Janette Anne Cullins, a 25-year-old white female, was found dead on April 14, 1984, in her apartment in the Pacific Beach area of San Diego, California. Her body was discovered concealed in a closed bedroom closet. The cause of death was determined to be asphyxia due to strangulation. Evidence at the scene, including wood chips near the front door, indicated that her apartment had been forcibly entered.
Cullins had died approximately one to two days before her body was found.
Investigators quickly linked her murder to a broader pattern of violent crimes occurring across California during a three-week span in the spring of 1984. The suspect, 28-year-old Dean Phillip Carter, was already under investigation for a series of rapes and murders targeting women from San Diego to the San Francisco Bay Area. Carter had previously met Cullins at a San Diego bar in February 1984 and had also been acquainted with her roommate, Cheri Phinney, whom he met the day of the murder. Phinney, however, had not yet moved into the apartment and was not present at the time of the crime.
Carter's crime spree included multiple sexual assaults and murders, often involving women who had rejected his advances. In Cullins's case, a neighbor reported seeing a vehicle belonging to another of Carter's victims parked outside her residence the night before her body was discovered. That vehicle departed abruptly and noisily. Cullins's own car was later found abandoned several blocks away. Surveillance footage from an ATM captured a man resembling Carter withdrawing money from Cullins's bank account on April 13, 1984.
Carter was arrested on April 17, 1984, in Arizona after being stopped for erratic driving in a vehicle linked to one of his other victims. Inside the car, authorities found numerous personal items belonging to several murdered women, including Cullins. He was extradited to California and charged with multiple counts of murder, rape, burglary, and robbery. In Cullins's case, Carter was convicted of first-degree murder with special circumstances, including murder during the commission of a burglary and robbery. He was sentenced to death for her killing.
The prosecution presented a theory that Carter had intended to kill both Cullins and her new roommate, but Phinney's absence thwarted that plan. Carter's conviction was part of a broader case that included the murders of at least four other women. Despite his conviction and death sentence, Carter has continued to deny responsibility for the crimes.
