising spot.

The second body, that of Edward Hope, 60, was found six days later on the western edge of the park, just above California 163, near an on-ramp for Interstate 5 northbound and up the hill from the tennis courts at San Diego High School.

The third body, that of Brian Russell Poole, 36, was found Saturday in a restroom near Marston’s Point, in the 2300 block of 8th Avenue.

Jarvis said he does not know whether gay men or homeless men or both were being targeted by the killer. “So we’ve taken a pro-active stance in notifying everybody in the park to be careful.

“The patrol division has made a concerted effort to clean the park up, and until the recent past, they believed they’d succeeded,” he said. “Well, this is a definite setback. It only takes one person to do this sort of thing, but the park, assuredly, is not the place it was 10 years ago, when children could wander there freely day and night. Now you have absolute townships living in the bush out there.”

Fred Scholl, director of legal services for the Lesbian and Gay Men’s Community Center and the Center for Social Services, said he had advised gay men to be especially wary of the park, which he believes is “at its most dangerous point” in 20 years.

Scholl said fears surrounding Balboa Park have become so intense that gays are avoiding it altogether.

“In the 20-something years I’ve monitored the park for legal services, it’s the first time I’ve seen a total shutdown of cruising,” Scholl said. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad--it’s just the reality. I’d say there’s significant fear. The park used to be active from sundown to 11 p.m., and now it’s desolate.

“A lot of violence has been going on on the west side of the park for two years or more,” Scholl said. “Robberies, drug dealing--it’s really a high-crime area. I’m not so sure that this killer is targeting gay men. It may be that a large number of gay and bisexual men favor that part of the park as a cruising area and simply ended up as targets of opportunity.”

Scott Fulkerson, executive director of the Lesbian and Gay Men’s Community Center, said he worried that the slayings have spawned fresh bigotry against gays, fostering an attitude that homosexuals “will get what’s coming to them. I’ve got news for you,” he said. “The park is unsafe not just for gays, but for the general population. Contrary to popular belief, gays are not going there in mass numbers to have sex in the bushes.”

‘Gay-Bashing’ Increases

Last week in San Diego, gay leaders cited what they called a growing incidence of “gay-bashing” by so-called Skinheads in Mission Hills and Hillcrest, as well as periodic outbreaks of violence against gays in other parts of the city.

Fulkerson praised the San Diego Police Department for “outreach” efforts and, in particular, for curbing the “gay-bashing.”

“Police response to that has been immediate and forceful,” Fulkerson said.

He said a Mission Hills businessman, who was accused by Skinheads of being gay but who, in fact, is not, was brutally beaten in a recent attack.