Accused killer had own eviction fight
Four years ago, Lisa Gonzales and a group of San Francisco tenant-rights activists stormed into a city real estate office to protest her attempted eviction from her Mission District apartment.
Now the 47-year-old Gonzales is in San Francisco County Jail, accused of killing her roommate — and chopping her body up — after trying to evict her from the same apartment.
Gonzales appeared before a judge Friday for the first time since her arrest last weekend. She did not enter a plea to a charge of murdering Maggie Mamer, 61.
Officers checking on a missing-person report at the residence June 2 discovered Mamer’s dismembered and decomposing remains, officials said. According to prosecutors, Mamer had moved into the home on the 200 block of 14th Street in August.
“Ms. Mamer represented that she had been evicted by unscrupulous landlords and that she was a victim of gentrification and needed a place to stay,” Gonzales’ public defender, Alex Lilien, said outside court Friday. “Ms. Gonzales was acutely aware of how expensive and difficult this city can be and took Ms. Mamer in.”
Lilien said Gonzales grew up in the threestory building and never left.
It was August 2014 when she and other activists walked into a San Francisco real estate office, protesting that her landlord was trying to evict her. Local filmmaker Peter Menchini shot video of the incident, showing Gonzales reading a letter to her landlord, who was not there.
“You have completely disrespected and disregarded my family as tenants and as human beings,” Gonzales says in the video. “Your repeated refusal to address health and safety issues in my unit forced me to use my time and my money toward maintenance for your investment, which is my home.”
Efforts by The Chronicle to reach the owner of the building have been unsuccessful.
Menchini said Friday he was shocked to learn of the murder allegations against Gonzales.
“There’s some pretty gruesome stuff about it,” he said. “I hope it’s not true, and whatever is the truth comes out.”
Gonzales was never evicted, and three years later let Mamer move in. At her previous apartment, court records show, Mamer had been accused of not paying her rent for several months by her landlords, who took her to court in 2016 to force her to move out.
“When Ms. Gonzales took in Ms. Mamer, she didn’t know her terribly well,” Lilien said. “I don’t know that she had a history of not paying rent. I’m not saying that’s a justification for anything. That’s just what I know so far.”
In court Friday, Gonzales said only “yes, sir” when Superior Court Judge Raymond Arata asked if she understood her rights. She wore orange jail-issued clothing with her hands cuffed behind her.
Asked about claims by the defense, district attorney’s office spokesman Alex Bastian said, “I don’t respond to victimblaming, especially in a murder case.
“The facts of this case are very disturbing, and the facts are still unfolding,” he said. “We’re going to do everything we can to bring justice to this family and this victim.”
Prosecutors said Gonzales probably killed Mamer around May 15 when the two got into an argument in a hallway in the apartment. Gonzales told her new roommate in April that she had 30 days to move out, but Mamer refused, prosecutors said.
Gonzales admitted to police that she “flipped” during the argument, and when asked what happened next, she answered, “probably nothing good,” prosecutors said.
On June 2, police knocked on her door to follow up on a missingperson report after Mamer’s friends became concerned that they hadn’t heard from her in weeks.
Gonzales let the officers into the apartment, where they discovered Mamer’s remains in a plastic tub in a basement storage unit, prosecutors said.
Another roommate told police that she smelled “rotten eggs” and heard the sound of sawing coming from the bathroom in the days after Gonzales allegedly killed Mamer, prosecutors said.