Genetic Evidence Links Prince to Murder Scene : Hearing: Defense attorney challenges legitimacy of testing process that was employed.

The probability that someone other than accused serial killer Cleophus Prince Jr. left a semen stain on a bedroom comforter owned by murder victim Janene Marie Weinbold is one in 27 million, a genetic scientist testified Monday.

In the fifth day of testimony to decide if Prince should be tried for six murders and 26 other criminal counts, a member of a private genetic testing company said the comparison of DNA bands between the stain and Prince’s blood sample represent “quite an extraordinary alignment.”

Weinhold, 21, a UCSD student, was raped and stabbed to death on Feb. 16, 1990, at the Buena Vista Gardens Apartments in Clairemont, where Prince lived at the time of the murder.

A second stain found on Weinhold’s jogging suit had a smaller sample of DNA, producing less evidence for clinical analysis but still matching Prince’s blood to a probability of one in 76,000, scientist Lisa Forman of Cellmark Diagnostics testified.

Defense attorneys for Prince immediately attacked the testing process, arguing that Cellmark drew its statistics from a sample population size of 146 to 240 people for each of five tests it conducted.

A burgeoning group of “population geneticists” who analyze DNA testing have found fault with such small and random sampling of “subdivided populations,” in which a relatively low number of individuals is used to draw conclusions on a larger set of the population, defense attorneys said.

“There are population geneticists that dispute you can get valid and reliable estimates based on available databases,” defense co-counsel Barton Sheela III said Monday.

During a break in the proceedings, Sheela said he will move to exclude much of the DNA evidence presented during Prince’s preliminary hearing.

“A number of scientists have said, ‘Look, I have a database of 10,000 people and there’s nobody in that database that matches this person rather than extrapolating from a database of 240 people or so to make it to 27 million people,” Sheela said.

The DNA match is the state’s strongest evidence against Prince, a 24-year-old former Navy mechanic who was arrested a year ago in his hometown of Birmingham, Ala. Although it has been admitted in various court cases, many judges have rejected DNA evidence as unproven and flimsy.

Forman of Cellmark Diagnostics said sampling a population is widely accepted in scientific circles, just as polling a small pool of voters is used to develop election information.

But Forman acknowledged that computer error in original testing on the Prince case involving the semen stain had placed the probability of someone other than Prince having the same DNA characteristics at one in 54 million. The error was corrected and the number recalculated to one in 27 million.

In other court testimony Monday, Prince’s girlfriend said that, during the string of killings in the Clairemont neighborhood where they lived during 1990, he warned her to “keep the door locked and don’t open it.”

In her second day on the witness stand, Charla M. Lewis described an enraged Prince slapping her to the ground when he discovered that she was in the bedroom with a new boyfriend and hit the visitor in the head as he hurried out of her apartment without his shirt.

Prince had telephoned her apartment repeatedly Nov. 7, 1990 while Lewis and her friend, Leo Robinson, were inside, she said.

Prince pounded on her door until she answered, demanding to know why she took so long, why she had not picked up the phone or why she hadn’t let him in, she said.

“We pushed on each other,” she said. “I pushed on him to keep him away from me. He moved my hands. I didn’t want to go in the bedroom. We just pushed on each other. We were both yelling, I believe.”

With a closed pocket knife in his hand, Prince rushed toward Robinson but Lewis stood between them. Prince slapped her in the face, knocking her to the ground.

Robinson “kept saying, ‘I didn’t know she was still yours, or something like that,” she said, and, after Robinson started to leave, Prince “tapped him in the head, like the way you pop a child in the head,” she said.

During their relationship, which began in early 1988, Lewis said, Prince had showered her with gifts, giving her at least three rings and two watches. Police have traced one of the rings to Holly Tarr, the third murder victim, and another to Elissa Keller, the fourth victim.

Those slayings, along with two others, occurred either in the same apartment complex where Prince lived or a nearby address. Two other killings happened in University City, near the Family Fitness Center where one of the victims and both Prince and Lewis were members.

Prosecutors said Lewis and Prince were briefly enrolled at the health club on Miramar Road, at which five crime victims and one murder victim were members. Prince was arrested in the parking lot of the club Feb. 3, 1991 on a traffic violation but later released.

The rings and watches from Prince to Lewis were gifts, but were never wrapped or presented on special occasions, Lewis said. Prosecutors presented a letter that Lewis wrote to Prince in 1989 asking for jewelry as gifts.

While murders were occurring near the apartment that Prince and Lewis shared in Clairemont in 1990, Prince warned his girlfriend “for my safety,” Lewis said, “to keep the door locked and don’t open it.”

Yet, John Rollins, a friend of Prince who lived at the Top of the Hill apartments in East San Diego, said Monday that Prince bragged about the murder of Elissa Keller in May, 1990.

During a party at Rollins’ apartment, in which a group of men were drinking beer and passing a joint of marijuana, someone asked about the Keller murder.

“He bragged like he did it or something,” Rollins said.

“To the best of your recollection, can you tell us exactly what he said?” Deputy Dist. Atty. Dan Lamborn asked.

He said, “ ‘I’m the one who took her out,’ ” Rollins said.

“Did you ever have a conversation with Mr. Prince about the killings that were going on in Clairemont,” he asked.

“Not as far as him saying he done it,” Rollins said.

“Did he ever make mention of anything that he did in Clairemont?” Lamborn asked.

He said he “checked out some white girls in Clairemont, he said he knew some girls that was out there,” Rollins said.

Loren Mandel, one of Prince’s attorneys, said Rollins is lying and that nobody who was with Rollins and Prince that day can recall him saying the same thing.

In marked contrast to other days when Prince was alert and responsive to testimony, the defendant sat hunched, with his chin almost resting on the defense table. For hours, his left hand covered the side of his head, shielding his face from view of reporters seated in the jury box.

At one point, he wrote a one-page note to his mother on a legal pad, and a bailiff handed it back to Dorothy Prince, who has attended every day of her son’s preliminary hearing.

At the top was written: “I love you, Cleophus” and it began, “Dear Mom.” Dorothy Prince scanned the letter and began crying. Her son looked directly back at her and smiled.