S.F. cops rapped for failing to find body
San Francisco police went to a missing man’s South of Market home three times amid concerned calls from his neighbors and family before finally going inside and discovering a headless body decomposing inside a fish tank, officials said Tuesday.
The response by police has raised concerns from neighbors who watched as strangers came and went from Brian Egg’s Clara Street home for weeks with no sign of the 65-year-old homeowner.
“The Police Department could have done a lot more in the early stages,” said Scot Free, a neighbor who called police several times in recent weeks. “It seemed like they weren’t taking it very seriously. There was a dead
body in there all along, and they were standing right next to it. What if we hadn’t said anything?”
At a news conference Tuesday, San Francisco police officials detailed the investigation and said they had arrested two suspects on suspicion of murder, fraud, theft, identity theft and elder abuse in the missing man’s case. However, the district attorney has not filed charges pending further investigation, and the two suspects are no longer in the city’s custody.
Police said the suspects are Lance Silva, 39, and Robert MacCaffrey, 52. Silva is being held in Santa Rita Jail in Dublin on a probation violation charge out of Alameda County. MacCaffrey has since been released from San Francisco jail.
The city medical examiner is using DNA from Egg’s family to determine whether the body found in the fish tank is Egg, while pathologists work to find a cause and manner of death.
Egg’s family first called police in July after not hearing from him for several weeks, officials said. Police visited the home that month and again in early August, but “received no response at the door and saw no suspicious circumstances,” Cmdr. Greg McEachern, who heads the department’s investigations bureau, said at Tuesday’s news conference.
Several days later, on Aug. 7, Egg’s sister made a missing persons report over the phone and officers again went to the home but no one answered.
A week after that, neighbors called 911 when a crime scene cleaning truck showed up at the home. Officers swarmed the home where they found “cleaning products and suspicious odors,” McEachern said.
Police obtained a search warrant and on Aug. 17 found “a human torso” in a large fish tank inside the home, police said.
Before discovering the body, several neighbors reported strangers coming and going from the home at 228 Clara St. Egg, who was often seen walking his dog on the narrow street, hadn’t been seen since early June.
“There wasn’t any evidence to the officers that appeared suspicious at the time that would lead them to take further action in this investigation,” McEachern said. “We don’t make entry into houses because someone has made a missing persons report. People have a right to their privacy.”
McEachern said that police had heard an answering machine message stating that Egg was out of town. But neighbors like Free, and Egg’s brother, said that he did not have an answering machine, and accused investigators of dropping the ball.
Free said at one point when he called police they told him “Brian was out of town doing an art project in Truckee.”
Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: esernoff sky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky