Irvine Man to Stand Trial in Wife’s Murder

An Irvine man has been ordered to stand trial in the slaying of his wife, whose body was found more than two years ago dumped along a remote San Diego County road.

Daniel Rodrick, 40, will be arraigned on the murder charge March 4. A second charge of stalking was dismissed by San Diego County Superior Court Judge David W. Ryan, who said there was insufficient evidence to prove the former lighting salesman had stalked Carolyn Rodrick.

After a daylong preliminary hearing Wednesday, Ryan agreed with defense attorney Cherie Brenner that the evidence presented by prosecutors regarding the murder charge was largely circumstantial. But he concluded by saying it was “a strong case.”

Rodrick had long been a suspect in the July, 1995, slaying, but he was not arrested until last fall. The arrest came more than two years after his wife’s body was found 20 feet down an embankment on Pala-Temecula Road, not far from where the couple once considered buying property. Rodrick is suspected of strangling his wife, putting her body in the trunk of their car and driving 70 miles to the site.

Carolyn Rodrick had been missing more than two weeks before her body was identified, a lapse her husband has said points to a shoddy investigation that may have allowed a killer to go free. On the night she disappeared, Daniel Rodrick told police, he woke up, found her gone and suspected that she had left him for another man.

He has repeatedly denied any involvement in his wife’s death.

San Diego County Deputy Dist. Atty. Giacomo “Jack” Bucci said the Rodricks had a troubled marriage that was on the verge of breaking up. In the weeks before her death, Carolyn Rodrick complained to friends and relatives that her husband was controlling and domineering, Bucci said.

While authorities suspect the victim was killed at her Irvine home, the case will be handled in San Diego County, where the body was found.

A trial date has not been set. Rodrick is being held at the San Diego County Jail in Vista on $1-million bail.