Page 2 of 4
Konopka's old patrol partner, Freddy Batres, who now oversees much of the West Coast operations as regional advisor for the Guardian Angels, says he remembers how Konopka "had this anger in him" because of crime in the Haight. But, Batres adds, Konopka stepped up and became "one of the greatest community leaders" he's ever known, someone who always pushed him and inspired him to commit to neighborhood activism. "He said, 'Freddy, when you want to do something, just go for it. Never stop. Because if you do stop, you're never going to accomplish anything,'" Batres says.
But then about seven years ago, Konopka stopped — stopped organizing street patrols, stopped agitating local politicians, stopped doing the things that made him a public figure. Some people believe Konopka withdrew after his crushing defeat in his 2000 bid for supervisor. In an 11-candidate field, Konopka got only 668 votes, more than 10,000 votes less than would-be Supervisor Matt Gonzalez.
"I don't think he ever recovered from the loss. I think he was shocked," says Calvin Welch, an Ashbury Street neighbor and longtime member of the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council, who often butted heads with Konopka during RAD's early days. "I think this guy really believed that he was an extraordinary political force. I think he was blown away that he did so poorly."
For Welch, Konopka's 2000 election loss showed "the level of isolation and delusion that characterized so much of RAD." Welch says he believes RAD was trying to turn Haight-Ashbury into a "gentrified clone zone," a political agenda not popular among most residents in the famously progressive neighborhood.
In recent years, Welch would occasionally run across Konopka around the neighborhood; Welch thought his neighbor looked ill whenever he saw him.
Konopka's health certainly may have been a factor in his decision to keep a low profile. According to Crommie, he suffered complications from spinal meningitis and encephalitis.
Konopka also apparently had a secret life: Ethel Konopka told police she found out seven years ago that her husband was gay, according to a search warrant and affidavit written by Inspector Michael Philpott.
She also told homicide inspectors that she knew her husband would have different lovers come over to the house on Wednesdays, when she was reportedly away at work or meetings.
"TOP MENACE," warned the headline of a classified ad in the May 17 and May 24 issues of the Bay Area Reporter, a local gay newspaper. Like lots of escort ads, the promise of sex was more than implied.
"Dirty White excon Total Top totally shaved tattooed with prison ink. experience in S.M. & B.D. Have much B.D. & S.M. equip. outcall only..."
It was signed, "Master Menace."
Police told the Bay Area Reporter that the ad was believed to have been placed by Terry D. Frazier, known among his friends as "Tye" (the credit card used to pay for the ad was under a different name). It was, Frazier told police, an ad Joe Konopka saw and responded to.
Frazier, 40, was a drifter who, during his years in San Francisco, often found himself homeless or crashing at friends' places.
Frazier has been in and out of jail over the years, mainly because of drug and burglary charges. He was caught stealing a couple of mirrors — valued at $700 — from a men's restroom at a San Francisco hotel in 2001 and sentenced to 16 months in state prison that July. He was allowed to enter a Salvation Army drug treatment program instead, but soon afterward, he failed to comply with the probation reporting and treatment programs. A January 2002 report to the court said Frazier had been homeless since being released. "As for his employment, he has not obtained a steady job," the report stated. "He indicated that he has been panhandling and collecting money with recycling in order to survive."
He wasn't showing up for his drug treatment program.
Frazier had in the past stayed with his friend Mario Eslava. Eslava, 51, called Frazier his "roommate" when he was interviewed by police. Eslava divulged that he paid "Tye" for sex and that he was in love with him. But he also told investigators that Frazier prefers women, doesn't love him, and has sex with men for money to support his drug habit.
Eslava declined to say much about the case to SF Weekly, but he says he knows Frazier to be a kind and wonderful person who would never want to harm anyone. Still, he describes him as scrappy. "He would fight if he had to," Eslava says. "But he wouldn't want to kill anyone."
Another friend of Frazier's says that while Frazier may be a heroin addict, he's no murderer. John "Tommie" Henry, who says he's known Frazier for about seven years, describes him as shy and a "caring, sharing, a loving person" who got into the bondage and discipline escort business not because he likes to inflict pain, but because he needed money.
Sitting on the bed next to his white stuffed animal — a prim kitten named "Marie" from the movie The Aristocats — inside his small room at the Drake Hotel, Henry says Frazier barely talked about his bondage work. Henry said he suspects his friend got into bondage only recently, because the Top Menace ad in the Reporter was "the first time that I'd heard of him doing such a thing." He added that he knows one of Frazier's exes and says "that was not what was going on" in that relationship. In any event, Henry says people who responded to Frazier's ad were "legitimate consumers" rather than prank callers, and so his business was going quite well.
But Henry says Frazier was definitely using drugs heavily when he stayed with him for a few nights at the Drake in mid-July. "He was strung out," he says.
