The Unlucky Ticket
Did a lottery winner’s murderer commit the perfect crime?
Ann Jenkins, 30, selected her Lotto numbers at the kitchen table in her family’s rented home. A few lines on her otherwise soft face suggested both pain and worldliness, making her appear slightly older than her age. Watching over her was her 35-year-old husband, Gary, who had a beefy body and a thick mustache. Before leaving for school, their older kids — two each from prior marriages — had made their Lotto picks. Their youngest, whom they had together, was less than a year old and too young to participate. On his drive to work from their home in the San Diego suburb of San Marcos, Gary stopped at a 7-Eleven and purchased five tickets.
Ann’s sister watched the kids that night while the parents attended a community meeting. She scribbled the winning numbers from the televised drawing on a napkin. When the couple got home, they couldn’t believe it: Ann had chosen five of the six winning figures — and the correct bonus number. Ann called the 7-Eleven, just to be sure. The owner, Margaret Martinez, confirmed they were winners and would collect $720,000. “There was so much joy in her voice,” Martinez recalled.
Three weeks later, Ann and Gary collected their check, almost $600,000 after taxes. They returned to the 7-Eleven and took pictures with the Martinezes. Ann quit her job as a secretary at her father’s construction company. The couple decided to spend the first hundred thousand and invest the remainder. They bought tickets for a family vacation at Disney World, talked of having another baby, and planned to buy a home.
On February 17, 1988, Ann’s sister phoned Gary. She’d picked up the kids from school after Ann didn’t show up. Ann wasn’t answering the phone either. Gary left work and drove home. In the driveway, he saw their Chevy Suburban half-washed. A bucket filled with dirty water sat nearby, and the hose was still gurgling. Dried soap streaked the windows.
Gary opened the locked front door. He called out Ann’s name and moved from room to room. Their infant was asleep in his crib. Gary encountered Ann’s body in a back hallway, half-leaning against a bathroom door. Her throat was slashed, and she was cold and stiff. He called 911. “Oh my god, my wife’s dead,” he bellowed into the phone.
There was very little blood. Police determined that Ann had been strangled and then stabbed. Detectives noted that her hands were uninjured, and her manicured fingernails were intact. She hadn’t fought her assailant. The forensics team found no fingerprints, fibers, hairs, or murder weapon.
Later, one of the people involved in the case would say, “This was the perfect crime. There was nothing found at the scene to help the investigating detectives learn who did it.”
But there was an obvious suspect. The murderer had to be — wait for it — the disgruntled ex-husband.
Ann had married her high school sweetheart, David Scott Harrison, in 1976. They had two children. Five years into the marriage, Ann filed for divorce, triggering a multiyear battle over custody, visitation rights, child support, alimony, and jointly held property.
In 1986, Ann married Gary Jenkins, a construction foreman. Harrison began harassing the newlyweds. He forwarded their mail to Hawaii, changed their phone number, and subscribed them to unwanted magazines.
Wiry, with receding hair and a flat, sneaky smile, Harrison used his family’s wealth to manipulate and extend the legal battle with Ann, hoping the costs would bankrupt her. Harrison targeted Ann’s parents when they began paying for her attorneys. Using the name of her dad, Harry Wanket, Harrison placed an ad in a swingers magazine soliciting gay sex. Wanket received pornographic photos in the mail and over 300 telephone calls from interested men. Harrison sent newsletters entitled “Incest Alert” to the Wankets’ friends and claimed Wanket had molested Ann.
Two observations struck me when I visited the communities involved in this story. First, I’d forgotten how pleasantly hilly the San Diego area is. Every few miles, I rolled into another charming glen, hidden from its surroundings and peppered with the droopy branches of live oak trees and eucalyptuses, which to me smell like toothpaste. But what I also noticed was that San Marcos is a curious city: part Brady Bunch and part Breaking Bad. In the center and western part of San Marcos, suburban homes house San Diego commuters, and a cool Pacific breeze wafts in from the coast. In the foothills to the east, horse farms, nurseries, and ramshackle homes occupy large lots. A loamy smell of broken pavement and fertilizer fills the air.
A few years after Ann divorced him, Harrison was shot between the eyes during a gunfight at the home he shared with his brother in a rural section of Escondido where farms raised juniper, ficus, and magnolia trees. The remote ranch was owned by Harrison’s mother and used by his brother to grow and deal marijuana. The shooting occurred when six people tried to steal pot plants from the property. Harrison was helicoptered to a hospital and fully recovered.
In June 1987, a year into Gary’s marriage to Ann, Harrison planted a pipe bomb under a VW van belonging to Gary’s ex-wife. The bomb exploded at 3 a.m. No one was injured, but the car was destroyed, and shrapnel tore through the windows of the hillside home. Gary’s children were sleeping inside.
A few days later, Harrison called Gary and asked to meet. Gary refused, saying their discussions should be handled through lawyers. Harrison angrily exclaimed, “You either meet me there in a half-hour, or the next bomb will be thrown through your children’s window.” Gary still declined, and police did not seriously investigate the bombing.
Harrison owned several parcels in San Diego County, and when Ann married him they became community property and a source of disagreement. The day before Ann was murdered, a judge decided a case about the disputed properties in her favor.
As if his life wasn’t complicated enough, Harrison was bisexual and engaged in relationships with both women and men. Around the time he was shot, he began a relationship with David Johnson. He told Johnson he’d moved his more valuable belongings to a friend’s house to hide them from his ex-wife and registered his businesses in his mother’s name.
Johnson said Harrison mentioned killing Ann Jenkins hundreds of times. “It was almost like a quest. He thought about it all the time. It was like an obsession.” One night in bed, Harrison whispered, “I’d like to cut her throat so she could never talk, and I’d like to stand there and watch her bleed.” Johnson’s relationship with Harrison didn’t last long.
In 1987, Harrison told another lover, Todd Neumann, that “It would have been easier to kill the bitch than to divorce her.” When Neumann ended their eight-month relationship, Harrison got revenge by setting fire to a boat stored in Neumann’s parents’ driveway.
Harrison kept in touch with Johnson, and shortly before the murder, he called to complain about his ex-wife. Johnson recalled that at first, “he said he didn’t know what he was going to do.” But then he announced, “I’m just going to have to kill her.”
Harrison’s life was a tumbleweed of resentment and treachery. But like tumbleweeds eventually halted by shrubs or fence lines, Harrison’s choices ultimately caught up with him.
Three days before Ann’s murder, Harrison lugged three duffel bags to a high school friend’s house in Escondido. He told Bruce Freebury that, within a week, “the police will probably be in my home.” When Freebury asked why, Harrison said, “Watch TV. Something big’s going to happen on Wednesday or Thursday.” Ann was killed that Wednesday.
Freebury was familiar with Harrison’s hatred for his ex-wife. “At one point, he told me he had been talking to people about having Ann killed,” Freebury remembered. “He discussed one particular way of having Annie’s car involved in an accident.” When Gary and Ann won the lottery, Freebury said, Harrison “didn’t like it at all. He was concerned it would help Gary and Ann fight their custody battle.” He worried Ann would hire better lawyers.
Freebury’s roommate overheard the conversation. When he learned about Ann’s murder, he contacted the police. Authorities visited Freebury’s home and opened the duffel bags. Inside were four galvanized pipe bombs, much like the one used to blow up the van of Gary’s ex-wife. The bags also contained a .357 Magnum and ammunition cartridges.
That night, Harrison met Freebury’s girlfriend in a parking lot. He demanded to know what Freebury and his roommate had revealed to investigators. A few days later, police arrested Harrison for felony bomb possession. Given the lack of evidence at the scene, prosecutors were not yet ready to indict him for Ann’s murder, but he was too dangerous to release, and the judge denied bail.
In jail, Harrison offered a fellow prisoner a boat if he killed Freebury before the bomb trial. The cellmate reported the offer to authorities. After eight months behind bars, Harrison pleaded guilty to bombing the VW van, setting the boat afire, and defrauding an insurance company by falsely reporting his mother’s car stolen after he’d sold it for parts. The judge sentenced Harrison to 20 years.
Harrison’s alibi for Ann’s murder was that he’d been hanging out by the pool all day at his condo in the posh oceanside suburb of Del Mar. Inside that condo, police found knives, lock picks, and some interesting books. Their titles included The Perfect Crime and How to Commit It, The Joy of Cold Revenge, The Revenge Book, The Anarchist’s Cookbook, and Murder — What Done It. Together, they provided the recipes for Harrison’s harassment, bombing, arson, and homicide schemes.
Despite the absence of forensic evidence, a grand jury indicted Harrison for Ann’s murder a year after her death. The circumstantial evidence was so robust that prosecutors felt they had a strong case. Harrison wasn’t so sure. This time, he turned down a plea bargain.
Harrison waived his right to a jury trial. That was another mistake. Immediately after closing arguments in the 1990 trial, the judge announced that, beyond a reasonable doubt, the circumstantial evidence overshadowed the lack of forensics. He found the now 32-year-old Harrison guilty of first-degree murder.
During the sentencing hearing, the judge declared that getting custody of the children wasn’t Harrison’s motive. “The motive was something more sinister. Mr. Harrison is a manipulative person. He wanted to control Ann Jenkins’ life. That’s really what this case is all about.” Harrison smiled as the judge characterized his motivations. The judge sentenced him to another 20 years in prison after his existing 20-year term for the bomb, arson, and fraud charges.
Gary Jenkins was awarded custody of the two Harrison children. He used the lottery winnings to quit his job and raise all five children. After a couple of years, he remarried and resumed working. He and his new wife also parented two of her children.
Fifteen years after her son’s conviction, Harrison’s mother, a tax preparer, pleaded guilty to fraud. Since the 1970s, she’d helped clients invest their money in real estate trusts and certificates of deposit. But she’d actually deposited the client funds in her own bank accounts and used them to buy property and support her family’s living expenses. She paid returns with funds from new investors. Eventually, as in all Ponzi operations, the pyramid collapsed. She was sentenced to a 2½-year prison term.
Her son remains in San Quentin.
Copyright © 2024 Lou Schachter • All rights reserved
