McIlvenna and his family were unquestionably a more stable and positive influence, if slightly alternative. Their business, the San Francisco–based Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, provides graduate-level courses.
As a teenager, Jillian's troublemaking got her booted out of various public schools, until she eventually landed at the Urban Pioneer Experiential Academy, a now-defunct charter school. The students were taken on camping and rock-climbing trips, during which she developed a love for the outdoors. After she graduated, she enrolled in Emeryville's National Holistic Institute to study massage therapy.
Jillian McIlvenna
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By that time, though, Jillian had developed a reliance on marijuana and its ability to "take the edge off." She had also declared herself a lesbian. She lived with her maternal grandparents in Berkeley; her family encouraged her to avoid San Francisco and concentrate on finishing school.
But Jillian went back to the city anyway, and that was when she met Kimberly Gutierrez and Felicia Mehrara. Both young women were out on their own by the age of 15. Child Protective Services told investigators that Felicia was an orphan who had lost her parents to AIDS and a brother to the prison system; she eventually became a prostitute. Kimberly — whom everyone calls Kim — was estranged from her father, whom she referred to as a drug dealer in a police interview, and had been raised by her mother, Socorro Gutierrez, who has a long arrest record and has been in and out of jail for drug and battery offenses. "I've had it pretty tough, and I don't really trust anybody," Kim told police. Eventually, Kim's mother was unable to care for her, so Kim entered foster care, where she met Felicia. The two regularly ran away from their group homes.
One night in 2003, Jillian and Kim wound up at a mutual friend's birthday party, where Kim immediately got Jillian's attention. She had delicate features and jet-black hair that cascaded down her back, and although there was no denying her extraordinary beauty, she was covered in bruises and fighting with everyone. "She was this little loudmouth girl," Jillian says. "I hated her right away."
That didn't last.
For months, Jillian and Kim bumped into each other around the city, and with each meeting Kim's guard seemed to slip a little. Jillian found herself drawn to the dark, unruly girl, and it turned out they had a lot in common. Both were living outside San Francisco and felt isolated from their friends. Both had mothers with issues. Kim's undesirable upbringing appealed to what Jillian calls her "counseling instinct," and beyond that, there was a lot about Kim that fascinated her. Kim fascinated just about everyone.
Solemn, secretive, and a skilled manipulator, Kim usually acted much older than 16, but if the situation called for it, she could also act much younger. Her ability to control people and situations was remarkable.
Soon after they became friends, Kim and Jillian began pretending they were in a lesbian relationship. One afternoon in 2004, during the initial period when gay marriages were performed in San Francisco, the two went to City Hall to get hitched. The purpose of this, Jillian says, was to emancipate Kim, who was a ward of the court. Because Kim was so young, the girls needed a consent form from her mother, who agreed to sign in exchange for $20, Jillian says. (A record of the marriage could not be located.)
Jillian and Kim moved into a small apartment in Daly City, where they slept in the same bed and eventually became lovers, according to Jillian. Kim told the police inspectors that although she was bisexual, she and Jillian remained platonic. Kim's lawyer, Tony Tamburello, says Jillian has difficulty telling fantasy from reality.
He may have a point. Although Kim tended to steal from or otherwise manipulate people she encountered, Jillian chose to believe their relationship was deeper than symbiosis. They often had thought-provoking, meaningful conversations. "With me it was different," Jillian still insists.
She also happened to be paying the rent, which came from her grandparents, odd jobs at the institute, and massage gigs. Months later, she realized her bank account had been mysteriously drained. "It was all going up Kim's nose," Jillian told police.
In early 2004, Jillian and Kim decided to move to a larger home in east San Bruno, a suburban area south of San Francisco known for cheap rent and methamphetamine addicts. They found a three-bedroom, $1,300-a-month apartment beside a tattoo shop and a pizza parlor. It quickly became a nonstop party.
All kinds of people came and went, buying and selling and doing drugs as much as they pleased. Two of the visitors were Felicia Mehrara and Marjorie Quispe, an impressionable young Peruvian girl who began hanging out with the faster crowd of girls in defiance of her strict and traditional mother. Jillian remembers that some nights, all the girls would sleep in the same California King bed. In the morning, Jillian would often prepare them all an egg-and-cheese croissant breakfast.
"It was so much fun there," Felicia told Inspector Pera. "I mean, here were these two teenagers with their own place. It was a party house. I was there all the time."
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