Investor irritated by dig at home

He says police have zeroed in on the wrong man in the 2005 disappearance.

By REBECCA CATALANELLO, Times Staff Writer
Published October 20, 2007

With the help of forensic anthropologists from the University of South Florida,Temple Terrace police Detective Michael Pridemore, center, examines a tube containing a soil sample as workers continue to dig.
	[Melissa Lyttle | Times]

TAMPA -- Each day detectives dig behind a South Tampa home searching for a missing woman, Don Watkins gets more irritated.

"We have $80,000 invested in that house!" the self-described loud-talker said Friday. "They have ruined the sale-ability of that house."

Watkins, 81, oversaw the purchase and construction of 3908 W Vasconia St. two years ago. He said he asked Earl Pippin III to build the house, which is owned by Watkins' business partners Timothy and Maiti McLeod.

It's the kind of arrangement he's had with Pippin for about 25 years.

Police have spent the past three days boring holes into the ground beneath the two-story rental, searching for evidence of Sandra Hamby Prince. They plan to continue this morning.

Prince was 59 when she disappeared from her Temple Terrace home sometime after Dec. 30, 2005.

Pippin, who police call her boyfriend and a "person of interest," was at her home the morning a neighbor reported her missing, according to police. They also say he is the sole beneficiary to her $2.8-million her estate.

On Jan. 5, 2006, six days after Prince vanished, a city inspector signed off on a newly poured concrete slab at the Vasconia Street property.

Despite the implications of that timeline, Watkins isn't buying the idea that Pippin, 53, had anything to do with Prince's disappearance.

Watkins, who police said Friday they have not questioned, sold Prince a home at 6214 S Main Ave. in 2002, records show. It's across the street from two other residences Pippin built with Watkins' involvement.

Watkins said Pippin helped arrange Prince's purchase of the Main Avenue house.

Pippin also helped her purchase several Sumter County properties, including one they co-own.

Prince would pay for the property, then Pippin would start clearing and building, Watkins said. That financial symbiosis itself would suggest Pippin lacked motive in ending her life, he said: "Would you kill the goose that laid the golden egg?"

Police have searched the Vasconia Street property before. They said this week that a culmination of 142 tips led them back to the South Tampa residence once more.

Watkins said the McLeods rented the house out a few months ago when they had difficulty selling it. But they still want to sell it.

A year ago, ground penetrating radar indicated an anomaly below the slab at this house, Temple Terrace spokesman Mike Dunn said. But when investigators cut a small section of the slab and used a shovel to remove soil, tests indicated nothing unusual there.

Police have not commented on the link between the Vasconia Street property and Pippin.

Watkins believes they've simply decided that Pippin's their man.

In an interview earlier this year, Detective Michael Pridemore said they named Pippin a "person of interest" after he stopped talking with them.

"He is one of the people in her very private life that actually knew a lot about her," Pridemore said at the time. "With him not wishing to talk with us and no longer communicating with us just piques our interest as to why."

These days, Pippin spends most of his time at Lake Panasoffkee, Watkins said. Pippin's wife of 20 years filed for divorce in August 2006, just weeks before police publicly named him.

Gale Pippin kept the couple's Inman Avenue house, 2 miles from where police now search with dogs, archeologists and heavy equipment. The Pippins have one child together, according to a court file.

Watkins said Prince was "well-heeled," and "very nice" when he met her at the real estate closing in 2002, though he did not know at the time that she and Pippin were involved. "When I found out she and Earl had an affair, I was flabbergasted," he said. "I didn't know he had it in him."

Similarly, Watkins said he doesn't believe Pippin has the expertise -- not to mention the time -- to carry off an elaborate crime on the scale this might require: "He doesn't impress me as being smart enough to take a woman and kill her."

When the intensely private Prince disappeared, police found her door unlocked, her cell phone on a kitchen counter, her blood in her trunk and her purse missing. A masked man tried to access her bank accounts by ATM, scenes captured on surveillance video show.

Watkins said the man they want is the man in the video, and Pippin is simply a scapegoat.

Back at Vasconia Street Friday, Detective Pridemore meticulously wiped the dust from plastic tubes filled with dirt -- samples that are headed for testing by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

By the end of the day, spokesman Dunn said that police had found nothing immediately eyebrow-raising. He could not predict how much longer the dig would continue.

Rebecca Catalanello can be reached at rcatalanello@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3383.

[Last modified October 20, 2007, 22:36:09]