Ex-Husband to Be Tried in Killing of Lottery Winner

The killing of Anne Jenkins in February, 1988, three weeks after she and her husband won $727,000 in the California Lottery, seemed to be an unsolvable crime.

Homicide investigators couldn’t find a single shred of forensic evidence at the 30-year-old woman’s San Marcos home. There were no fingerprints, no fibers, no hairs, no murder weapon--nothing.

But what investigators found later were several books detailing how to commit the perfect murder, including chapters on how to foil the crime lab.

The books were in the possession of Jenkins’ ex-husband, David Scott Harrison. The two had been entangled in an acrimonious, eight-year custody battle over the couple’s two children.

On Friday, Harrison, 32, was ordered to stand trial in Vista Superior Court on charges that he murdered Jenkins by slashing her throat.

“It’s ironic that the same books he used to perfect the technique of this murder turned out to be his undoing,” said Larry Burns, an assistant U. S. attorney who handled the preliminary examination of Harrison on behalf of the district attorney’s office because he had previously prosecuted Harrison on federal bomb charges.

“This is probably the most interesting criminal case I’ve ever handled,” Burns said. “All the evidence against Harrison is circumstantial. There’s no direct evidence linking the defendant to the house. But we have strong motive, preparation and opportunity on his part.”

The motive, Burns alleged, was Harrison’s concern that his ex-wife, with her new-found wealth, could better finance the legal battle over the visitation and financial support of the couple’s children, who were in her custody. Previously, Jenkins had been financially drained by the legal costs, while Harrison had relied on his family’s wealth to pay for his efforts.

The preparation, Burns said, came by reading books on murder and through the incessant harassment of Jenkins, her new husband, Gary Jenkins, and her father.

Harrison’s attorney, Alan May, argued during the preliminary hearing before Vista Municipal Judge Suzanne Knauf that police did not adequately investigate the crime and that there are other suspects, including Gary Jenkins himself.

Harrison, who is already serving a 20-year federal prison term, will be arraigned Jan. 2 in Vista Superior Court.

He took the stand in his own defense Thursday, admitting that he had changed the Jenkinses’ telephone number, ordered unwanted magazine subscriptions for the couple and submitted false change-of-address forms for both the Jenkinses’ home and her father’s home and business.

Harrison had also talked to others about throat slashings, according to testimony, and Burns submitted a picture in court showing Harrison’s male lover pretending to slash Harrison’s own throat--a reenactment complete with ketchup.

Harrison had been convicted in federal court for the bombing of Gary Jenkins’ ex-wife’s vehicle in Vista--an unsuccessful attempt, Burns said, to cast suspicion on Gary Jenkins as a violent person.

During the preliminary hearing, Gary Jenkins testified that Harrison had threatened to throw a pipe bomb through the children’s bedroom window in San Marcos.

There is no direct evidence putting Harrison at the scene of the killing, but a neighbor testified that he saw Anne Jenkins arguing with a man in front of her house the day she was killed and overheard words about child custody and court battle. The neighbor quoted the woman as telling the man: “We have money now. We can fight you.”

Burns alleged that, although Harrison had tried to establish several alibis for himself the day of the killing, there was opportunity for him to leave his Solana Beach home and a two-hour unexplained gap in his otherwise documented activities at the time at which the coroner’s office said Jenkins was killed.

A former jail cellmate testified that Harrison had talked about the murder, telling him, “I promise you, she suffered.”