Hubbard’s Wife Clings to Belief in His Innocence

Clutching a wad of tissues for the tears she knew would come, the wife of jailed San Diego Police Officer Henry Hubbard Jr. softly recounted Tuesday the reaction of her 19-month-old daughter, Samantha, the past two weeks when an airplane would fly overhead or a car would pass by.

“She wants to know where her daddy is,” said Karen Hubbard, blinking back tears. “We tell her, ‘He’s gone away for a while, but he loves you, and he’ll be back.’ ”

Her husband of seven years sits in an isolated cell in the downtown jail, arrested two weeks ago and charged with the attempted murder and attempted robbery of two men shot in the chest at Torrey Pines State Beach. He also was charged with an attempted robbery of a woman during the same incident.

Hours after his arrest at a San Diego hospital, where he had checked himself in with a hand wound, Hubbard was named the prime suspect in six other attacks on couples at a stretch of beach from Solana Beach to La Jolla.

The same day, Police Chief Bob Burgreen immediately placed him on emergency suspension and said termination proceedings had already begun.

For Karen Hubbard, 31, who was smitten with her husband the moment she saw him, it all has been too much to take.

Hubbard was still playing for the San Diego Padres organization in 1984, when he was attending an instructional league here. Although neither Karen nor Henry drinks, they met, oddly enough, in a bar, a fact Karen even now is a bit embarrassed to recall for reporters.

“He saw me, and I saw him, and that was it,” she said. “It was one of those quick-type romances. We dated every day for a month. We were engaged and married within six months.”

They did everything together, she said. They graduated with business degrees from National University together. They jogged together. They went scuba diving together. And, when their baby came along two years ago, Henry was the “primary day care person for our daughter,” she said, scrambling from work to spend as much time at home as possible.

The biggest disagreement between them has been whether Samantha should be allowed to watch “Gilligan’s Island” reruns with her father in the afternoon. Karen does not want her daughter watching TV. Henry is a fanatic for old situation comedies.

None of it fits with the police profile of an armed serial robber and rapist who liked to frequent the shores of San Diego and prey on young couples, she said.

And, as the events of two weeks ago were explained to her in her husband’s hospital room, Karen Hubbard stated simply that they had the wrong person.

Henry Hubbard could not be the gunman who pulled on a ski mask at 4 a.m. Aug. 15 and watched two young men and a woman emerge from the surf, she said. He could not have asked them to tie one another up and then, in a confused scuffle, shot the two men and himself in the hand, she said.

“I’ve lived with the guy for seven years, and there’s just no way he could have committed those crimes,” she said. “We are a close family. We have a small child. We spent every day off together; evenings, whenever we could.”

On the night of the shooting, Henry Hubbard’s attorneys say he was driving home from Northern Division, the same way as always. Northbound on I-805, he headed west on Mira Mesa Boulevard when his car “wouldn’t accelerate and kept bucking,” attorney Allen Bloom said.

Hubbard got out of the car, looked under his hood, and three men attacked him, Bloom said. Gunshots were fired, and Hubbard passed out bleeding by the side of the road until 4 a.m., when he drove himself home, Bloom said. His gun and flashlight were gone, Bloom said.

Karen drove her husband to the hospital at about the same time police investigators were combing the beach.

“If anyone was passing by between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. and saw anything--the breakdown, the scuffle, anything, I wish they would call us,” Bloom said.

Police say they recovered a flashlight at the beach engraved with Hubbard’s name, along with slugs from a .380-caliber gun, the kind registered to Hubbard. Steve Anear, a deputy district attorney, said sand was found on Hubbard’s clothing and in his shoes and wound at the hospital.

On Tuesday, at an impromptu press conference, Bloom and attorney Kerry Steigerwalt would not allow Karen Hubbard to comment about anything her husband said regarding the morning of Aug. 14.

They already have said someone besides Hubbard dropped the flashlight and shot the two men on Torrey Pines State Beach. They have suggested a larger cover-up involving other police officers bent on revenge against Hubbard for his testimony in an assault case that they said resulted a suspect’s acquittal.

Henry Hubbard told his wife that his testimony in the case, which involved an alleged beating of a man in Mission Beach in May 1990, did annoy officers but mentioned it just briefly.

“I didn’t get into particulars about my place of employment and he didn’t either,” she said. “If it was really serious or really something bothering him, of course, we would discuss it.”

No, Henry was not under any particular stress at work, she said. No, he never exhibited violent behavior or had trouble expressing his feelings, she said. Yes, he was close to police officer Jerry Hartless, killed in the line of duty in 1988, but she did not want to discuss his reaction.

During the press conference, Karen Hubbard wanted to focus on the good side of her husband, a man for whom dozens of people have written personal letters testifying to character reference.

Bloom placed 61 letters from 72 people into Hubbard’s court file Tuesday.

“Unquestionably, you have arrested the wrong person,” wrote Michael A. Smith, a high school friend from Hubbard’s hometown of Lancaster, S.C.

“Believe me, the description of the charges brought against Henry definitely fit another totally different character,” wrote Willie Mae Montgomery, a neighbor in South Carolina.

“These accusations are so totally, totally uncharacteristic of the person that we knew and saw grow up into a fine, worthwhile adult,” wrote Leonard George and his family.

During a bail review hearing Tuesday, Hubbard’s attorney waived his chance for review because he thought it unlikely that the $2-million bail would be reduced.

Meanwhile, Karen Hubbard said, two legal defense funds have been set up, one in San Diego at HomeFed bank, where she works as a financial analyst, and one by a dentist in Lancaster.

Life has been difficult the past two weeks. She said she has taken her daughter and moved out of her Mira Mesa apartment after it appeared on local television newscasts. She has hosted out-of-town family members and guests, and tried to explain what has happened.

In court during last week’s arraignment and Tuesday’s bail review, she smiled and joked with friends who accompanied her to the proceedings and stared intently during her husband’s brief appearances before television cameras, photographers and reporters.

At night, she and her husband talk by phone.

“I go between bursts of crying and shock and disbelief, but I need to be there for him, and I will be there for him,” she said.

The San Diego Police Department, where Hubbard spent 4 1/2 years, is of little consolation, she said, except for a few officers and their wives who have kept in contact. But she is not impressed with upper management.

“I feel isolated in the sense that his superiors have written him off,” she said. “I have not received any support from them. I think our true friends that are police officers have been there for us. I would have thought there would have been more support, given the type of individual Henry is.”

Henry Hubbard would have loved to become a pilot someday and obtained his commercial rating earlier this month, having spent “every waking hour studying for his commercial exam,” Karen Hubbard said. His ideal job was to get on the department’s air support unit.

Karen is finding solace in her daughter as she waits for the Sept. 5 preliminary hearing at which it will determined if there is enough evidence to hold her husband for trial.

“We can’t really go back to a normal life,” she said. “This is always weighing on your mind. I want Henry to be proven innocent so that we can carry on as a family and pick up the pieces.”