Burglary Try Led Police to Troubled Suspect : Arrest: Similarities between attempted break-in last month and five serial slayings prompted authorities to focus on Prince.

Cleophus Prince Jr. became the prime suspect in the murders of five women a month ago when he allegedly attempted to burglarize a Scripps Ranch apartment close to Miramar Naval Air Station, where he served for more than two years.

Similarities between that case--in which someone was home at the apartment--and the slayings prompted police to take DNA samples from Prince while he was in custody and send them to a private laboratory for processing, Deputy Chief Cal Krosch said Monday.

Last Thursday, law enforcement officials reported during a news conference that they had little new information. But, by Friday, “a lot of things came together,” Krosch said.

The attempted burglary case “heightened our interest considerably. (Prince) became more or less of a prime suspect . . . but it was not until Friday . . . that (evidence) caused us to seek the warrant for his arrest.”

Police will not say whether the DNA results were returned Friday and thus changed the nature of the investigation.

The San Diego County district attorney’s office formally charged Prince on Monday with five murders, adding the counts to his attempted burglary charge.

San Diego officials are seeking to extradite Prince from a Birmingham, Ala., jail, where he was arrested early Sunday and is being held without bond.

Attorney Roger Appell, whom the Prince family hired in Birmingham, said his client is likely to agree to extradition, although no details have been worked out. Even then, it could be 10 days before he is flown back to San Diego, police said.

At a news conference Monday, San Diego police gave the first, albeit sketchy, account of what led investigators to Prince:

They had questioned him sometime between the April 3 Clairemont murder of 18-year-old Holly Suzanne Tarr, the third victim, and the Sept. 13 murders of 42-year-old Pamela Gail Clark and her 18-year-old daughter, Amber, in University City, the fourth and fifth victims.

At the time, he was one of “a couple of dozen” suspects, Krosch said, but did not warrant special surveillance because police had little evidence linking him to any of the slayings.

“We have been aware of Mr. Prince for quite a period of time,” Krosch said. “He was one of many viable suspects, but not the only suspect we were looking at. As we got close to the end of last week, a lot of things occurred that caused us to really focus on him, and we sought an arrest warrant” in Alabama.

Prince had been arrested Feb. 4 in San Diego on a traffic warrant and was also charged with attempted burglary at the Scripps Ranch apartment, although police will not disclose what evidence they have tying Prince to the latter charge.

The apartment was close to Miramar Naval Air Station, where Prince had served as a designated aviation structural mechanic beginning in July, 1987. He was discharged in October, 1989, after being court-martialed for larceny and serving a 27-day sentence in the brig.

Larry Eldredge, who lives at the small complex, refused to talk to a Times reporter unless he was paid $75. He said he had a “financial obligation” with another newspaper to be paid $50 for his story.

“I’m protecting my neighbor’s privacy,” he said.

After Prince’s arrest in February, the district attorney’s office had requested in writing that he be held on $50,000 bail, but the paper work did not reach the court until after Prince was released.

Prince was given a Feb. 7 arraignment date for the traffic warrant, but he failed to appear, and a $100,000 bench warrant was issued for his arrest, court records show. County marshals began a search for him.

Prince, however, did appear at a Feb. 15 hearing on the attempted burglary warrant. At that hearing, a Municipal Court judge set a March 15 disposition hearing and recalled the bench warrant.

“We came in to court that day and said this guy should be held,” district attorney’s spokesman Steve Casey said. “The judge said no, he made his appearance, and let him out on his own recognizance.”

Krosch said Monday that police did not have enough evidence at the time to arrest Prince anyway.

It was not until Saturday that police made their move and determined that Prince was in a Birmingham jail on a petty theft charge.

Birmingham police had arrested Prince on Friday at a nightclub, where he allegedly tried to reach across a bar and swipe money from a cash register. Before that, he had no criminal record in Alabama. Prince was able to make bond and left jail three hours before San Diego police called looking for him.

A Birmingham detective called Prince’s parents and concocted a story in which he told them Prince had not signed the proper paper work that made his release official, according to Deputy Chief Charles H. Newfield of the Birmingham Police Department.

“He showed back up here with his momma, and San Diego police already had flown in,” Newfield said. “They took him into custody on their warrants.”

Police arrested Prince in the five murders at 12:30 a.m. EST Sunday.

The possibility that a series of miscalculations very well could have doomed their investigation did not faze police, Krosch said.

“Some great man said some time ago that hindsight is 20/20,” he said. “We’re not kicking ourselves. We’ve done what we had to do. A tremendous amount of information had been processed on this case. Detectives have spent numerous hours of their own time, weekends, nights,” working on the cases.

The district attorney’s office and police renewed their request Monday to the media not to publish any photographs of Prince, so that witnesses being asked to select him from a lineup will not be able to recognize him from those sources.

Prince will be among about eight people in the lineup once he is in San Diego.

Krosch said the investigation has not been easy.

“We have contacted thousands of people in the course of this investigation,” he said. “As you all know, we’ve had over 3,000 tips, and a large number of people were very viable suspects.

“We did not have sufficient information nor a belief that we should arrest Mr. Prince until we did.”