Educator Sought in Slayings of 5 Relatives

The family matriarch, her daughter and three young grandchildren went to church Sunday, as they did each week.

Earnestine Harper, 70, wore her Sunday best and was in good spirits. Joanie Harper, 39, had her preschool-age children in tow and a newborn baby to introduce to the congregation at East Bakersfield Church of Christ.

Joanie was happy showing off the baby, said Wanda Carroll, a longtime family friend. Joanie’s mother, Earnestine, well known as a local African American civil rights leader, told Carroll, “I’m doing really good.”

It was the last time the Harpers were seen alive.

Early Tuesday morning, a close friend who hadn’t heard from the family since Sunday went to check. The woman saw Joanie Harper motionless in a bedroom, her little girl beside her, Carroll said, the child’s hand resting on her mother’s stomach.

Within hours, local, state and federal authorities were seeking a popular elementary school vice principal, the father of Joanie Harper’s children.

Police discovered the bodies of Harper and Marques, 4, Lindsey, 23 months, and 6-week-old Marshall dead of gunshot wounds in one bedroom. Earnestine Harper was found shot to death in another bedroom, a tragic end for a woman who had earned the community’s respect for her efforts to correct what she saw as unequal treatment of African Americans in the criminal justice system.

“Everybody is totally amazed. It’s unbelievable it would happen to this family in particular and in this area in particular,” said Bakersfield City Councilwoman Irma Carson, who once lived in the historically black neighborhood known as the Lowell District. “Who would do a thing like this?”

Police were looking to question Vincent Brothers, 41, who, according to court records, was divorced from Joanie Harper in 2001. Friends said Tuesday that they believed the couple were still married and that Brothers was the father of all three children.

Police called Brothers “a possible suspect” and said he could not be located. When he did not show up Tuesday -- even as the deaths of his family made national news -- members of the tightknit community near downtown got a second shock, weighing the likelihood that an educator they knew for his kindness to children may have been involved in the killings.

Many in the Harpers’ circle of friends learned of the shooting deaths through telephone calls from neighbors and church members. While the neighborhood -- once solidly middle class, now fraying -- had suffered gang shootings in recent years, the deaths of three generations of one family stunned residents.

“Earnestine was full of life, loved people, loved to help people, to right the wrongs.... She was always searching for the truth,” said her nephew Jeff Hollis, 50, who sat holding his face in his hands near his aunt’s home. “Beautiful kids, man, smart, full of life, raised up with morals, respect, things you don’t see people raise their kids with today.”

Bakersfield Police Capt. Neil Mahan called the killings “a horrific crime for the community.” He said his department was devoting all of its detectives to the investigation, as well as patrol officers and the Kern County district attorney’s crime lab. The FBI was also working the case, he said.

Mahan asked for help from neighbors and people who knew the family in reconstructing Brothers’ whereabouts over the last week.

Police found his blue Chevy pickup truck Tuesday but refused to say where. They also would not say what led them to consider Brothers a possible suspect, adding that there are currently no other suspects.

Bakersfield Police Det. Mary DeGeare said police had not ruled out a murder-suicide. DeGeare also said there was “some indication of property loss” at the home, which is owned jointly by Earnestine and Joanie Harper. Autopsies are planned for today.

Lethuy Horton, 39, a hairdresser at Who’s Bad! Salon, where Joanie Harper had her hair styled every two weeks, said during her recent pregnancy Harper often talked about the family’s plan to move to a gated community in southwest Bakersfield. Horton said Harper told her they could get two master suites, one for her mother and one for her to share with Brothers.

“They needed a bigger place because their family was getting bigger,” Horton said.

The mood in the salon was somber Tuesday, with Harper’s 8:30 a.m. appointment for this coming Saturday still written in their book. Horton said Joanie Harper was a loyal customer who brought in girls from her church and paid for their hair to be styled. Her children would come to the salon in their pajamas and play. Her mother, Earnestine Harper, was a leader in local social justice issues, active in her church and respected by longtime friends for her strong faith and for successfully raising five children as a single mother.

Joanie Harper was her youngest child and had been a standout basketball player during her years at Bakersfield High School. Former teammates say she played for the University of Texas at Austin for two years before getting homesick and moving back to California, where she stayed active in the sport as a well-liked referee for PAC-10 women’s games.

Brothers was a teacher at Emerson Middle School when Harper was hired as a campus security guard in August 1994. When Brothers moved to Fremont Elementary School as a vice principal in August 1996, Harper transferred there too.

In August 2000, Harper moved on to the Johnson Community Day School while Brothers remained at Fremont.

Court records indicate that Brothers and Joanie Harper had a rocky relationship. When the couple married on Jan. 25, 2000, they had had their son, Marques, and Harper was pregnant with the couple’s second child, Lindsey. Two weeks later, the couple separated.

On February 23, 2000, Brothers filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. The divorce was delayed until Joanie Harper filed on Dec. 19, 2000. She cited fraud but public court records contain no explanation.

When a divorce was granted in Sept. 2001, Harper got custody of their children.

Several longtime friends of Joanie Harper’s said Tuesday that they believed the couple were still married, although they said she had been depressed in recent days over their failing relationship.

Court records indicate his legal split with Joanie Harper was Brothers’ third marriage and divorce in 15 years. Divorce filings from his second marriage to Sharon Claudia Brothers detailed what Brothers himself described as “a very turbulent marriage.”

In six years, the couple separated more than four times, with Sharon filing several requests for restraining orders against him. Brothers filed restraining orders against her, court records show.

“The respondent [Brothers] is violent and has threatened to kill me,” Sharon said in the first request, which came only four months after their wedding day.

Brothers denied any violent or abusive behavior in other court documents.

“I am a very well respected individual and would never place myself in such a situation that would jeopardize my position as a vice principal for three years,” he wrote. “I have never verbally or physically abused the respondent [Sharon], nor has she ever verbally or physically abused me.”

Police said Tuesday that Brothers had a 1988 misdemeanor conviction for spousal abuse.

Parents and students who have known Brothers during his 14 years in the Bakersfield City School District described him as a gentle man loved by students.

“The kids looked up to him,” said Donny Waddell, whose 9-year-old son Donny Jr. looked forward to playing basketball with Brothers in the mornings before school. “My son was saying when [students] had problems they would talk to him and he would solve the problems.” As word of the killings spread, many longtime friends, relatives, and neighbors gathered, staring at the yellow stucco house that had been cordoned off with police tape.

“I hope the kids were asleep,” said Niree Wiley, 27, who grew up on the street and had Brothers as a teacher in junior high school. “That would just ease me to know that they didn’t see it coming.”

Next door to the family’s home, neighbor Elbert Robinson, 44, scanned the TV news vans and police cars late Tuesday. He placed a lighted candle along the iron fence where mourners created a small memorial of flowers and candles.

“It just takes a lot out of you,” Robinson said.

Earnestine Harper had moved to Bakersfield in the late 1950s or early 1960s, said friends, one of a wave of immigrants to California known as “Black Okies,” African Americans seeking a better life away from the Jim Crow laws of the South.

Harper made a name for herself as an advocate for Offord Rollins, a high school star athlete who many in the community believed was unfairly accused of raping and killing a young woman. In recent years, Harper served as president of a group called Americans United for Justice.

“She was really a lady who fought for the underdog,” said family friend Matthew Cruise, 69. “When she had her mind made up that she was right she had what I called bulldog determination. It was part of her basic belief that all people should be treated fairly and honestly.”

Times staff writers Megan Garvey, Li Fellers, Mark Arax, Jose Cardenas and Carla Hall contributed to this report.