After dead woman found stuffed in suitcase, videos and witnesses offer new clues

Reporting from SAN DIEGO  —  When a woman’s body was found in a suitcase in downtown San Diego on April 6, Joshua Palmer told co-workers he was worried it might be his friend, Shauna Haynes, witnesses testified Wednesday.

Some of those colleagues and friends testified in court that Palmer told them Haynes, 21, left his place the day before at 4 a.m. He said she was naked and wrapped in his blanket and had a bloody nose from snorting cocaine.

The preliminary hearing, expected to last two days before Superior Court Judge Louis Hanoian, will decide whether there is enough evidence to try Palmer, 32, for Haynes’ murder.

Prosecutors say Palmer raped, beat and strangled Haynes in his room in the Chadwick residency hotel on A Street at Seventh Avenue. The two worked together at the Old Spaghetti Factory in San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter.

Deleted videos recovered from Palmer’s cellphone show an unconscious woman being touched in a sexually inappropriate manner early April 5, the day before Haynes’ body was found, according to a police detective’s testimony.

The videos, which were played in court but not shown to the gallery, were found on a memory card in Palmer’s phone. San Diego police Det. David Spitzer said he believed he could identify Haynes in one of the videos.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Martin Doyle also called a string of witnesses who knew Palmer and Haynes.

Co-worker Diana Gonzalez said that about two weeks before Haynes’ death, Palmer said he was frustrated that she wasn’t interested in him sexually, even though she was going to move in with him.

Malik Collier said he and Haynes had been friends since high school and Haynes had told him that Palmer was getting aggressive. She showed Collier a text message, allegedly from Palmer, saying, “If I can’t have you the way I want you, I’m going to do something I regret,” Collier said.

“I told her to stay away from him,” Collier said.

A resident of the Chadwick found Haynes’ body on April 6 when he noticed human hair and toes sticking out of a suitcase that had been dumped into a trash can behind the hotel. Homicide investigators took Palmer in for questioning after the body was found and arrested him April 8.

Haynes had been strangled and had several scratches and bruises on her body and inside her mouth, Deputy Medical Examiner Bethann Schaber said. She said a small bone in Haynes’ throat was fractured by blunt force.

Schaber said the discolored pooling of blood in Haynes’ lower body indicated she may have been placed in the suitcase eight to 12 hours before she was found. Schaber gave no better estimate on when Haynes died.

The woman had no drugs or alcohol in her system that could account for her death, the deputy medical examiner testified.

Under questioning from defense attorney Katie Belisle, Schaber said injuries indicated, but did not prove, that Haynes had been raped rather than engaging in consensual sex.

Gonzalez said Palmer, her co-worker, met her the day before Haynes’ body was found and talked about what he and Haynes had done the night before.

Palmer said he and another woman went to his room and were joined by Haynes and a man she met on the street. They all drank and had sex as a foursome, Gonzalez testified.

Spitzer said text messages sent from Palmer’s cellphone about 2:20 a.m. suggested the same, with one reading, “OMG it just turned into a foursome.”

But messages sent to Haynes soon took on a different tone.

“I’m sorry,” the text sent about 2:50 a.m. read. “I love you. I accepted my place as a friend, but I can’t watch you make love to someone else. I know it’s selfish, but I can’t take it. I’m not good enough, but two total strangers are? It just destroyed me.”

Five of the 10 deleted videos found on Palmer’s phone were taken between 2:25 a.m. and 6:53 a.m., according to testimony. In one of the later videos, a man could be heard saying, “I’m sorry. I let a lot of people down. I tried to be good and wasn’t good enough.”

Spitzer said he’d had contact with Palmer before and recognized his voice as the one in the video.

There were five other deleted videos found on Palmer’s phone, recorded at an earlier date. Spitzer said those videos appear to show other unconscious women being touched in an inappropriate manner. Those women have not been located, the detective said.

Repard and Winkley write for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

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