TALE SEEN AS FULL OF HOLES DETECTIVE TELLS WHY GUARD BECAME SUSPECT IN PARKING-LOT SLAYING.

Byline: KAREN MAESHIRO Staff Writer

LANCASTER -- A former security guard accused of the 2000 slaying of a Palmdale teenager in a parking lot became a suspect after he told investigators he couldn't see her killer even though he watched her car roll backward when gunshots were fired from close range, a homicide detective testified Thursday.

Raymond Lee Jennings, the security guard who patrolled the Park and Ride lot the night Michelle O'Keefe was killed, told detectives he couldn't explain why he didn't see the person who fired the fatal shots, although he acknowledged the shots seemed to be fired by someone close enough to stick his gun hand through the driver's side window that was partially open, sheriff's Detective Diane Harris testified.

``He said he didn't see anyone near the car. He said he should have seen the shooter, but didn't. He said he didn't understand why he didn't see the shooter,'' Harris said.

Detectives said they doubted other parts of Jennings' account, such as his statement that he saw O'Keefe's fingers twitching and a faint pulse in her neck when he was called to the car by the supervisor he had alerted to the shooting. Detective Richard Longshore said an expert termed the possibility of seeing a pulse then highly unlikely.

``He saw the twitching and the pulse when he shot Michelle, not afterwards,'' said Longshore, who also testified that a former girlfriend told detectives Jennings kept a gun in his car when he lived in North Carolina the year before the killing.

Jennings, a 32-year-old Iraq war veteran who was arrested in December while home on leave, has pleaded not guilty to a murder charge in the Feb. 22, 2000, slaying of O'Keefe, an 18-year-old Antelope Valley College student.

Harris and Longshore testified at a preliminary hearing Thursday in Antelope Valley Superior Court before Judge Christopher Estes, who will decide whether Jennings should be held for a trial.

Estes is expected to decide after hearing arguments from the prosecutor and defense attorney on June 20.

O'Keefe was found shot to death behind the wheel of her Mustang in the lot on Avenue S, where she had left her car while she rode with a friend to work as an extra in the taping of a music video for rapper Kid Rock.

Harris said the shooting is believed to have occurred about 9:30 p.m. Investigators believe there was a struggle in which the vehicle's transmission ended up in neutral, and it rolled back until it hit a planter.

Harris said O'Keefe was first wounded while she was outside her car. Blood drops were left on the asphalt, on her leg and ankle, and on the upturned sole of a sandal, found upside down outside the car. She was in the driver's seat and the door open when she was found, officials said.

O'Keefe's cell phone was missing, but Harris said investigators don't believe the killing was the result of a robbery or carjacking attempt, although they earlier considered that a possibility.

O'Keefe's wallet, with $113 in cash and her credit cards undisturbed, was in the car.

``The only thing missing was the cell phone. We didn't believe there was evidence of a carjacking,'' Harris said.

In an interview with detectives after the slaying, Jennings said he had noticed O'Keefe's parked Mustang while he was walking through the lot about 40 or 50 minutes after going on duty that night, Harris testified.

After walking to another area of the lot, Jennings told detectives, he heard a car alarm and assumed it was the Mustang's, Harris said.

As he walked toward the sound, he heard a gunshot and took cover behind his own parked vehicle, he told detectives.

After a few seconds, Jennings said he stood up again and more gunshots rang out, Harris testified. Jennings said he took cover behind his vehicle again, she said.

She said he claimed to have seen a gray car leave the lot after the shooting. She also testified that Jennings told detectives he heard the alarm and car engine stop, then heard the car's starter crank, after the first shot. He heard the additional shots as the car rolled backwards, Harris quoted him as saying.

Jennings had first-aid training, but didn't try to help the wounded teen, Longshore said.

``He said he viewed it as a crime scene and didn't want to get involved in it,'' Longshore said.

During the interview, Harris said, Jennings stood up and demonstrated for detectives where he thought the gunman stood in relationship to the open car door. He indicated that the gun might have gone through the window, which was open 4 1/2 or five inches, Harris said.

``He said the shooter had to be an expert to shoot in the pattern -- the grouping of shots on the victim's face,'' Harris said.

Under cross-examination by defense attorney David Houchin, Harris said detectives initially thought the slaying might have occurred during a carjacking attempt. They later concluded it had not, she said.

Detectives also investigated whether a semicircular discoloration beneath the chest wound was a bite mark, but an expert told them it was not, Harris said.

Jennings became a suspect within months of the shooting. He was named in a wrongful-death lawsuit filed in December 2000 by O'Keefe's parents but was not criminally charged until prosecutors filed the case Nov. 15, about two days before Jennings, a sergeant in the Army National Guard, returned home on leave.

Prosecutors initially found insufficient evidence to file criminal charges, but later said the civil case changed the character of the evidence.

The gun that killed O'Keefe has never been found. In May 2002, members of a local scuba diving club combed the murky bottom of nearby Palmdale Lake but turned up nothing.

karen.maeshiro(at)dailynews.com

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