San Francisco woman convicted in gruesome killing of roommate over unpaid rent |
FILE: San Francisco courthouse federal building entrance with American flag.
A San Francisco jury determined that a 55-year-old woman was guilty of murder in the 2018 stabbing death of her roommate, the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office announced Wednesday. Assistant District Attorney Melissa Demetral called the murder a “deeply disturbing and heartbreaking case.”
Lisa Gonzales was convicted of second-degree murder for using a knife to kill her roommate and trying to hide the body by stuffing it in a storage container in her basement, the DA said.
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According to NBC Bay Area (KNTV-TV), the motive was “frustration over unpaid rent.”
Prosecutors previously said that the roommate, Margaret Mamer, was paying $400 a month to rent a room from Gonzales in San Francisco’s Mission District, NBC Bay Area reported in 2018. Prosecutors said Gonzales was frustrated after she noticed her personal items were missing or broken, according to NBC Bay Area.
Before the murder, Gonzales complained to her co-workers about her roommate refusing to move out of the apartment near South Van Ness and 14th Street, the DA said. Instead of legally evicting the roommate, Gonzales told her co-workers, “No thanks, I’ll do it my way,” prosecutors said.
Gonzales’ own daughter helped authorities uncover the crime. The daughter said she visited the apartment on May 15, 2018, and Gonzalez told her not to go into the bathroom. By the time the daughter returned to the home after work, she smelled a metallic stench throughout the home and heard sawing in the bathroom for several hours, the DA’s office said. The next day, Gonzales was still in the bathroom, and when the door finally opened, it smelled like vinegar and bleach, and one of the daughter’s blue laundry containers was missing. She also saw a hacksaw in the laundry room, the DA said.
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Public defender Alex Lilien, right, representing Lisa Gonzales, addresses the court as Gonzales made her first court appearance on a murder charge, Friday, June 8, 2018, in San Francisco.
Gonzales told her daughter that the other roommate left, “but not the way she wanted to,” according to the DA’s office statement.
Mamer was reported missing on June 1, when her friends contacted police after not hearing from her for several days. The friends knew about “escalating tension” between the two roommates.
The next day, a concerned citizen told police that they believed Gonzales murdered someone on the 200 block of 14th Street and dismembered their body.
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Officers from the San Francisco Police Department went to the apartment and questioned Gonzales in the kitchen. She reportedly told police that Mamer didn’t live there and that Gonzales helped her move out on May 15 before she relocated to Eureka.
The officers searched the apartment and found the blue storage container filled with Mamer’s remains. Investigators found blood spatter all over the bathroom and later determined that Mamer died of multiple sharp injuries to the head, heart, face, skull and chest.
Gonzales is being held at the San Francisco County Jail without bail, jail records show. Her sentencing date hasn’t been set as of Thursday morning.
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