Guilty Verdict Reached in Deaths of 6 Women : Crime: Cleophus Prince is convicted on all 27 counts against him in the San Diego-area series of stabbings. He could receive the death penalty.

A former Navy mechanic accused of fatally stabbing six women in a crime rampage that led to the largest police manhunt in this city’s history was found guilty Tuesday of all 27 counts against him.

The jury deliberated for 10 days before reaching a verdict against Cleophus Prince Jr., 25, who could be sentenced to death in the gas chamber in the penalty phase of the trial, which begins Aug. 3 in San Diego County Superior Court.

As the verdicts were read, the muscular Prince sat impassively, motionless and staring straight ahead. When the judge dismissed the jury, his mother, Dorothy Prince, cried out, “Oh, my Lord! Oh, my Lord! He didn’t do it! Oh, my Lord!”

As individual jurors were polled, several sobbed or wiped away tears while stating that they had voted for conviction on six counts of first-degree murder and on the allegation of “special circumstances” that could result in Prince’s execution.

Given the boyhood nickname of “Little Pie” because of his moonish face, Prince, a native of Birmingham, Ala., was also found guilty of one count of rape, one count of perjury and numerous counts of burglary and attempted burglary. Most of the crimes were committed in 1990.

“We’re relieved, and we’re grateful,” said Dorothy Rubin, the mother of Holly Suzanne Tarr, an 18-year-old high school actress from Okemos, Mich., who became the third slaying victim while visiting her brother during spring vacation.

Tarr was killed in the Buena Vista Gardens apartments in Clairemont, where Prince lived at the time. Because one other victim was killed in the same complex and another in an adjoining row of condominiums, the suspect was called the “Clairemont Killer.”

Two other victims were slain in University City, near La Jolla, and one in East San Diego, shortly after Prince moved to an apartment there. The slayings followed a pattern, with victims being systematically stalked and then stabbed repeatedly.

Prince followed one, 42-year-old Pamela Gail Clark, home from a health club that prosecutors say he joined for the purpose of tracking victims. The first victim, Tiffany Paige Schultz, 20, a San Diego State student, was stabbed more than 50 times.

In each case, circles of blood were smeared on the victims’ breasts in what prosecutors called a grisly signature pointing to a single, serial killer.

Prosecutors relied heavily on gruesome photographs showing the stab wounds and on the testimony of 200 witnesses, some of whom described confrontations with Prince as he struggled with them while trying to break into their homes.

Much of the case hinged on DNA, or genetic fingerprint, evidence. Semen found at the scene of the second slaying, where 21-year-old UC San Diego student Janene Marie Weinhold died, matched Prince’s DNA type, prosecutors said.

Prince was also found guilty of raping Weinhold in what prosecutors said was the only sexual assault connected to the string of slayings.

Other evidence included a rare opal ring allegedly taken from the finger of Holly Tarr and given by Prince to his girlfriend, Charla M. Lewis, as a Christmas present. Prosecutors traced the ring from a store in Michigan, where it had been purchased by Tarr’s father, to Lewis’ jewelry box.

Rubin, Tarr’s mother, said after the verdict that she hopes Prince is executed “because we don’t think there’s any hope for rehabilitation.”

But Joseph S. Lazzaro, whose wife, Pamela Clark, and 18-year-old stepdaughter, Amber Clark, were the fifth and sixth victims, said he was not certain about the death penalty.

“Personally, in my heart, I would like to have my five minutes alone with him and be armed with a baseball bat,” Lazzaro said. “But it’s different when the state is involved.”