Page 4 of 6
In fact, the last time Kim slept with Ben, Jillian had stolen his keys and made copies with the intent to later break into his parents' home and steal weed.
The morning after the murder, Kim and Jillian robbed the Laightons' home of $3,000, Giants season tickets, a digital camera, and enough weed to keep them high for a month. Jillian says that while Kim gathered the loot, she merely smoked a joint on the couch. She needed to smoke really bad, she remembers, because Kim's behavior was growing more disturbing by the minute. Kim apparently showed no remorse whatsoever, and shut down any attempts at conversation about the murder. Kim paid for a nail appointment with Gorenman's credit card, and even slept in the newly purchased bedsheets they had taken from his trunk.
Shortly after the murder, Jillian remembers hearing a new Alicia Keys song, "Diary," on the radio. The lyrics immediately caught her attention: "I won't tell your secret/Your secret is safe with me/I won't tell your secret/Just think of me as the pages in your diary." She says she felt sick and turned off the radio. She knew she'd never be able to keep this secret.
In the lobby of the homicide department at the Hall of Justice at 850 Bryant, the south wall displays more than 50 wanted posters containing pictures and descriptions of suspects. The suspects vary in age, appearance, and ethnicity, but there is one element common to nearly all of them: They're men.
"It's unusual to have a female defendant," said Inspector Pera, seated at a conference table with her partner, Joseph Toomey. "We had three."
Making the case even less common was the fact that the female perpetrators didn't know their victim beforehand. That complicated the case, and explains why Pera and Toomey had so much trouble initially finding leads.
The crime scene and the body contained no helpful evidence — not even the bullet itself, which had apparently exited Gorenman's right eye. He had no criminal record and no apparent enemies. He didn't live a high-risk lifestyle, which meant the inspectors would have to pursue almost every imaginable avenue. Maybe his girlfriend had a jealous ex-boyfriend? Maybe all the chatter from friends about the Russian Mafia had some merit?
Nope. "We were shut down," Toomey said.
Then, two weeks into the investigation, Gorenman's credit card sprang back into action. At Wireless Specialty's on Divisadero, not only was a cellphone purchased with the card, but the buyer also had the nerve to fill out the application using the dead man's information.
After probing into the cellphone's purchase and using a search warrant to obtain all the numbers called by the cellphone, police eventually zeroed in on 21-year-old Edwin Suarez. Although he was evasive at first, claiming to have purchased the phone from "a black guy," he eventually told police that he bought it at the store with a stolen credit card.
Suarez explained that he and two friends had recently hung out at an apartment in San Bruno. He said he stole a bunch of stuff, including some weed, some Giants tickets, and the credit card from a purse. He thought it belonged to someone named Kimberly.
When Pera and Toomey showed up at Jillian and Kim's apartment, the girls lied about everything. Kim said her name was Grace Gutierrez (her sister's name), Jillian said she hadn't been to Fort Funston in five years, and both feigned ignorance of the murder and the credit card. Kim did say she had "associates" who stole things.
From there, investigators showed up routinely at 984 Camino Real, and the girls' stories began to morph and grow. To throw them off, Kim she said she had been warned to keep certain names "out yo fuckin' mouth, bitch," and her reaction when shown a picture of Gorenman was to squeal, "He's cute."
Investigators knew the girls were lying, and eventually began to piece together the truth with information from some guys who worked at the pizza parlor next door. Jillian had apparently talked to them about the murder while high, and she had also spilled to Mark Sanford, a 42-year-old mechanic the girls had recently befriended at the Laundromat.
After the cops began investigating, Jillian remembers, Kim became increasingly violent, and made offhand comments about going on a shooting spree in San Francisco to increase the workload of the police and refocus their attention. Jillian says Kim threatened her life and burned the clothing they had been wearing on the night of the murder. Distraught, Jillian started having nightmares and seizures, and decided to go into hiding with Sanford, who became her boyfriend.
Sanford — who has a long, drug-related criminal history — was eventually arrested again. Investigators were finally able to get to Jillian through him. After she gave a thorough, three-plus-hour interview to the police, she naively expected to go home. Instead, she was placed under arrest for murder, robbery, and car theft.
Because Jillian's statements were transparently self-serving and unreliable, Bob Gordon, the head of homicide at the district attorney's office, wasn't prepared to charge the other girls. Jillian, apparently hoping for a better deal, offered to help ensnare her friends with several phone calls meant to glean confessions. She also cruised by her old apartment in an unmarked police car, wearing a wire and surrounded by undercover police. Kim refused to come out.
Although no new evidence surfaced, a year later a new D.A., George Butterworth, reviewed the case and decided to charge all three girls. Felicia was picked up while walking alone on the street. When the cops arrived at Kim's place, there was a surprise in store. She had given birth to one child, and was pregnant with another.
On March 11, 2008, day two of the pretrial hearing, the prosecution was set to call Marjorie Quispe to the stand. For her cooperation, she was granted immunity from her own testimony, which otherwise would have incriminated her as an accessory in the robbery and murder of Eugene Gorenman.
Showing 1-1 of 1
