Police Look for Evidence in Ohio

Police detectives served a search warrant Monday at the Columbus, Ohio, home of the brother of Vincent Brothers, the sole suspect in the slayings of his mother-in-law, wife and three children in Bakersfield.

Brothers, a 41-year-old vice principal at a Bakersfield public school, was briefly arrested last week in North Carolina on suspicion of the slayings, but Bakersfield police released him, declining to seek a formal arrest warrant after they unearthed new leads in Ohio.

Columbus Police Det. Wayne Buck, who accompanied Bakersfield police detectives on Monday’s search, said it focused on a house and three automobiles. Buck would not say what, if anything, was recovered.

Brothers’ attorney, Curtis Floyd, did not return calls for comment Monday. Last week, Floyd said his client was not at the home in Bakersfield when the family was killed. Floyd suggested there was key evidence in Columbus that would exonerate his client.

Police in Bakersfield on Monday refused to comment on the case. Joanie Harper, 39; her children, Marques, 4, Lyndsey, 23 months, and Marshall, 6 weeks; and Harper’s mother, Earnestine Harper, 70, were found shot and stabbed to death July 8, officials said. A friend who had last seen them two days earlier found the bodies.

Brothers walked into an Elizabeth City, N.C., police station the night of July 8 after hearing news of the slayings, police said, but he refused to talk to detectives. According to friends, Brothers had told his wife that he was planning to visit his mother in Elizabeth City. Police verified that Brothers boarded a bus in Bakersfield that was headed for LAX on July 2.

Junea Davis, a friend of Brothers, said Joanie Harper told her July 4 that her husband was planning to get some money from a brother, then visit his mother. The search in Columbus was at the home of the suspect’s brother, Melvin Brothers, according to Melvin’s wife, Tammy Brothers, who was interviewed by Associated Press.

Last week, authorities seized a computer, financial documents and photos in searches of an apartment and storage space Vincent Brothers rented. The July 8 searches failed to turn up the .22-caliber firearm police believe was used in the killings or any “blood evidence associated with a weapon or clothing that could have come from the crime scene,” according to an affidavit submitted with the search warrant.

After his release in North Carolina on July 9, Brothers returned to Bakersfield.