Sunset on a Murder

A warm, vivacious divorcee, Debbie was accepted wholeheartedly into the tight, largely blue-collar network of St. Cecilia families, most of whom lived in the Sunset. Debbie's oldest son, Robert, eventually became a star athlete and class heartthrob. Mexican on his father's side, Irish on his mother's, Ramirez had dark hair, olive skin, and full, sensuous lips, but it was his eyes that made girls swoon. Sad and pensive beneath imperiously arched brows, they hinted at a sensitive soul that Ramirez rarely revealed.

By the sixth grade, he had assumed his place among the group of popular boys that included Kevin Reilly, Philip Sands, and Bobby Gomez. Reilly, a towheaded Irish kid, was known as the lead troublemaker. Sands, skinny and Eurasian, was awkward and quiet. Gomez stood out as a handsome blond athlete with a permanent grin and "aw shucks" kind of shyness. Ramirez was cocky and brash, his friends say; when he was with the group, he adopted a "don't mess with me" exterior.

Over time, Ramirez and his friends came to constitute something that was more than a bunch of friends but, they insisted, absolutely not a gang. They called themselves an entourage; others called them frightening.

"They knew swear words before anyone, and they ... were pretty rough on other kids," says a former classmate who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation. "The bullying was more than regular sixth-, seventh-grade bullying. They were always egging each other on, trying to prove something."

As individuals, former classmates say, the boys were extremely likable. Gomez, Sands, and Ramirez had been St. Cecilia altar boys; Ramirez was witty, artistic, and intensely devoted to his family. He even helped check over his siblings' homework at night, his mother says.

When the boys graduated from St. Cecilia's and entered Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory School -- S.H., for short -- they widened their posse to include other members, including a tall, blond football player, Michael Debergerac. They also developed a reputation as drunken, aggressive toughies.

"They'd show up 10 to 20 at a time to a party, and it always went bad," remembers Daniella Mattias, Ramirez's high school girlfriend; somebody would say something to one of the group, and then everybody would jump in and fight for that person. "It was like a code of honor. It got old."

S.H., the oldest coeducational Catholic high school in San Francisco, traces its roots back to a Catholic orphanage for cholera victims that was established in 1852 at the site of what is now the Palace Hotel on the corner of Market and New Montgomery streets. By the time Ramirez enrolled in 1993, the Fightin' Irish occupied a sprawling campus on Cathedral Hill and could boast of a star-studded network of alumni that included former Mayors Joseph Alioto and Frank Jordan.

S.H.'s traditional rival is St. Ignatius College Preparatory School, or S.I., located in the Sunset District. Closer to downtown and catering to a more working-class demographic, S.H. has the reputation as "city"; S.I., which draws many students from tonier West of Twin Peaks neighborhoods like St. Francis Wood, is seen as "preppie." Ramirez's group took the rivalry seriously, say former classmates. Gomez admits they got into fistfights almost every other weekend, often in the name of the Fightin' Irish. "They were notorious," says Caitlin Crawford, a former S.I. student.

Although he had a quiet demeanor, Philip Sands seemed, to some people, even more macho and problematic than the rest of the S.H. entourage. Stick thin and unathletic, Sands was "sort of mysterious" and "hard to read," in the words of two former friends. "Robert and me would sit in my living room for hours playing video games, and Phil would just sit there and watch us and never play," Gomez remembers.

What he couldn't express verbally or physically, Sands apparently made up for with accouterments. He drove a souped-up Chevy Malibu, former classmate Marcee Manuel says, and announced his arrival at parties with a deafening roar from its engine. He acquired a white pit bull he named Powder. He began to sell pot, says Ramirez's former girlfriend Mattias, and in August 1996, according to police records, officers broke up a party Sands was attending and found in Sands' backpack a set of brass knuckles, a scale, plastic baggies, and a loaded pistol that was registered to Sands' father, a retired deputy from the San Francisco Sheriff's Department. School officials declined comment, but a source close to the Ramirez murder investigation says Sands was expelled from S.H. because of the incident. At different times, two other members of Ramirez's posse were also expelled, says Ramirez's mother.