Memory Haunts Man Who Saw Killer

He has replayed the moment over and over in his mind: He was there--within an arm’s length of the man police say has now murdered five women in Clairemont and University City.

He has thought about the things he might have done differently, but it all adds up to the same fact, Richard Williams said:

The guy got away.

“And I’d give anything if he hadn’t,” he said with a sigh.

Still, police say Williams, a 58-year-old maintenance man at the Buena Vista Gardens apartments in Clairemont, is largely responsible for information leading to the composite drawing of a slim, dark-skinned man whose likeness is on wanted posters all over San Diego.

On the afternoon of Tuesday, April 3, Williams answered a page from the apartment building’s main office. He was told to report to an upstairs unit in the 3400 block of Cowley Way. A neighbor had heard a scream.

Although security guards had been paged as well, Williams was the first to arrive. Williams said another 15 minutes passed before security guards showed up. By that time, the killer was gone, but not before he had come at Williams with a knife held over his head.

Williams’ regret is twofold--he didn’t see the man’s face, which was covered with a shirt, and he didn’t stop him.

The killer’s victim that day was Holly Suzanne Tarr, an 18-year-old high school senior from Okemos, Mich., who had come to San Diego to visit her brother during spring break. She was the third woman to die in a series of stabbings that resulted in the deaths of Pamela Gail Clark, 42, and her daughter, Amber, 18, in University City on Sept. 13, police said.

At a briefing Thursday morning, Deputy Chief Cal Krosch said investigators from the three homicide teams are driven by a sense of urgency to catch the killer.

“If we don’t catch him, the guy will hit again,” Krosch said.

Krosch said the killer could strike outside University City because of media attention focused there, just as he had struck outside Clairemont.

Police spokesman Dave Cohen said this week that it was Williams’ confrontation with the killer that provided “the only basis” for the composite, which has drawn more than 1,600 tips leading to his arrest. Capt. Dick Toneck said this week that the most recent series of tips had made police feel “more optimistic” than at any time since the manhunt began.

“That (Tarr’s murder) was the only crime at which the suspect has been positively sighted,” Cohen said. “We had no suspect information after one or two and none at the scene immediately after four and five. So, really, Williams is the basis for that composite. All other information stems from that encounter.”

Williams said that one other employee, a painter, alerted by the commotion at the apartment, “got a real good look” at the killer. The painter saw the man run from the unit and he saw the man’s face. It’s the painter, Williams said, who told police the killer was black.

Although Williams never saw the man’s face, he did see his arms and neck, and says the man was “Mexican or Oriental, maybe Portuguese. The painter got a better look at his face, though, and swears he was black.”

Police have admitted confusion over the killer’s ethnic origin. After Tarr’s murder, they stuck to a description of the man being black. But after residents on Honors Drive in University City, where the Clarks were killed, claim to have seen a man in the neighborhood who matched the composite--and then described him as Latino or possibly Middle Eastern--authorities have wavered in referring to the man as “black.”

He’s now described as “dark-skinned,” 5-foot-7 to 5-foot-10 with a medium build and short, dark, curly hair. They believe he could be anywhere from 17 to 23 years old. Williams says “17 or 18, just a kid.”

In his confrontation with the killer, Williams said, the man did not utter a sound. He just came toward him with a knife held high, threateningly, and gripped “tightly in his right hand.”

Williams’ lasting memory is one of “fear--I was scared to death, but he seemed more scared than I was, like a terrified cat. He didn’t say nothing; he just held that knife up and ran out over me. I lunged at him and kicked at him with my feet, but I just couldn’t stop him. And in the excitement, I fell over backward.”

Williams remembers the man wearing a red T-shirt and black jeans but failed to take note of the shoes.

“I think about it all the time, and for a while, every time I did, cold chills passed all over me,” Williams said. “I haven’t dreamed about it exactly, but for a couple, three days, I thought about it constantly. It was pretty bad there for a while. For a while there, it was like our life (Williams’ and his wife’s) just wouldn’t get back to normal.”

Williams harbors a sense of regret--even guilt--that he failed to stop the guy “so that this whole thing would be finished.”

“I wish I could have done something, but I might have ended up stabbed myself,” he said. “I thought I could trip him, but that didn’t work. He was starting down the stairs and clinging to the railing, with me kicking at him. He knocked me over backward, and then he was gone, and gone fast.”

Williams said his own fear about the moment was much worse in succeeding days--”when I had time to think about it”--than in the seconds of actual confrontation. For a while, he said, “I couldn’t get over this feeling that, ‘Nothing like this has ever happened to me. This is really pretty extraordinary.’ Not much exciting happens to maintenance men.”

Williams said a lot of the tenants at Buena Vista Gardens have armed themselves.

“I think the guy will make a huge mistake by walking into somebody’s place and they’ll just blow him away,” he said. “A lot of people around here have bought guns, and they’re ready to use ‘em. It worries me, ‘cause it’s dangerous.

“A lot of the gals here are taking courses (in self-defense and on how to use handguns). I hope they’re doing the right thing, but I really hope the guy is caught. This thing has gone on long enough. People are past the point of being sick of it.”

Times staff writer Deanna Bellandi contributed to this story.