The next thing Jillian remembers is crouching to tie her shoe, then looking up just in time to see Kim's arm extend toward Gorenman, just a few feet from his head. There was a flash of light as the gun went off. "He fell so fast," she recalls. "In movies, you see people fall, and it seems so slow. He was on the ground in seconds. I was in shock."
Then, Jillian says, Felicia and Kim crouched beside him, rummaged through his pockets, and took his car keys, wallet, and all the cash he had — a mere $30. Jillian later told three people three different reasons Kim had shot Gorenman instead of just holding him up. One: She was too afraid to hit him with the gun. Two: She wanted to see what it would feel like to kill somebody. Three: She got jealous of his interaction with Jillian.
Paul Trapani
Eugene Gorenman’s body was found just beyond this tunnel at Fort Funston.
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Getting back to the car is a blur for Jillian, although she does recall falling in the sand, only to be ordered by Kim to "get the fuck up." In the story she told investigators, once they arrived back at Marjorie's Toyota, Jillian got in, and Kim tossed the gun onto Jillian's lap. Then Kim and Felicia drove off in Gorenman's Mustang.
In the car, Marjorie asked Jillian where Gorenman had gone. "Don't worry about it," Jillian told her. "He's staying here." Marjorie apparently didn't find out the truth until months later, when the cops knocked on her door.
The two cars caravanned to the Bayview, where Kim parked and removed the Mustang's license plates. Then they continued driving, parked the car in an alley, and emptied its trunk. Kim, Marjorie, and Felicia then ate Gorenman's fruit, according to Jillian, who claims to have watched in disgust.
The girls then drove back to Daly City in the Toyota, where Felicia may have returned the gun.
Kim and Jillian continued the crime spree at the home of Bruce and Rebecca Laighton, parents of a guy named Ben, whom both Kim and Jillian had bedded. Jillian says she was hesitant to defy Kim right after she had just killed somebody, and robbing the Laightons was something they'd been planning for a while.
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.
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