A Missouri man previously acquitted of murdering a pregnant woman was charged Friday with murdering his ex-girlfriend in her St. Louis apartment and dumping her body.
71-year-old David L. Harvey was charged with first-degree murder, first-degree burglary, abandoning a corpse and evidence tampering in the death of 63-year-old Carolyn Jenkins. Police said her badly decomposed body was found Wednesday, dumped in a wooded area on that same block.
According to charges, police went to Jenkins’ apartment on August 11 for a “wellness check” and found her third-floor apartment “in disarray” with blood on the floor. Jenkins wasn’t there.
Harvey and Jenkins lived on the same floor of the Metropolitan Village Apartments in the city’s Jeff-Vander-Lou neighborhood.
Police reviewed surveillance video that showed Harvey follow Jenkins to her apartment and “rush inside behind her before closing the door,” charges said. Several minutes later, Harvey can be seen exiting the apartment.
Harvey and Jenkins were previously in a relationship and had broken up a few weeks earlier, charges said.
Surveillance video from the apartment building showed that about 2 a.m., Harvey returned to Jenkins apartment with someone else. The video shows them going inside Jenkins’ apartment and wheeling her body outside using a dolly.
No one else was seen entering or exiting the apartment on surveillance during that time, charges said. Police on Wednesday found Jenkins’ body dumped in “a wooded area a few yards away” from Jenkins’ apartment building. Police classified her death as a homicide. The charges allege that Harvey killed Jenkins “by smothering her.”
Harvey “made several incriminating statements” in a police interview. He was jailed without bail. It was not clear if officers had arrested the person police say helped Harvey dispose of Jenkins’ body.
A jury in April 2018 found Harvey not guilty of murdering 30-year-old India Blake. She was shot to death September 13, 2015. Blake’s body was found covered by debris in an alley. Blake died from a .32-caliber gunshot wound to the head, according to a pathologist’s testimony at Harvey’s trial. Blake was pregnant when she died.
Harvey’s criminal history stretches back to the 1980s with convictions of burglary, child abuse, stealing, assault and illegal guns and drugs, court records say.
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