Geralynd had just gotten home and was about to get into the shower after a good workout at the gym, when she heard a strange noise coming from the front door. Alerted, the young woman rushed out of the bathroom, put her eye through the peephole and ran into a man trying to force the lock. Without thinking, she turned the latch and called for help.
A few minutes later, the police arrived at the apartment, but the assailant had already managed to escape in his car. Thanks to the testimony of the neighbors, a description of the individual was made and the license plate number of the car was obtained. The data led to a 25-year-old African-American ex-Marine, Cleophus Prince Jr., apparently harmless. However, under that mask was hidden the mind of a dangerous serial killer whose deviant behavior led him to practice booby behavior with six women in order to satisfy his twisted sexual fantasies. It was his signature.
Cleophus Prince, Jr. was born on July 24, 1967 in the US city of Birmingham (Alabama). He was the eldest of eight siblings and, despite growing up in one of the most difficult neighborhoods in the region, those who knew him say they felt It was about an educated and gentle boy, who never belonged to any gang group.
In fact, Prince was an average student and athlete, who, after graduating from high school, decided to enlist in the United States Navy when he was barely twenty years old. Nothing up to that moment suggested that, some time later, he would become a depraved serial killer of women.
In October 1989, the Navy court-martialed him after accusing him of theft and he was sent to jail for a month. Upon leaving there, he was expelled from the force and moved to Clairemont, more specifically to the Buena Vista Gardens apartment complex, a location close to his first three murders.
In May 1990, after committing his third crime and to further mislead the police, Prince moved to University City, a neighborhood in eastern San Diego, with his girlfriend Charla Lewis. As on previous occasions, the young man did not look for an unknown location to commit the rest of his crimes, but instead opted for places that were familiar to him. In fact, his fourth victim, Elissa Keller, lived very close to his killer.
Consequently, the killer's modus operandi and the choice of victims were not a matter of chance. Prince was comfortable in his habitat, which is why he stalked women he could meet and keep a close eye on. He needed proximity to know when they were alone. Furthermore, he was a daytime robber, most of his victims were murdered between ten in the morning and two in the afternoon, when they left the gym and always inside their homes.
Prince took advantage of helpless moments - while they were in the shower - to break through windows or doors. Once inside, he beat them and began a sadistic ritual where the knives were the protagonists.
The killer did not find sexual satisfaction in raping women, but in stabbing, cutting and slicing their bodies. A sexual paraphilia known as piquerismo, where the tearing of the flesh and the observation of the suffering of the subjected victim is what generates that degree of excitement.
That form of sadism became the footprint and signature of the Clairemont murderer, the name with which the media baptized this sexual predator. Each stabbing was a form of expression of his paraphilic behavior. Prince did not ejaculate -except on one occasion- on his victims, however, he stimulated himself through the violence he inflicted. Hence, any sexual satisfaction occurred after leaving the scene of the crime.
The ex-marine sought at all times to have absolute dominance and control over his victims. For that reason, if everything was too easy for him - stalking, assaulting and dominating - the violence used was even greater.
That is why the ferocity in his stab wounds, located mainly in the left chest, the depth of which came to tear the flesh from the back. They were ritualized wounds, about 20 centimeters, to dehumanize the victims.
To culminate the scene, Prince strategically placed the mutilated bodies to startle those who found them. He did not want to hide or hide his work, he wanted them to be easily discovered to make clear his domain. In addition, all the women appeared completely nude or with some underwear on, in a supine position and with their necks resting on the floor.
Some had their legs open, others their arms extended perpendicular to their sides or above their heads, as a sign of the submission to which they were subjected by the murderer. Something striking, according to criminal profiling experts, is that all the women were white.
I mean, it's unusual for serial killers to kill victims of different races. This also generated a lot of confusion among investigators when looking for the real culprit.
As for the murder weapon, Prince used large knives, about 30 centimeters long, which he always left at the crime scene and never bothered to clean. It was a practical matter for him: taking the knives and hiding them would increase the chances of getting caught in the future.
This is how from January 12 to September 13, 1990, Prince began a bloody carnage that ended the lives of Tiffany Paige Schultz, Janene Marie Weinhold, Holly Suzanne Tarr, Elissa Naomi Keller, Pamela Gail Clark and Amber Clark, at who, for the most part, inflicted almost fifty stab wounds and stole valuables.
From Holly Suzanne Tarr he took a ring, which Prince later gave to his girlfriend for Christmas 1990. Something he repeated after killing Elissa Naomi Keller, his fourth victim, when he took another gold ring. She even stole Pamela Clark's wedding band to wear on a chain around her neck for all to see. Prince felt such a degree of impunity that he boasted of having relationships with white women or even of being the author of Pamela's murder.
A friend of Prince, John Rollins, revealed during the trial what the murderer told him when the body of this young woman appeared: "I was the one who killed her." But he thought it was bravado, despite the fact that, a few days before the murder, the ex-marine had joined the same gym that the victim attended. He wanted to keep a good watch on her.
With six recent crimes, the San Diego Police were working to find a serial killer. However, his investigations came to a standstill with no leads or suspects.
The authorities reinforced the neighborhood patrols, almost thirty agents were assigned to clarify the cases and some residents moved, while others installed steel bars on their windows. Fear gripped the city.
Television programs like America's Most Wanted (The most wanted in America) also tried to help in the investigation with a special delivery dedicated to tracing the criminal profile of this serial killer. Everyone wanted to find him, but no one found him.
Luck changed when, in early February 1991, Prince was caught attempting to rob his latest victim, Geralynd Venverloth, at his home. The young woman had time to run the bolt before the murderer entered and called for help.
Thanks to the eyewitnesses, who gave a detailed description of the assailant and wrote down the registration number of a 1982 Chevrolet Cavalier, the vehicle used in his escape, an identification was obtained. It was Cleophus Prince Jr., from Alabama.
A patrol detained the young man for the crime of attempted robbery, but he was released on probation hours later. During the interrogation, Prince agreed to provide blood and saliva samples, tests that, without knowing it, would be essential weeks later.
At the same time, a statement was taken from the assaulted woman, who exposed the possibility that the young man had followed her out of the gym. This information led the police to continue along this line of investigation and the hypothesis that said individual was also the perpetrator of the three fatal assaults that occurred in the region.
To elucidate the facts, the investigators requested judicial authorization to proceed with a search of the suspect's vehicle and, when they obtained it, they found several knives inside.
They also found Prince's wallet: it had a credit card with small defects on the edges, which led to the belief that the young man used it to force doors and windows. It was the usual procedure for white-collar thieves.
Prince's travels and previous addresses were also tracked. Here they discovered that she had lived in the Clairemont area, where months before the bodies of three women had been found in the same circumstances, and that her current residence is just one block from the house of Elissa Naomi Keller, the fourth victim.
The decisive test to proceed to the arrest of Prince was the DNA match between his genetic material and the semen found on the clothes of Janene Weinhold, the only victim who had sexual fluids from her attacker.
The results of the samples arrived at the beginning of March, and on the 3rd he was arrested. At the time, authorities had located him at his family's home in Birmingham, where he had fled.
In a new search, agents located more incriminating evidence against Prince: Holly's gold ring, the third victim, which the killer gave to his girlfriend as a Christmas present, Elissa's gold ring and the sneakers used in the crimes. . In this case, his sole prints matched those found at the stabbing scenes.
Subsequently, the police extradited the ex-marine to San Diego and the investigation of the case began to take him to trial. The court hearing began in the summer of 1993 and the defendant pleaded not guilty to all charges. In fact, the defense of what is known as The Clairemont Killer argued that, in three of the cases, his guilt could not be proven due to lack of evidence. It was not true.
“This was not a simple thief caught by surprise. He was about someone with a purpose, a sexually perverted purpose. He liked to see blood run from women's breasts,” Assistant District Attorney Dan Lamborn said in closing arguments at the trial.
On July 15, 1993, the jury found Cleophus Prince Jr. guilty of six murders and 21 other counts of robbery. "I didn't kill any of his daughters," the killer released to the families of the victims. He kept insisting on his innocence. The whining was of no use. Four months later, Judge Charles Hayes upheld the jury's verdict and sentenced the 20-something to life in prison.
Prince is currently on death row at San Quentin State Prison, and the California Supreme Court has so far dismissed all appeals by the former Marine's attorneys seeking his parole.
