Judge Gives Serial Killer Death Penalty : Crime: Cleophus Prince Jr. denies the stabbing murders of six women in San Diego in 1990.

A Superior Court judge sentenced Cleophus Prince Jr. to death Friday for stabbing to death six women in a series of crimes that terrorized this city for most of 1990 and led to the largest police investigation in its history.

Judge Charles R. Hayes ordered Prince, 26, transported to San Quentin within 10 days, where he becomes the 368th person in California awaiting execution.

The normally stoic Prince, a native of Birmingham, Ala., and former Navy mechanic, spoke out in court for the first time Friday.

“I did not kill any of (your) daughters,” he told the victims’ family members, many of whom were weeping. “I feel for all of you whose daughters passed away. Seeing the pictures of (your) daughters, the way they got torn apart, hurt me as much as it hurt (you).”

“I don’t believe a word he said,” said an angry Jean Weinhold, whose 21-year-old daughter, Janene Marie Weinhold, became Prince’s second victim when she was raped and stabbed repeatedly in her apartment. DNA evidence gathered at the scene matched Prince’s semen.

“I wish that I could kill him myself,” Weinhold said.

Among the most incriminating evidence presented during the trial was a rare opal ring, formerly owned by 18-year-old Holly Suzanne Tarr, Prince’s third victim. The ring was later found in the possession of his girlfriend, Charla M. Lewis, to whom he had given it as a Christmas present.

On Friday, Prince acknowledged having obtained the ring, but said he bought it “off the street.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Daniel Lamborn called Prince’s remarks “absurdities on absurdities. To the end, he lies.”

Prince’s execution will probably not occur for another five to 10 years, after appeals are exhausted, Lamborn said.

Eddie Lewis, a friend of Prince’s mother, said he was unsure of Prince’s guilt or innocence, but lamented the racial element in the case. Prince is African-American; the victims were white.

James Alan Fox, an expert on mass murder at Northeastern University in Boston, said Friday the Prince case is unusual because serial killers almost never murder outside their race.

“The Prince case is extraordinary in that respect alone,” Fox said.