Sunset on a Murder

The prosecution's case appeared to be weak. The only person who claimed to have actually seen the stabbing was Elvis Jessie Presley, the homeless man who had held Clarke's hand. But in Presley's account, the stabber had blond hair, and the weapon was a Phillips screwdriver. Sands has black hair shaved close, and although a screwdriver was found near the scene, there was no forensic evidence that could tie it definitively to the crime.

If the case did go to trial, the prosecution's most potentially damning evidence would be Ramirez's statements to the police, and those attributed to him by Gomez. None of the other witnesses, Debergerac included, admitted questioning Sands directly about the stabbing.

Debbie Ramirez told her son to "do the right thing." Ramirez was still on probation from his Kezar assault conviction and couldn't afford to anger the DA or the police by refusing to testify. But all his life, Ramirez's uncle had instilled in him the belief that if there was one thing you didn't do, it was rat on your friends. "Those kids would know from hanging out with us what was right and what was wrong," Crowley, the one-time SDI member, says. "I would hope that he would not [testify]."

Meanwhile, Sands had been let out on bail, and he and Ramirez avoided each other. Word within the group was that Sands felt betrayed. "[Sands] felt like, 'Robert, it was your fight. I did it for you,'" says Jo Jo.

The trial was repeatedly postponed for a year and a half, and the judge ordered Ramirez to be present at a string of court dates where he was forced to sit before his childhood friend, appearing as if he'd already rolled over on him. Although those close to him say Ramirez hadn't given any indication of what, if anything, he would say at Sands' trial, they noticed that beneath his tough exterior, he was a nervous wreck.

Finally, pretrial motions were set for August 2003. Tension between Sands and Ramirez was at an all-time high when, in early July, according to Crowley and Jo Jo, the two came face to face at an electrician's union meeting. (By this time, Sands was apprenticing to become an electrician.) They made eye contact, and the room went quiet. Sands gave Ramirez a dirty look, then stormed off. Ramirez vowed to Jo Jo that he'd drive over to Sands' house and sort things out, but he never got the chance.

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Ramirez called Jo Jo all day on July 13, 2003, wanting to know when he wanted to go out and start drinking. At 10:30 p.m., the two headed over to North Beach, met a big group of Sunset buddies, and drank until after midnight, according to Ramirez's cousin, Ryan Crowley. Eventually, Ramirez left to head home with his cousin and one of Crowley's buddies, Brendan Burke. Ramirez told several others they'd been partying with -- his brother Michael; an old friend, Maria Anderson; and Mark Nikolov -- to meet them back in Daly City. Ramirez's mother and sister were out of town; the party could continue there.

All three men were drunk, Crowley confirms, as they drove south on I-280. They didn't notice the car was running out of gas until it stalled on the Ocean Avenue offramp. Crowley trudged off into the night to buy a can of gasoline, and when he returned, Ramirez was sitting on the back of the car, clearly upset.

"I saw Debutt and Phil," Ramirez said, according to Crowley. Debutt was their disdainful nickname for Debergerac, with whom Ramirez had also fallen out. Crowley assumed both men had driven by while the car was stalled there, although Ramirez didn't elaborate. Aware of the seriousness of Ramirez's problem with Sands, Crowley asked him, "Are you afraid?"

"I'm not afraid of anything," Ramirez responded.

"I thought, 'We're about to get out of here, so what's the big deal,'" Crowley says.

They emptied the gas can -- half into the car, half spilled on the ground -- and chugged up the ramp, but Crowley blew through a red light. A Highway Patrol car appeared in the rearview mirror and stopped them. Troopers gave Crowley a field sobriety test, which he failed, and they arrested him. One of the officers took the keys to Crowley's car and drove it into the nearby City College parking lot, noting in his report that Brendan Burke was "incoherent." At the officer's behest, Ramirez called his brother Michael and Maria Anderson, arranging to have them come for Burke and him.

The two highway patrolmen took Crowley to the drunk tank, leaving Ramirez in the deserted City College parking lot with the all-but-incapacitated Burke. It was 3:33 a.m.

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Maria Anderson remembers that she, Michael Ramirez, and Mark Nikolov initially couldn't find Crowley's Oldsmobile. There are three sections to the City College parking lot, and they didn't find the right one for a while. Then, Anderson says, they saw brake lights in the distance.