‘I Didn’t Do It,’ Sobs Slain Nude Dancer’s Boyfriend : Crime: He proclaims his innocence after being held by police for five days. Detectives say he’s still a suspect.

Christopher Jon Burns, the 28-year-old construction worker arrested Jan. 13 on suspicion of murdering his fiancee, a nude dancer at a Loma Portal nightclub, said this week that he is innocent and that he was wronged by the system.

“This is worse than a nightmare,” he said. “Nightmare is too weak a word for what I’ve been through. This is a horror that will never end.”

Burns spent five days in County Jail after the death of Tiffany Paige Schultz, a 20-year-old English major at San Diego State University who moonlighted as a “go-go” dancer at Les Girls, reportedly making as much as $300 a night in tips.

Burns said he walked in the door of his Clairemont apartment in the 3100 block of Cowley Way about 9 p.m. Jan. 12 and found Schultz lying on the floor. He said he called 911 immediately.

When police arrived, they found the nude body of a woman who had been stabbed repeatedly. They said her clothing, and any obvious murder weapon, were gone. They questioned Burns and another man, with whom the couple shared the apartment.

The roommate was never arrested. But Burns was arrested, and he wasn’t released from jail until the following Wednesday. Police and prosecutors said they did not have the evidence to keep him longer.

Burns said the proof to convict him will never be found.

“But I’ve found that in America you’re guilty until proven innocent,” he said in an interview with The Times. “The way I’ve been treated, the way the press takes anything they want and don’t check anything. . . . It’s a little bit more than a nightmare. It’s the kind you don’t wake up from.”

Burns said he was angry with the media for reporting comments made by Kathleen Pierce, the manager of Les Girls, who said Schultz “desperately” wanted to leave her relationship with Burns, a relationship Pierce termed “destructive.”

Pierce was quoted as saying, “(Schultz) often came to work with bruises on her wrists and ankles. She had told this guy several times she wanted to leave, that she did not wish to continue an abusive relationship. She said he tied her up and hit her, and that he was a deviant person sexually. She said he enjoyed watching movies in which men behaved violently toward women.”

“All of that is complete, utter bull . . . ,” Burns said. “Nothing could be further from the truth. That stuff about our relationship being on the rocks--completely untrue. Tiffany had just gotten diamond earrings from me at Christmas, as an engagement present. We were planning to be married this summer. She was the first girl I had ever asked to marry me.”

‘Beautiful Person’

Burns said he liked “everything about Tiffany,” whom he called “the most beautiful person, inside and out. There was nobody like her, and I was so supportive of everything she did.”

Friends of Burns have been quoted as saying that he was less than happy with her working at Les Girls, which, because it does not sell alcohol, is not required to make dancers wear anything, not even a G-string. The nudity is total, both on the main stage and in a red-draped private room, in which dancers perform one-on-one for individuals from the clientele, which is made up almost entirely of men, many of whom are sailors or Marine recruits. Some, however, are businessmen and professionals.

“She worked at Les Girls for nine days after Christmas and had worked there for two weeks in the fall, and that was it,” Burns said. “The only reason she had gone there in the first place was, she had a falling-out with her mother. Her mother had cut her off financially. She needed money, so she moved in with me and took the job at Les Girls.

“It’s true that I didn’t like her working there, but Tiffany was not the kind of girl that you could tell what to do.”

Burns was interviewed at a Japanese restaurant on Garnet Avenue in Pacific Beach. His bright blond hair is trimmed in a stylish cut, and he wears a diamond earring in his left earlobe. As he spoke, he sipped quietly from a can of Sprite.

He cried frequently during the interview but never more than when he discussed his fiancee’s life as a nude dancer. At the table, he pulled out a photograph of him with his girlfriend, both dressed formally, clutching each other tightly and grinning from ear to ear.

“She came home and cried every night after her shift at Les Girls,” he said. “I was always trying to help Tiffany with self-esteem. She had been bulimic since her early teens, 12 or 13. She was adopted, she had no real parents. She was always trying to find out who her real parents were, but her mother wouldn’t tell her, and her mother knew. We both came from alcoholic families. We had that in common.

“She was a special person, very giving, very caring. She would do anything for just about anybody, unless you crossed her. And then she’d never have faith in you again.”

Suspicious Characters

Burns believes his fiancee’s killer was a man who may have watched her perform at Les Girls and then followed her home.

“Tiffany was always telling me about the girls who worked there being followed by these guys who came to the club,” Burns said. “She used to say, ‘These (creeps) think they own you.’ She told me last fall that somebody tried to follow her home, but she lost him. Took him on a chase.”

Burns met Schultz early last year. She came from Grass Valley, a tiny town in Nevada County where her father, Willard W. (Bill) Schultz, is a member of the Board of Supervisors. Shortly after coming to San Diego to attend SDSU, she took a job at Hamel’s Action Sports, a Mission Beach surf-and-sport shop, where friends say she met Burns. They say he fancied himself a bodybuilder, and that she enjoyed roller-blading on the boardwalk, wearing only a bikini top and G-string.

He said all of the good times they shared vanished in the shock of finding her dead on the floor.

“It still doesn’t seem real,” he said. “It’s not like something I can accept right now, but I don’t have any choice. I’ve never been through anything like this in my entire life. My grandparents died when I was really young, but until Tiffany, I had never lost anybody close.”

Burns said Pierce, the Les Girls manager, is trying to protect herself. “She’s terrified of the cops shutting her down. She said Tiffany made only $150 a day--that’s complete bull. . . . She never would have worked there if that’s all it paid. She’d make close to $200 a day, easy, and on Fridays and Saturdays, $350 a day, minimum. She made $1,000 a week or more. In nine days once, she made more than $2,000.

“Hey, it’s all cash money. Those girls walk out of there with a stack of bills, and I’m sure none of it gets reported. So, Pierce is trying to cover herself. I know that Tiffany would never talk to her about our relationship, much less our sexual relationship. I don’t know where the woman ever came up with that.

“Our relationship had problems, but every relationship has problems. It was no more than any relationship. No relationship is completely smooth all the time. Tiffany was a very emotional girl,” Burns said, then cried.

Asked if he committed the murder, Burns paused and then, haltingly, began to answer.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “I don’t really trust anybody anymore. But, no, I didn’t do it. I’ve told that to the police the entire time.”

Still a Suspect

Sgt. Ray Sigwalt, the homicide agent investigating the case for the San Diego Police Department, said Burns, who has no criminal record, “is still very much a suspect.” Sigwalt said he expects no breakthrough in the case anytime soon and said it may remain an unsolved mystery.

“It is a real heartbreaker,” he said. “We believe the motive was domestic. And, if anybody goes out and does the legwork, a good deal of the information will confirm that.”

The forensics are not complete, but at this point, Sigwalt said, the evidence is lacking. Otherwise, he said, Burns would still be in jail.

“I can’t make things up,” Sigwalt said. “I have to go where the evidence takes me. I still have reason to believe that my original feelings were correct. Until we completely process the evidence, which may take another month, we just won’t know.”

Sigwalt said he isn’t sure “we have the exact murder weapon at this time.” He said a lot of the fingerprints found in the home “were different. The problem is, it’s a shared environment,” meaning the apartment was occupied by Burns, Schultz and Burns’ male roommate, whose prints, in some cases, overlapped.

In the meantime, Sigwalt said Burns is under no police restrictions.

But Burns said he will never be free in some respects. He said an ulcer he believed was dormant is bleeding again and causing him great pain. He said that, for the first time in his life, he is seeing a psychologist.

He said his friends and parents (the family is from Minnesota) have been “especially supportive. My parents just left, after a brief stay here, and they’ve been behind me the whole way,” Burns said. “That’s the only thing that’s gotten me through.

“My family is closer than it’s ever been. My dad’s been sober quite a few years. My parents are the greatest in the world.”

Burns called his best friend and boss, a general contractor in San Diego, an “indispensable” ally.

Customer Questioned

He said he clings to the hope that another suspect will surface soon. He said he was told that police questioned a Tijuana jeweler, who often came to Les Girls to visit Tiffany Schultz and watch her perform, particularly in the private room, fees for which range from $20 to $50, depending on the length of time.

Sigwalt said homicide agents had reviewed several hours of videotape recorded in the private room for insight into the relationship between the jeweler and Schultz. Sigwalt said the Mexican jeweler had spent considerable time with Schultz on the Wednesday before her death.

“We have talked at length to the jeweler from Tijuana,” Sigwalt said. “He’s been cooperative with us. He had been involved in a long conversation with Tiffany shortly before her death.”

Asked if the jeweler is a suspect, Sigwalt said, “We haven’t excluded anybody as a suspect. But we don’t anticipate the jeweler being arrested.”

Burns knows the police don’t believe him.

“Sigwalt told my father, ‘Mr. Burns, I’ve been in this business 25 years, and I think your son’s lying. I think he did it. He’s not telling the truth about something, and I think he’s guilty.’ He said he could have held me another 48 hours but decided not to,” Burns said.

“They have no proof at all, because all I did was call 911. Tiffany wrote me a letter two days before she died. In it, she says she understands how I felt about her working at Les Girls and that it hurt her to know how much it hurt me. She said, ‘Together, we’ll get through this, and I love you.’ ”

Burns said the police have the letter. He said that, even if the killer is caught, it won’t provide solace to him. He said his peace of mind is gone, probably forever.

“My life with Tiffany is over now, and nothing will bring her back,” he said, his voice choking with emotion. “I want to see that person punished for what he’s done. But I was not even allowed by Tiffany’s parents to attend her funeral. You ought to try something like that for yourself. I can’t even talk to her parents right now. All they read is this negative (crap) that you people print in the newspaper.

“This was a crime totally senseless and without reason. For a person’s entire life to change in an afternoon. . . . I’ll never be the same again.”