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Gardener, Woman Had Bond

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By VALERIE KALFRIN and SAMARA SODOS, The Tampa Tribune News Channel 8

Published: November 2, 2007

Interview With Sandra Prince's Gardener

TAMPA - For more than a year after his friend Sandra Prince disappeared, David Jarrett tended to the garden and the pool at her Temple Terrace house, keeping things just the way she liked them.

Not anymore.

A search warrant filed two weeks ago in a Hillsborough County court indicates Temple Terrace police think Prince, who was 59 when she vanished, was killed; blood was found in the trunk of her car and in her bedroom.

This week, Douglas Stalley, a fiduciary of her $3.6 million estate, dismissed Jarrett, thanking him in a letter for his loyalty and asking him to return the house keys.

Stalley could not be reached Thursday.

Jarrett said the dismissal brings mixed emotions. He worked for Prince for about three years before she disappeared, meeting her through a mutual friend who at first cared for the house. He visited her home about four days a week.

He is saddened someone else will take over the work he did for so long, but he also feels relief.

"It was so hard to continue to do that yard," he said Thursday. "I wasn't enjoying ... I did everything for her, not for the sake of a job."

'Narcissistic Injury'

Police last month dug for Prince's remains at a South Tampa house that Earl Pippin III, her boyfriend when she vanished, had built at the time she disappeared. Investigators took soil samples.

Pippin, who was married at the time, had a five-year relationship with Prince and is the sole beneficiary of her estate, police said. Pippin's attorney, Paul Sisco, has said there is no evidence linking Pippin to Prince's disappearance.

The search warrant states that a $6,000 painting Prince had commissioned could have caused a "narcissistic injury" to Pippin because it depicts her in her garden at work with Jarrett and his dog.

The painting still hangs in Prince's house, Jarrett said.

Jarrett first thought it was "kind of weird" that Prince wanted him in the painting, but Prince said he was "as much a part of the garden as the plants itself." He consented after his wife and his mother, both of whom knew Prince as his friend, expressed their approval, he said.

He doesn't think the painting she loved caused her death. "Whoever did this is pretty sick," Jarrett said. "The painting didn't cause it. An individual caused this."

Mutual Journals

Prince liked to treat Jarrett and his family to dinners out on holidays, he said. They also exchanged gifts, such as a calendar she had filled in with his family's birthdays.

They began mutual journals as an easy way to communicate, leaving each other notes about chores. The notations segued into discussions on politics, religion and family, he said.

Prince had no TV, so the journals were her entertainment, Jarrett said. "The journals were so innocent, they weren't even funny, but they meant a lot to her because that was the fresh news."

Jarrett and a neighbor reported Prince missing on Jan. 3, 2006, after neither had heard from Prince for days. Jarrett said he let himself into the house twice before calling police, once with his wife, to check on Prince. He found her car at the house and her cell phone on the counter.

"I knew something bad had happened. ... I said it the first day," he said. She wouldn't just walk away without telling him to watch the house, he said.

"It makes me sad," Jarrett said. "This woman enjoyed life. She saw the good in everybody. ... It is a travesty that somebody would actually hurt this person."

Reporter Valerie Kalfrin can be reached at vkalfrin@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7800. Reporter Samara Sodos can be reached at (813) 314-5379 or slsodos@wfla.com.

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