What It’s Like Being a Suspect--Even Briefly

Ramona K. Thompson thought something had happened to one of her son’s friends when the family found a San Diego homicide detective’s business card wedged in the front door of their Clairemont home.

“I wondered, ‘Did something happen to one of Stacy’s friends? Is that why the police want to talk to my son?’ ” she said.

Stacy Thompson, 22, was equally perplexed. Not knowing why police would want to talk to him, Thompson, who is black, wondered if he had missed something that happened in the quiet neighborhood where he has lived for 13 years.

“I asked both of our neighbors if the police had left cards on their doors, and they said no,” Thompson said.

Detective James W. Boyd made a couple of more trips to the Thompson home before the family realized the chilling reason for his persistent visits.

Stacy Thompson, an affable and popular figure in the North Clairemont area, was one of dozens of suspects looked at by police in the slayings of five white women in Clairemont and University City. A tipster whom police could not or would not identify--one of the more than 3,000 leads investigators said they followed--had given them Thompson’s name.

“I never even associated the Clairemont murders with the cop’s visits. I had no idea that’s why he wanted to talk to Stacy. When he (detective) told us why he wanted to talk to him, I was really shook,” Ramona Thompson said.

Although investigators last contacted Thompson in October, his story offers some insight into how police have grappled with the largest manhunt in the department’s history. Despite a mountain of leads and promising physical evidence, investigators have hit a dead end at every turn, and they concede that the murders may never be solved.

A law enforcement source familiar with the serial killer investigation told The Times that police have a DNA sketch, or a genetic fingerprint, of the killer. The source also said investigators were able to lift a shoe size and shoe type from a bloody footprint left by the killer at the home of one of the victims.

However, this information could not be confirmed with police investigators, who have refused to discuss specifics of the case with reporters.

Boyd’s first visit to the Thompson home occurred after the Sept. 13 murders of Pamela Gail Clark, 42, and her daughter, Amber, 18, in their University City home. The two women were the killer’s last victims, police say.

Thompson ignored Boyd’s attempts to visit. Police, under intense pressure to solve the killings, became less subtle in their pursuit of Thompson.

San Diego police cars began parking in front of the family home and across the street, in the Madison High School parking lot, keeping Thompson under surveillance. Thompson, who works at a Mission Valley insurance company during the day and a video store at night, was frequently followed to and from work.

Ramona Thompson became a nervous wreck, worrying about her son and suffering as only a mother can.

“I was very concerned because I knew the police were under a lot of pressure and desperate to arrest someone. I was afraid they would stop Stacy one night and pin the killings on him,” she said. “I would listen for him to come home at night. Once I knew he was in the house, I would take a deep breath and go to sleep.”

Ramona Thompson said she had reason to be concerned. There are now two black families in her neighborhood, where some homes sell for almost $300,000, but for many years the Thompsons were the only blacks living there.

An older son, Tracy, is a teacher and a former football star at San Diego State University.

“Both of my sons have been harassed and stopped for no reason by police, especially at night. The cops want to know what they’re doing in this neighborhood,” Ramona Thompson said.

When it became clear that the police were not going to go away, Ramona Thompson invited Boyd to meet with her family.

“I didn’t have anything to hide, because I knew that I didn’t do anything wrong,” Stacy Thompson said. “My father has always told me, ‘If you know you haven’t done anything wrong, don’t run.’ ”

When Boyd arrived at the Thompson home one evening early in October, the entire family was waiting for him. “Everyone was present, so he couldn’t say we weren’t concerned,” Ramona Thompson said.

She said Boyd told the family that police wanted Stacy to provide them with blood, urine, hair and skin samples, along with fingerprints and a photograph. Boyd explained that investigators had talked with 100 suspects, and 60 men had volunteered to provide the samples.

A family friend who is a police officer later urged Thompson to provide investigators with the samples. But, as the family peppered Boyd with questions and told him of their concerns, Thompson’s father argued against cooperating with police.

“The detective told us that, even if lab tests eliminated Stacy as a suspect, they wouldn’t tell us,” Ramona Thompson said. “He said that, if we weren’t contacted again, we could assume that Stacy wasn’t a suspect. He was not very reassuring.”

In addition, the family expressed concern that Thompson’s specimen samples could be mixed up with someone else’s.

“When he told us that Stacy’s lab tests would remain in the file until the murders were solved and would probably be made available to defense attorneys, Stacy decided not to go through with them,” his mother said.

Boyd did not take notes during the meeting, she said. After talking to the family for about an hour, the detective shook hands with Stacy Thompson and left.

“That’s the last we heard from him (Boyd),” Thompson said. “The police stopped watching me, too.”