Fear Takes Up Residence in Area of S.D. Murders

They are hiding their knives, avoiding daytime showers, changing their locks, keeping baseball bats beside their beds. They’re afraid to show their faces for television cameras or allow their names to be used in print.

Women in University City and Clairemont are frantic over reports that a serial killer has fatally stabbed five women since January, two of them last week.

“As much as everyone tries to hide it, people are really frightened,” said Jack Edison, who lives with two women in Clairemont on the street where two of the killings occurred. “I’m a guy and it even bothers me. There’s someone out there who is wacko.”

The pattern is eerie: Four of the five victims were brunettes between 18 and 21 years old, all stabbed between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. by someone who entered through unlocked or open doors. The fifth was the 42-year-old mother of one of the women, whom the killer did not expect to be home, police believe.

Some had just showered before they were killed. Three were slain within a two-block area in Clairemont. The two most recent stabbings occurred last week three miles away in University City.

“There was a level of security here that people used to take for granted,” said Richard Madsen, a professor of sociology at UC San Diego and a resident of University City. “Now that’s gone.”

Another UCSD professor, who said his wife would not let him be quoted by name, said the level of concern about the murders in University City is “astonishing. People are reading every word of it in the papers and talking about nothing else on the streets.”

After the third murder, in April, police released a composite drawing of a suspect: a black man, 14 to 23 years old, with close-cropped hair and medium build, between 5-foot-7 and 5-foot-10.

Although they have not changed the drawing since the latest murders, police are hedging on their description: The suspect may be dark-skinned rather than black.

However, that has not stopped reports that police are harassing blacks near the site of the murders and taking their photos. Police officials denied those charges Thursday.

“From the point of view of someone who’s African-American, that can be construed as questionable,” said City Councilman Wes Pratt, who is black. “When you detain someone, that means they’re under arrest, doesn’t it? All of us want them to catch the killer, but we don’t want our Police Department to overreact.”

With 19 detectives working full time on the case and extra patrols roaming neighborhoods in both areas, San Diego police are calling the serial killing investigation the city’s largest in history.

They are working on a dozen different theories: The killer staked out his victims before attacking; rode a bus line that connects all four murder sites; may have held a job delivering flyers in the neighborhood; may be a service repairman; may be homeless; may be a gardener.

Police in this city are used to highly publicized murders. A team of city, county and state investigators has been working for two years on the killings of 43 women, mostly transients or prostitutes, since 1985.

They are not used to the public reaction the University City-Clairemont killings has generated. Since Sept. 13, police dispatchers have been swamped with more than 600 tips, from the serious to the frivolous. Many callers claim to have seen the killer, but police say they have no suspects.

When law enforcement officials arranged a neighborhood meeting in University City on Tuesday night to discuss safety precautions, more than 800 alarmed people showed up, filling the school auditorium and spilling outdoors while police officials scrambled between the two groups.

Police have assigned five full-time community service workers to help residents make sure their homes are secure. Normally, only two are assigned and they do five checks per week. Now they are doing about 15 a day.

People are stripping hardware stores of locks and security systems.

“Door locks and window guards are flying out of here,” said Connie Johnson, assistant manager of the Home Depot in Clairemont. “We’ve had to air-freight our orders. Some of these people are getting to the panic stage.”

Diane Ainslie, who sells window screens affixed with burglar alarms to about 140 alarm companies throughout San Diego, said sales to stores in University City “have gone sky high.”

And gun sales are up, especially among women.

Woody Seals, owner of A & W Guns, said many of the women who have purchased guns from his shop recently have taken home revolvers and other types of small handguns.

“Something small and simple, easy to handle,” Seals said, describing the choice of guns.

Deputy Police Chief Cal Krosch said that, although women should be cautious, they should not be panicked.

“I suggest to people that they cannot change their lifestyles,” he said. “You’ve got to continue living your life. There’s no reason to turn it upside-down. Life’s too short.

The killings started in January. The first victim was Tiffany Paige Schultz, a 20-year-old student at San Diego State University who moonlighted as a nude dancer at a local nightclub. She was stabbed more than 50 times.

Schultz lived on Cowley Way, two blocks from where Janene Marie Weinhold, 21, a UC San Diego student, was murdered Feb. 16. Weinhold was doing her laundry and baking cookies at the time she was killed, authorities say. Her father said she was stabbed more than 30 times.

The third victim was an 18-year-old high school student and aspiring actress, Holly Suzanne Tarr, who had come to San Diego from her hometown of Okemos, Mich., to visit her brother during spring vacation. She had just left the Buena Vista Gardens swimming pool--near where both Schultz and Weinhold were murdered--and had showered when the slaying occurred, according to police and relatives.

Authorities say one of last week’s victims had showered just before the murder and that another victim, in addition to Tarr, had showered before she was attacked. Willard (Bill) Schultz, the father of Tiffany, said he had been told that his daughter had left the swimming pool to return to her apartment to shower before she was killed.

The most recent victims were Pamela Clark, 42, and her 18-year-old daughter, Amber, whom a family friend found stabbed to death inside their University City home about three miles from the previous three murders. Amber Clark bore a striking resemblance, police say, to the previous victims.

Police believe the killer used kitchen knives taken from the residences in all but the first case.

Many women in the University City-Clairemont area believe they could be next. None of the women interviewed in those areas Thursday would allow their surnames to be published.

Barbara, 41, said she is keeping her 15- and 13-year-old daughters out of school “to have them closer to me” until she feels safer.

And, fearful of being home during the hours of 8 a.m. and 1 p.m.--when the killer has attacked--the mother and her girls had gone bowling at Clairemont Bowl, near the site of the first three killings.

“Our lives have been changed drastically by this,” said the mother, a resident of Clairemont. “We live in fear of something happening.”

“Yeah, now we keep baseball bats by the door,” the 15-year-old said.

“And all of the doors and windows are locked,” the 13-year-old said.

“Everyone around the area is real scared,” the mother said, adding that some women have stopped showering during the day. She said she and her daughters are taking showers only at night.

“The doors are locked 24 hours a day, and I want my husband to get a security door and security screens,” the mother said.

Charlotte and Lizette--who asked that their last names not be published--are law students who live in Clairemont near the site of the first three slayings. Each moved in about a month ago from out of state without having heard of the murders. They’ve considered moving out but say they won’t--for the time being.

“We’re all really scared, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that everyone I know is terrified of this guy striking again,” Lizette said.

Darrell Williams, a letter carrier in the Clairemont area, who delivers mail to the Buena Vista Gardens complex where the second and third murders occurred, said Thursday that “there’s definitely a heightened nervousness out here. You can feel it everywhere you go.”

Times staff writer John D. Cramer contributed to this report.

DNA TESTING: Police acknowledge delay in testing of hair samples. B1