The University of California, Irvine is the academic setting attached to Keith Harrington’s life as a medical student and, through that connection, to one of the parallels investigators noted between the Harrington murders and the later Witthuhn case. The book identifies the university through the people and investigative details linked to it, rather than describing its campus or institutional history.

Keith Harrington’s Medical Studies

Keith Harrington was twenty-four and a third-year medical student at the University of California, Irvine. At the time, he and his new wife, Patty, were living in a house owned by his father, Roger Harrington, who was pleased to have his family close by. Keith’s studies situate him within a medical community that later became part of investigators’ comparison of cases.

A Medical Connection Between Cases

Six months after the Harrington murders, criminalist Jim White reviewed the Witthuhn case and saw similarities that suggested a possible connection. Among the details he considered was a medical link: Keith was studying medicine at the University of California, Irvine, while Patty worked as a registered nurse and sometimes took shifts at Mercy Hospital in Santa Ana. David Witthuhn, whose wife Manuela was murdered, had been a patient at Santa Ana–Tustin Community Hospital.

Investigative Significance

The university’s relevance in the account is specific and limited: it establishes Keith’s medical training as one element in a broader pattern investigators examined across the cases. The book presents that overlap as an intriguing investigative detail, not as proof that the cases were connected or that the university itself played any part in them.

Scope of the Reference

The University of California, Irvine is named as Keith’s place of study, but the account supplies no details about his coursework, campus life, or the university’s involvement in the investigation. Its significance rests on the biographical and case-comparison context: Keith’s medical education is one of the concrete facts that places the Harringtons within the medical links considered after the Witthuhn murder.