Husband Held in 1995 Slaying

An Irvine man long suspected of strangling his wife and dumping her body along a remote San Diego County road was arrested outside his Westpark apartment early Wednesday, more than two years after the killing.

Daniel Rodrick, 40, was startled by detectives in street clothes who approached him shortly before 9 a.m. as he prepared to leave for work in his white Jeep Cherokee.

“Remember us?” asked San Diego County Sheriff’s Det. Rick Scully, who for the last year has worked as the lead investigator on the case.

Rodrick froze, considering the officers surrounding him, but did not speak until they placed him in handcuffs. “Why are you doing this now? There is nothing new. What are you doing this now for?” He sobbed as he was led to a waiting Irvine Police Department patrol car.

Sheriff’s officials said there wasn’t “any one break” in the 2-year-old case that led them to arrest Carolyn Rodrick’s husband Wednesday. Instead, it was a cumulation of evidence--much of which they concede is circumstantial, gathered since her July 21, 1995, slaying--that finally convinced San Diego prosecutors to move ahead.

“It became a collection of little pieces that all pointed at one person,” San Diego Sheriff’s Sgt. Tom Bennett said. “The pieces, when looked at all together, eventually became convincing enough.”

But Rodrick’s attorney, Jim Riddet, said he is baffled by the arrest. If detectives did not have anything new, Riddet asked, why did they wait so long to take his client--who has always proclaimed his innocence--into custody?

“I’m shocked and curious,” said Riddet, a prominent Orange County criminal defense lawyer. “I don’t think there’s ever been evidence that suggests he did it, and I don’t think he did do it. The timing of it just begs the question: Why now?”

The attorney said although his client has known for two years that he was the main suspect in the slaying, he had no idea “things were warming up” in the case.

Rodrick, a salesman, was booked into San Diego County Jail, where he is being held without bail. The couple’s children, a 16-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter, were interviewed by police and released to child protective workers.

They probably will stay with Rodrick’s mother in Garden Grove, the attorney said.

Many of Carolyn Rodrick’s friends and relatives did not share Riddet’s reaction when told of the arrest Wednesday. They expressed relief that the man they had once shared Christmases and vacations with was finally behind bars.

“I prayed for this day, dreamt about it, but I was never completely sure it would come,” said Carol Montana, a longtime friend of Carolyn Rodrick who once lived near the couple in Irvine. “Finally, hopefully, Carolyn can find peace.”

The victim’s sister, Janet Vanzyl, who lives in South Africa, said she had almost given up after the unsolved case had dragged on for so long.

“It started to seem like the police would never settle this,” Vanzyl said. “Now I know it’s true that God doesn’t always answer your prayers immediately, but eventually.”

Few who knew the couple were surprised when, shortly after the slaying, they learned Rodrick was the focus of the criminal investigation.

Almost immediately after Carolyn Rodrick’s body was identified at a San Diego County morgue, her husband of 17 years started erasing her memory from his family’s life, Vanzyl said.

When she and other relatives tried to talk to Rodrick about his wife’s slaying, Vanzyl said, Rodrick began to avoid them, isolating himself and his children. It has been nearly a year since Vanzyl has been allowed to speak to her niece and nephew.

Rodrick told police that when he woke up in the middle of the night on July 21, 1995, and found his wife gone, he suspected she had left him for another man.

He told police he was able to identify what she was wearing by figuring out what was missing from her side of the walk-in closet. His near-perfect guess--jeans, a dark, long-sleeved shirt and white shoes--immediately raised suspicions.

Shortly after, he refused police requests for an interview and would not allow officers to speak with his children.

Carolyn Rodrick’s body was later found at an illegal dumping site off Pala-Temecula Road, hours after her husband reported her missing from their home, about 70 miles away.

More than two weeks went by before the body was identified as that of Carolyn Rodrick, a lapse her husband has said points to a shoddy investigation that may have allowed a killer to go free.

But investigators point to how Rodrick spent this two-week period: He sold the couple’s Mercedes, pawned his wife’s jewelry, scrapped the bedroom mattress they shared, and moved. Friends said that in the weeks before the slaying, Rodrick had become increasingly suspicious that his wife was having an affair, and Carolyn Rodrick had confided to them that she thought he was following her.

“She was irritated about that,” Jan Cleary said. “She said he was stalking her, more or less, and that he wasn’t very good at it.”

It was no secret that Carolyn Rodrick, 35, also was unhappy, admitting in a letter to her mother shortly before her slaying that she and her husband were “never suited.”

“We knew she’d never leave, though,” Montana said. “No matter how hard it got, she’d do whatever it took to stay with her kids.”

Now, with Rodrick in jail and scheduled to be arraigned Friday in San Diego Municipal Court on a murder charge, Vanzyl said she hopes to finally learn the truth about her sister’s death.

“That is all we want,” Vanzyl said. “All we want to know is what happened, once and for all.”