Police See Connection in Woman Who Was Found Stabbed to Death in Clairemont

A 21-year-old UC San Diego student was found stabbed to death Friday night just a few blocks from a Clairemont apartment where a nude dancer was fatally knifed last month, San Diego police said Saturday.

The body of Janine Weinhold was discovered about 8:30 p.m. by a roommate and two other witnesses in a back bedroom of her apartment in the 3100 block of Clairemont Drive, Sgt. Jim Clear said. She had been stabbed in the upper chest and the room had been ransacked, detectives said.

Investigators said Saturday that elements in the case resembled the fatal Jan. 12 stabbing of Tiffany Paige Shultz, 20, an English major at San Diego State University who moonlighted as a “go-go” dancer at Les Girls on Rosecrans Street in San Diego.

Shultz, who lived in the 3100 block of Cowley Way, was found about 9 p.m. by her fiance, Christopher Jon Burns, who was later arrested and questioned in the case. He was released five days later when police said they did not have enough evidence to file charges.

Weinhold had been stabbed repeatedly, and her clothing and any obvious murder weapon had been taken from the scene. Police said both stabbings apparently happened about the same time. “Definitely, we’re looking into a possible connection,” Clear said.

Police spokesman Bill Robinson said Saturday that it is too early to tell if the same person committed the killings.

“There are a number of similarities in both cases but there are also a number of dissimilarities,” Robinson said. “Right now it’s too early to tell. But we’d like any neighbors who might have seen something unusual to call police.”

The victim’s father, Ray Weinhold of Scottsdale, Ariz., said that he had talked to his daughter a few nights ago and that her spirits were high.

“This Friday was her birthday, and she was coming home,” he said.

Weinhold, president of the Scottsdale Memorial Health Foundation, said his daughter was a senior at UCSD studying a pre-law curriculum. She had recently applied to several law schools in Southern California, Arizona and Oregon and was awaiting a reply, he said.

Ray Weinhold said he was contacted by San Diego police shortly after midnight and told that his daughter had sustained multiple stab wounds in the chest.

He said police told him that his daughter had washed some clothes in the apartment complex earlier that evening and had apparently been baking cookies when the attack occurred.

The dead woman’s roommate said she and Weinhold had moved to the Buena Vista Apartments in August and had no reason to fear the neighborhood.

“There weren’t even any car break-ins. And I never even heard about that other girl’s death,” she said, referring to Shultz. “I mean, we never talked about it.”

The roommate said Weinhold had failed to pick her up from work at 2 p.m. Friday. She found Weinhold about 8:30 p.m., after returning to the apartment with a sister and a building maintenance man.

Liz Conte, manager at Jazz’d, a La Jolla T-shirt shop where Janine Weinhold had worked for the past four years, said the brown-eyed brunette was looking forward to law school.

“That’s what so sick about this,” she said. “Janine didn’t have an enemy in the world. She didn’t have a boyfriend right now, and it was impossible to dislike her. This must have been a random thing.”

A spokesman at the County Coroner’s office said that an autopsy will be conducted Sunday.