Husband Sought In Calif. Murders

Police called in the FBI to aid in their search Tuesday for the vice principal of an elementary school as a possible suspect in the shooting deaths of five people, including three children.

The five - including a grandmother and a mother - were found dead in their Bakersfield home Tuesday morning. Police said they apparently had been shot multiple times.

Detective Mary DeGeare said officers were looking for Vincent Brothers, 41, the vice principal at Fremont Elementary School. DeGeare said he is the estranged husband of the younger woman and father of at least two of the dead children, and had periodically lived in the house.

"He is a person of interest, a possible suspect," DeGeare said. "We'd like to find him to determine whether he was responsible or eliminate him as a suspect."

Police were called to the home early Tuesday by a family friend who had gone to check on the family. The bodies of the mother and her three children were found in a bedroom; the grandmother was in another room.

The coroner identified the victims as Earnestine Harper, 70, Joanie Harper, 39, Marques Harper, 4, Lindsey Harper, 23 months old, and Marshall Harper, 6 weeks old. The coroner says it's unknown when the five were killed and that autopsies would be performed Wednesday.

Police Capt. Neil Mahan said Brothers' pickup truck was found Tuesday. He wouldn't say where.

The family lived in a tough neighborhood with a reputation for gang activity, but friends and family described them as active in the community and very religious.

Joanie Harper worked with troubled children and refereed ballgames, said Darren Dixon, 22, Earnestine's nephew and Joanie's cousin. Dixon said he saw no friction in her relationship with Brothers. "She liked him a lot. He was a very nice guy,"

But Brothers has had a history of marital difficulties, according to court records and police.

Two previous marriages ended quickly, and he and Joanie Harper formally separated less than two weeks after their marriage in January 2000. He cited "irreconcilable differences," while she checked "nullification based on fraud" as the reason she wanted a divorce.

Still, they stayed involved in each other's lives, living together at times, friends and family members said.

In one earlier marriage, Brothers was convicted of spousal abuse, Mahan said. In his 1992 marriage, his wife filed for a restraining order, saying Brothers "is violent and has threatened to kill me."

At Emerson Middle School, where Brothers worked from 1989 to 1996, he was known as a stern leader who mixed encouragement and discipline in daily lessons to young people about how to survive in tough neighborhoods. He spoke from experience - Brothers grew up as one of 11 children raised on welfare by a single mother in Long Island, N.Y., according to a 1996 profile in The Bakersfield Californian.

Earnestine Harper became well known for bringing attention to accusations of prosecutorial misconduct in the case of Offord Lee Rollins, a high school football and track star who was accused of raping and killing his girlfriend. Rollins served three years in prison and was retried twice before he was eventually freed.

"I never heard anyone speak ill of her, even in her fight for the young man she believed in," said Irma Carson, a Bakersfield City Council member who knew Earnestine well.