Hearing Set for Accused Killer of 6 : Courts: Cleophus Prince Jr. is accused of the serial slayings of 6 San Diego women during 1990.

The chief prosecutor in the Clairemont-University City serial killing case said this week that the counts against Cleophus Prince Jr. is up to 31--with more than 30,000 pages of evidence mounting against him--and a preliminary hearing is set for Feb. 24.

Prince, 24, a construction worker and former Navy machinist from Birmingham, Ala., is accused of stabbing to death three women in Clairemont, two in University City and one in East San Diego between Jan. 12 and Sept. 13 of 1990. He is being held in County Jail without bail.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Daniel Lamborn said count No. 31 came recently, after a knife was found in Prince’s cell in late December. Loren Mandel, Prince’s attorney, said Thursday the weapon was actually a toothbrush with a razor blade on one end.

Deputy Pearl Janulewicz of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department said Prince was disciplined for having a “home-made shank” in his cell but that the reprimand was “an internal matter handled privately” within the jail.

“Those kinds of weapons are found quite often in prisoners’ cells,” Mandel said. “They only made a big issue out of it because he’s Cleophus Prince Jr.”

Other charges pending against Prince include rape by force, burglary, assault with a deadly weapon, attempted burglary, battery on a person without injury, perjury, indecent exposure and possession of a firearm.

Prosecutor Lamborn said the preliminary hearing, over which Municipal Judge Patricia A.Y. Cowett will preside, may take as long as a month, even though he intends to present only “the bare-bones outline” of the state’s case.

Lamborn said special circumstances have been requested, but Dist. Atty. Edwin L. Miller Jr. will wait until after the preliminary hearing to decide whether to ask for the death penalty or life in prison without parole.

Defense attorney Mandel, who said he has yet to review the complete transcript of almost 40,000 pages of evidence, said the trial itself may not start until 1993, at the earliest.

Mandel said a part of the prosecution’s case involves DNA “genetic fingerprinting” evidence, such as hair and semen samples taken at the crime scenes. Prosecutors say such evidence links Prince to the killings and to at least one rape.

Mandel said he expects prosecutors to put on witnesses at the preliminary hearing “who will try to show that Cleophus is responsible for all the crimes with which he’s been charged.

“At the prelim, it’s not typical for the defense to put on much of a case, if any at all, because the district attorney then has the option of starting all over again, so we don’t count on doing a defense until the actual trial.”

Mandel, who runs the county offices of the alternate public defender, described Prince as “easy to deal with, very cooperative, very communicative. He called to wish me a merry Christmas. He’s very easy to get along with. He’s the last kind of person you’d think would be a serial killer.

“If you listed any 10 individuals, he would be the 10th most likely to be a serial killer.”

Lamborn, who has prosecuted 10 murder trials, said that, if Prince is convicted, he expects to have family members of the victims flown to San Diego to testify during the penalty phase of the trial.

Raymond Weinhold of Scottsdale, Ariz., whose daughter Janene Marie Weinhold, was stabbed to death in her Clairemont apartment on Feb. 16, 1990, said he would agree to testify “but I’d absolutely hate it.”

He said the death of his daughter continues to haunt him and his wife.

“We’re making progress,” Weinhold said. “But obviously, we’re never going to get over it. We’ve only recently been able to go out with friends and have a good time, without thinking about it too much.

“In other words, we have started to enjoy temporary relief--at brief times--but the memories of Janene are all-abiding and always will be.”

The six serial slayings began Jan. 12, 1990, when 20-year-old Tiffany Paige Schultz, an English major at San Diego State University, who moonlighted as a nude dancer, was found stabbed to death in her Clairemont condominium.

On Feb. 16, 1990, UC San Diego student Janene Marie Weinhold was found stabbed to death in her Buena Vista Gardens apartment in Clairemont, two blocks from where Schultz was killed.

Police later revealed that Prince moved into Buena Vista Gardens in the same block as Weinhold in December, 1989, two months after his court-martial from the Navy for larceny and a month before the first slaying.

On April 3, 1990, 18-year-old Holly Suzanne Tarr, who was visiting from Okemos, Mich., was found stabbed to death in her brother’s apartment in the Buena Vista Gardens complex, a block from Prince’s residence.

On Sept. 13, 1990, 42-year-old Pamela Gail Clark and her 18-year-old daughter, Amber, were found stabbed to death in their home in University City, about a mile and a half from where the previous slayings occurred.

Police said later that Prince followed the elder Clark from the Miramar Avenue health club, where she had been working out, to her home on Honors Drive.

Prince was later charged with the May 21, 1990, stabbing death of Elissa Naomi Keller, and six additional robbery counts connected with the crime. Police said Keller lived in an East San Diego apartment across the street from where Prince was living at the time.