Police Still Interested in Slain Dancer’s Beau

Saying “there are many unanswered questions,” San Diego police are trying to reinterview the construction worker jailed briefly in connection with the first of five serial slayings in Clairemont and University City.

Christopher Jon Burns, 29, was booked on suspicion of murder and held for five days in County Jail after the Jan. 12 stabbing death of his fiancee, Tiffany Paige Schultz, 20, a San Diego State University student who moonlighted as a nude dancer.

“There are still some unanswered questions with respect to Mr. Burns, but I can’t say anything further out of fairness to him,” Lt. Gary Learn said at a Thursday press briefing. “Mr. Burns is represented by counsel, and for us to follow up any further, a lot of legal issues have to be overcome.”

So far, Learn said, Burns and his attorney have refused to allow police to question him further. Burns was released from jail after the district attorney failed to issue a murder complaint, citing insufficient evidence. He has not been re-arrested.

Learn, the homicide agent heading the investigation for the San Diego Police Department, reiterated that Burns is not a suspect in any of the five cases but that “lingering, unanswered” questions surrounding the Schultz case compel police to talk with him further.

A source close to the investigation said police believe Burns might be able to clear up questions regarding the disappearance of the murder weapon and shed light on who the actual suspect might be.

Burns’ attorney, public defender Michael J. Popkins, said he had advised his client not to talk to police.

“Nothing is going on, and he’s not going to talk to them,” Popkins said. “He’s not a suspect, and they’ve told me they know he didn’t do it. He’s maintained that position from the first day he was arrested, and there’s nothing he can do for them, because he just wasn’t there at the time of the homicide.”

After Schultz’s death, four other women were killed, the most recent being 42-year-old Pamela Gail Clark and her 18-year-old daughter, Amber, who were found stabbed to death in University City on Sept. 13.

The three deaths before those occurred within a two-block area of one another along a row of apartment houses in Clairemont. Schultz, Burns and one other man shared a two-bedroom unit in the Canyon Ridge complex at 3187 Cowley Way, where she was found stabbed more than 50 times.

The daughter of a county supervisor in Nevada County, Calif., Schultz was an English major whose dream was to teach creative writing. But her job at the time of her death was as a nude dancer at the Loma Portal nightclub, Les Girls--a job to which Burns strongly objected, according to friends interviewed by police and quoted extensively in the media.

About a month after Schultz’s death, 21-year-old UC San Diego student Janene Marie Weinhold was found stabbed to death in her apartment at 3301 Clairemont Drive.

Then, after the stabbing death of 18-year-old Holly Suzanne Tarr on April 3, a maintenance man briefly confronted what was describe as a light-skinned black man running from the apartment where the killing occurred, holding a knife over his head.

That man--thought to be 18 to 23 years old, 5-foot-7 to 5-foot-10, with a medium build and short-cropped hair--is being sought in connection with all five slayings. A blood-stained knife, believed to be the murder weapon, was later recovered near the Buena Vista Gardens apartment at 3410 Cowley Way, where Tarr was killed.

Investigators believe Burns might have information crucial to only the first case, but that could help solve the other four.

Reached by The Times Thursday afternoon, Burns declined to be interviewed. Burns said his attorney had requested that he not talk to the media after his recent appearance on the TV show “Hard Copy.” Burns did acknowledge that he was recently injured in a motorcycle accident but is now back at work.

“Clearly, he didn’t commit any murder,” attorney Popkins said. “They’ve assured me he’s no longer a suspect, that they believe the same person did all five. But he’s not cooperating, because he’s spoken with them in the past. He would not be able to help them apprehend the killer, because he has no information that would help them. And that decision has been made by me, as his attorney.”

Learn said that, at one time, he had a full-time staff of 26 detectives working the case but that the staff has been reduced to 20, in addition to supervisory and support personnel.

He said the department has spent more than $500,000 on the case, which has produced more than 3,000 leads, 2,800 of which have surfaced since the last slayings on Sept. 13. It was after that date that police chose to institute weekly press briefings.

Learn said the department is “continually” looking at six men as possible suspects but refused to say whether an arrest was imminent.