Of "The Suitcase Body Parts Murder"~~~~~

"....this is a City.....and sometimes you expect things like this."

So said one resident of the Tenderloin of San Francisco.

Dear Darklings,

I know I seem to be terribly focused on this horrible crime, but in the city that gave us Sam Spade and the "Maltese Falcon" and T.V. programs like "The Streets of San Francisco" and "The Line Up" and Film Noir movies as well at Dirty Harry, in a city that inspired Anne Rice to start writing "Interview with a Vampire", was the birth place of Anton LaVey's "Church of Satan"  one cannot help but feel the gothicness of the place.

Granted not as old as New York, or London or Paris, nor as associated with the mixtures of Voodoo, Hoodoo and Santeria as New Orleans, or the bizarre fake glam of Los Angeles, San Francisco has a strange, twisted mystic all its own.

I have found that in traveling through this city it has soooo many different faces, it is both a city and county within the same borders,  but within those borders there are different feels to it, if one can take away the cheap garishness of cheap trinkets and souvenirs and look for it's original foundations.

It's like micro-climates, beautiful peaceful, business and gray, glamorous and haute something, flashy and garish, gritty, sophisticated, old money, new money, sleek, but art Deco, 30's/40's noir yet Victorian and modern, light and dark, clean and dirty, international and historical, glass towers and wooden false fronts, high power business and abject poverty.

She is a siren that beckons, where either you thrive or be destroyed, to be loved or feared or both.

She is a city that hates cars, but has crowded streets, and people moving like lemmings with strong leg muscles from walking and directions that would drive a person insane unless you have a guide and forget GPS it will mislead you, and buses and trolleys packed like sardines, and heaven help you if you contract lice or bed bugs by contact or some crazed person who thinks you didn't look at them right and decides to stab you or you find unusual characters that become landmarks within themselves.

And yet at times there are moments of kindness but far and few between.   And most of all Fear.

One old time fireman said to me "every minute of everyday somewhere there is a fire burning in San Francisco, she is a city always on fire."

Doyle told me in the hospitals there is new life every day, but in the streets there is death every day and this was one of them.

It seems that SFGate has labeled this death "The Suitcase Body Parts Murder"....but whether a murder has really been committed is not known at this time and is still to be determined, without the Head to show if a blow had been rendered, it leaves it up to the City Medical Examiner to make that determination, and who it is, is still unknown.

Last report is evidence has been sent to a DNA Laboratory in the hopes of identifying this person.

However a person of interest (and we know what that means) was detained and finally arrested, thanks to both a phone tip, eye witness testimony and surveillance footage and according to this news report-------

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco police arrested a man on suspicion of murder Saturday in connection with a suitcase found on a downtown street stuffed with dismembered human remains.

Mark Andrus, 59, had been spotted on surveillance footage near where the suitcase was discovered and was booked into county jail hours after he was detained as a "person of interest," Officer Grace Gatpandan said.

Gatpandan said she could not comment on exactly how police linked Andrus to the body, but said they were aided by the surveillance footage and witness statements. She did not have any additional information about Andrus, the body parts found in the suitcase or a possible motive.

Andrus' family told the San Francisco Chronicle he had run-ins with the law, kept to himself and drifted so far from them that they didn't know where he was or how to reach him.

"We haven't heard from him in, oh my gosh, years and years and years," said Helen Andrus of Spokane, Wash., who is married to Mark Andrus' older brother, Jon. "My husband at one point tried to reach out and find him, but I'm guessing it's been 20 years now since we last saw him."

The newspaper said Andrus had arrests in Missoula, Montana, in the 1980s and '90s for suspected drug possession, theft, burglary and jumping bail.

Police received a call on Friday night on the department's anonymous tip line that a "person of interest" in the suitcase incident had been spotted in the city's Tenderloin neighborhood, Gatpandan said. They responded and detained two people, including Andrus.

Police had released photos of Andrus from the surveillance footage earlier in the day showing him in a striped baseball cap, light blue jeans and a blue and orange jacket.

The suitcase was found Wednesday afternoon outside a Goodwill thrift store in the city's South of Market neighborhood. More body parts were found in a trash can nearby. The San Francisco medical examiner determined that the remains belong to an unidentified light-skinned man. Authorities will now turn to a DNA laboratory to identify him.

The condition of the man's torso had police considering the possibility that organized crime or a gang was responsible for the remains, Officer Albie Esparza told the Chronicle before the announcement of Saturday's arrest. He did not elaborate in the story.

Gatpandan said she did not know whether the second person who was detained remained in custody Saturday.

 

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But there is more that I found out over 3 hours ago~~~~

 

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) [Televison] --

 Arraignment is scheduled for early this week for a man arrested in connection with a dismembered body found in a suitcase in San Francisco. People who live in the building where murder suspect Mark Andrus was staying say they're in shock.

When asked if he'll be there in court to defend him, San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi answered, "Yeah, that's what we do."

Adachi came to the jail on Saturday night to visit the 59-year-old accused killer. Andrus, seen in surveillance camera stills, is accused of dismembering a body, stuffing the headless torso into a suitcase, and then dumping it at 11th and Market streets.

"We generally enter a plea of not guilty and then begin the investigation of the case," Adachi said. "But at this point, the case is under investigation."

Police point to photos and surveillance video as evidence leading to Andrus' arrest. It shows a man dragging a suitcase just two blocks from where the body and suitcase were found.

"You're not really thinking about somebody's torso being in a suitcase," said Miles Gregory. The San Francisco resident says he's breathing some relief knowing a murder suspect is off his neighborhood streets.

On Saturday night, investigators came to a public housing building in the city's Tenderloin neighborhood after getting an anonymous tip. The suspect was led out with a sheet covering his head.

"So many people coming in and out of here, it's scary," said one San Francisco resident.

Andrus didn't officially live there. But one longtime resident told ABC7 News that the 59-year-old has lived there on and off for about a year. He bunked with a friend on the fourth floor. A resident named Bill lives next door.

Very nice guy," he said. "That's why it's a surprise when I saw his picture on TV."

Others are shocked that a man seen regularly in the building could be accused of something like this.

"My roommate, she got kind of afraid of it," said resident Leslie Clark. "But I looked at her and said, 'this is a city. You know, and sometimes you expect things like this.'"

San Francisco resident Jackie Williams added, "I've spoken to the man a couple of times in passing and stuff, but that's crazy. I mean, it's just really scary because you never know what's going to trigger a person off."

The case remains under investigation ........

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Doyle told me that the police were tight lipped about this and he suspected that they had quiet a bit of information, the fact that they were able to move in so quickly about it was amazing but he said, if only those who live in the Hunter's point area or know of suspects in gang shootings would be as forth coming many of those homicides would be cleared up quickly, but Fear among them prevent those cases from ever being solved or even bringing closure to the survivors. 

And yet, I would not be surprised if I see a variation of this story appearing in a police procedural drama, I work in this city, even if I'm partly retired.  At one time in my youth I lived here, this does not surprise me, and yet it is what I expect from this Gothic City, that now I prefer to view at a distance.

Later Darklings