Painting may hold clues to missing woman

A woman hangs a portrait of a man other than her boyfriend, then disappears.

By REBECCA CATALANELLO, Times Staff Writer
Published October 26, 2007

A search warrant filed in court late Wednesday reveals that Sandra Prince's blood was found at her Temple Terrace home. It also lists evidence that investigators expect to find on a South Tampa property. That investigation is ongoing.
	[Thomas M. Goethe | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT Sandra Prince was reported missing in 2006.

TAMPA -- The $6,000 painting still hangs in Sandra Prince's now-vacant house. In the portrait, the missing social worker stands in her garden with a man and his dog.

Prince once told the artist she was fond of the man.

"Sadly," she said, according to a court document, "he is married with children and nothing would ever come of it."

Temple Terrace police wonder if the painting made another man jealous enough to bury her under a house.

New details filed in court late Wednesday indicate more about why police have focused much of their investigation on Earl C. Pippin III, 53, who they say Prince dated for five years before she vanished around New Year's Day 2006.

Pippin's attorney, who did not return calls for comment Thursday, has previously said that police are wrong to target his client and that their evidence is thin.

Investigators hypothesize that Pippin may have experienced a "narcissistic injury" -- a wounding of his self-esteem -- over the painting, according to a search warrant that allowed investigators to dig beneath a South Tampa house last week.

The man pictured in the painting was not Pippin, but Prince's gardener, David Jarrett, 47, the records say.

* * *

That Jarrett felt close to Prince is not unusual, according to interviews with those who knew Prince, 59 when she disappeared.

Though intensely private, she developed an uncommon intimacy with people she paid to help improve her life: her esthetician, her massage therapist, her feng shui consultant and the women at her favorite boutique.

"It took me forever not to call her 'Ms. Prince,'" Jarrett told the St. Petersburg Times on Thursday. "And I always called her 'Sandra Prince.' I don't think I ever called her just 'Sandra.'"

Still, Jarrett told police, an outsider reading the notes that Prince and the gardener exchanged might think them "flirtatious."

The two began leaving entries in a journal as a way for Jarrett to let Prince know what he had done in the yard and for her to reply, the court documents say.

Over time, their notes filled two or three journals. The entries grew longer and broached many topics, police said.

Those journals were among the items missing from Prince's otherwise tidy house when police arrived on Jan. 3, 2006.

Also gone: a picture of Pippin and Prince that a maid last saw on Prince's nightstand on Dec. 28, 2005, Prince's purse and a towel from the master bedroom.

When detectives asked Pippin what he knew about the painting, he changed his story several times, police wrote.

First, Pippin told police he believed the man pictured was the artist. Then, he said, Jarrett told him the figure was Jarrett.

In the end, Pippin told investigators he had discussed the painting with Prince and she asked if he wanted to be in it.

"He did not," the search warrant states. "She told him she wanted David in the picture and asked him if he was okay with that. He said that he was."

* * *

Jarrett, who continues to care for Prince's property, said he took a lie detector test about his statements to police.

Lead Detective Michael Pridemore said Jarrett passed the test.

"Nothing was between me and her," Jarrett said Thursday. "Nothing. As a matter of fact, I think I only touched her one time."

He hugged her, he said. That was it. His family was there when he embraced Prince to say thank you. She had treated Jarrett, his wife and their children to dinner at Cafe Don Jose.

Pridemore said Pippin remains the only person who hasn't responded to a police request to submit to a polygraph.

Pippin's attorney, Paul Sisco, said last week that Pippin passed a polygraph administered by an experienced FBI questioner; however, it wasn't under the Police Department's watch.

* * *

When police in September 2006 named Pippin a "person of interest" in Prince's disappearance, they saw several oddities, according to the search warrant.

On Jan. 3, 2006, Jarrett, Prince's neighbor Nancy Sackville and Pippin were all at Prince's house when they decided to call police about their missing friend, according to court documents.

Pippin, married for 20 years at the time, left the house before police arrived, records show.

Pippin, a Tampa contractor, told Jarrett he needed to take his son to a doctor's appointment, according to court records. He told police he went to ACTS, the Temple Terrace drug treatment center Prince helped found, to see if one of her co-workers, Richard Brown, knew where she was.

In a police interview four months later, Pippin said, "I went to, to, to her office, talked to Richard." Next, he said, he went to a job site at either San Pedro Street or Pearl Avenue, both in South Tampa.

Construction at both of those sites had been completed by then, according to records cited by police. Pippin did not mention, however, his job site at 3908 W Vasconia St., also in South Tampa, where a concrete slab was poured in January.

After Pippin left Prince's house, his cell phone hit off towers near Interstate 275 and Rome Avenue, then at Lee Roy Selmon Crosstown Expressway and Himes Avenue, indicating he was traveling toward South Tampa, police wrote. Cell phone records show that Pippin called ACTS twice during this time, once for 47 seconds and once for just over two minutes, police said.

Police this week concluded five days of digging beneath 3908 W Vasconia St. in a search for Prince's remains. Now, University of South Florida archaeologists are sorting through 295 pounds of dirt seeking any evidence of Prince.

Other findings released in the Vasconia Street search warrant:

• When shown surveillance video of a man taking $800 in four withdrawals from Prince's ATM accounts, Pippin told police the man looked like him. "Do you wear that?" a police interrogator asked him, referring to the mask over the subject's head. According to police, Pippin responded with, "What am I wearing?"
• Prince's blood was found on the her garage floor, around and in the trunk of her car, and on the overhead garage door. Investigators found evidence that her bedroom floor had been cleaned, as had the garage door.
• On Nov. 17, 2006, police found a glass vase with a yellow ribbon on it at the Vasconia Street house. Inside the vase was a plant called the ti plant. Also called the "good luck" plant, it is abundant in Prince's garden. A fingerprint on the vase belonged to Pippin.

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

TIME LINE: Search for Sandra Prince

• Dec. 18, 2005: A large, two-piece painting featuring Sandra Prince in her garden is delivered to her Moffat Place home.
• Dec. 28, 2005: Prince doesn't call her mother in North Carolina for their regular talk.
• Dec. 30, 2005: An ATM user with his face covered withdraws $400 from Prince's accounts.
• Dec. 31, 2005: Prince misses a business meeting and fails to get a planned oil change. The masked man makes two more ATM withdrawals totaling $400. A neighbor sees Prince's car arrive and the garage door shut.
• Jan. 3, 2006: A neighbor reports Prince missing.
• Jan. 6, 2006: Sumter County deputies search land that Prince owns at Lake Panasoffkee, finding nothing.
• Jan. 7, 2006: Contacted by the St. PetersburgTimes, Earl C. Pippin denies he co-owns land with Prince at the lake. Records show otherwise. He says he didn't date Prince.
• Aug. 21, 2006: Gale Pippin files for divorce from Pippin.
• Sept. 13, 2006: Police name Pippin a "person of interest." They say he dated Prince five years and is her sole beneficiary. Her family raises a missing person reward to $80,000.
• Oct. 17, 2007: Investigators begin removing soil from beneath a house that Pippin built at 3908 W Vasconia St.

Sources: Times interviews, Temple Terrace police.

[Last modified October 26, 2007, 00:25:22]