Keith Morrison

About the central facts, there was no doubt.

Michelle O'Keefe was hit with some blunt object and then shot to death while sitting in the driver's seat of her brand new Mustang in a park-and-ride north of Los Angeles.

As for the rest, there just wasn't much to go on.

Except, Detective Richard Longshore was getting a familiar feeling in his gut about that one talkative witness of his, the night security guard, Raymond Jennings.

Jennings had told Longshore he heard shots fired, saw muzzle flashes, but couldn't see the shooter.

That's determined by the autopsy.

Three days after the murder, Jennings quit his night security job, said he couldn't feel comfortable around there anymore.

So he drove over to All Valley Security at a strip mall on Palmdale Boulevard to turn in his uniform.

And of course, Detective Longshore found out.

And a few days later, detectives retrieved the nylon security jacket and the beige short-sleeved shirt and the dark pants that Jennings wore that night in the park and ride.

Happily, the clothes had not been washed.

Could be a DNA gold mine.

So they took the dirty uniform to the crime lab, where the techs ran tests for blood and gunshot residue and so on.

And?

Negative.

Lots of Raymond Jennings' DNA, but nothing that could pin him to a shooting in a parking lot.

No blood, no gunshot residue.

Zip.

which tended to back up Jennings' story that he was nowhere near the shooting.

But this wasn't Longshore's first rodeo.