Suarez explained that he and two friends had recently hung out at an apartment in San Bruno. He said he stole a bunch of stuff, including some weed, some Giants tickets, and the credit card from a purse. He thought it belonged to someone named Kimberly.
When Pera and Toomey showed up at Jillian and Kim's apartment, the girls lied about everything. Kim said her name was Grace Gutierrez (her sister's name), Jillian said she hadn't been to Fort Funston in five years, and both feigned ignorance of the murder and the credit card. Kim did say she had "associates" who stole things.
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From there, investigators showed up routinely at 984 Camino Real, and the girls' stories began to morph and grow. To throw them off, Kim she said she had been warned to keep certain names "out yo fuckin' mouth, bitch," and her reaction when shown a picture of Gorenman was to squeal, "He's cute."
Investigators knew the girls were lying, and eventually began to piece together the truth with information from some guys who worked at the pizza parlor next door. Jillian had apparently talked to them about the murder while high, and she had also spilled to Mark Sanford, a 42-year-old mechanic the girls had recently befriended at the Laundromat.
After the cops began investigating, Jillian remembers, Kim became increasingly violent, and made offhand comments about going on a shooting spree in San Francisco to increase the workload of the police and refocus their attention. Jillian says Kim threatened her life and burned the clothing they had been wearing on the night of the murder. Distraught, Jillian started having nightmares and seizures, and decided to go into hiding with Sanford, who became her boyfriend.
Sanford — who has a long, drug-related criminal history — was eventually arrested again. Investigators were finally able to get to Jillian through him. After she gave a thorough, three-plus-hour interview to the police, she naively expected to go home. Instead, she was placed under arrest for murder, robbery, and car theft.
Because Jillian's statements were transparently self-serving and unreliable, Bob Gordon, the head of homicide at the district attorney's office, wasn't prepared to charge the other girls. Jillian, apparently hoping for a better deal, offered to help ensnare her friends with several phone calls meant to glean confessions. She also cruised by her old apartment in an unmarked police car, wearing a wire and surrounded by undercover police. Kim refused to come out.
Although no new evidence surfaced, a year later a new D.A., George Butterworth, reviewed the case and decided to charge all three girls. Felicia was picked up while walking alone on the street. When the cops arrived at Kim's place, there was a surprise in store. She had given birth to one child, and was pregnant with another.
On March 11, 2008, day two of the pretrial hearing, the prosecution was set to call Marjorie Quispe to the stand. For her cooperation, she was granted immunity from her own testimony, which otherwise would have incriminated her as an accessory in the robbery and murder of Eugene Gorenman.
Before Marjorie could testify, though, Judge Benson wanted to briefly hear from her mother, Maria Theresa Camino. Camino strongly disliked when her daughter hung out with Kim and Jillian, but she also had sympathy for them. "They had nothing," she says. "Nothing and no one." Camino said she'd never forget the time she threw Kim a birthday party, and Kim cried because that night, for the first time in 16 years, she received a birthday cake.
Socorro Gutierrez, Kim's mom, apparently had other ways of demonstrating affection. Camino was taking the stand because Gutierrez had threatened her in the courtroom. "Tenemos que eliminar los ratos," she had said. We have to eliminate the rats.
Before Judge Benson, Camino said she was afraid for her daughter's safety. The judge reprimanded Gutierrez (who denied making threats), but allowed her to stay in the courtroom. On the previous day, the judge had expelled Kim's boyfriend, Oscar Grados, for allegedly threatening Sanford. Grados had said, "The rain will stop soon," which Sanford interpreted to mean, "I was a done deal-y."
There had been other threats, too. Back in 2004, Kim, her sister, and either Jillian or Felicia (Marjorie couldn't remember which) had approached Marjorie at work. She remembers Kim pushing her against a wall. "If you say anything, I'm going to pop a cap in you," Kim had allegedly said.
With all this in mind, Marjorie took the stand, contradicted Jillian's statements, and hesitantly incriminated them all. Although Jillian had told the inspectors that Marjorie had stayed in the car because she didn't feel well, Marjorie admitted that Kim had ordered her to stay as a lookout, and to call Kim's cellphone if anyone came.
Marjorie also changed her own story on multiple issues. She had told inspectors that when her friends returned to the car, she saw a gun in Jillian's hand, but she recanted that in court. When the prosecutor asked Marjorie if there had been a discussion in the car about hitting the man over the head and taking his wallet, her answer was yes.
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