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no. 76 PUBLISHED CENTRAL CITY BY THE Thawing SAN FRANCISCO STUDY CENTER MARCH cold cases 2008 Several slayings on SFPD hot list P.O., are in District 6 WE WON’T BY T OM C ARTER GO HE murder of a 9-year girl in SAN FRANCISCO her Tenderloin apartment Residents Tbuilding is among several cold cases in District 6 that homicide protest for full Inspector Joseph Toomey and his partner are investigating, Toomey post office O RIGINAL J OE’ S told those assembled at the Tender - loin police captain’s meeting Feb. 26. PAGE 2 The crime occurred nearly 24 year ago in the five-story apartment building at 765 O’Farrell St. DNA is expected to play a major role, if the special investigative unit created a year ago is to solve the case. On April 10, 1984, Mei Leung and her 8-year-old brother, Mike, were returning home. As they got close to the building’s steps Mei dropped a dollar bill. Police believe the bill blew under a door to the basement or somewhere inside the building. Mei told her brother she was going into the basement and would look for the bill near the elevator. Mike took the ele- PLUSH “People don’t vator upstairs alone and went inside MYSTERY realize what the family’s apart- ment but didn’t say SOLVED impact a anything to his murder has mother. It was nearly 15 minutes Stuffed P HOTOS BY L ENNY L IMJOCO on a family.” before she noticed Frank, owner and night bartender at the 21 Club near Original Joe’s, sorely misses the restaurant Mei was not around. animals’ lives and like so many in the neighborhood, hopes it will reopen. Holly Pera Mike went to find meaning SFPD COLD CASE UNIT the basement and found his sister dead, hanging over a water pipe PAGE 4 naked and bloody. Police believe she was sexually assaulted, stabbed Hole in the ’hood and strangled. Toomey and his partner light. The smell of old booze and damp Inspector Holly Pera work out of the Tenderloin’s clothes hangs in the sweet and sour air. The Hall of Justice, relying heavily on lab DISTRICT 6 bar’s colored advertising lights wink like a work and a statewide DNA identifi- miniature carnival. Jimmy Buffett’s nostalgic cation bank in Sacramento. Most DRUG CASES tequila anthem, “Margaritaville,” wafts from felons arrested in California in the not the same the jukebox. last two years have their DNA on SOARING “I just wish Marie would open up,” file. DNA has been used in court Frank says, pausing at the end of the bar in more effectively than fingerprints without Joe’s a reference to Marie Duggan, the co-owner since the 1990s, but Toomey said Grim stories of Original Joe’s restaurant. “But I think fingerprint technology has greatly BY T OM C ARTER she’s still fighting the insurance company.” advanced, too. Bloody prints on a told at TL Duggan is co-owner with husband, wall were always easy to take. But ARLY on a miserably cold and wet John, of the iconic, 70-year-old restaurant now, a chemical spray can pop up Safety Forum up the block on Taylor Street. Some of the invisible prints. night in January, Frank, owner and night bartender at the grungy restaurant’s 70 employees favored nightcaps The team recently solved a 36- PAGE 8 at Frank’s bar. year-old case with the murder con- 21 Club in the middle of the Tenderloin, is doing a brisk busi- The 21 Club is itself a Tenderloin land- viction of John Puckett, 74, a repeat mark, as close to an artists’ bar as you’ll find sex offender, guilty of assaulting and Eness. Bundled-up customers fill every bar stool. They coddle their beers in the dim in the neighborhood. And everybody who’s stabbing to death a 22-year-old been there knows Frank, but they don’t all UCSF nurse in her Sunset District know his last name. And he wants to keep flat. Puckett had DNA on file from it that way. So you’ll see a picture of him on previous sex-offender convictions. our front page, but you’ll have to kneecap He was arrested in Stockton after a us to get us to cough up his last name. match with DNA that had been But nightcaps and all other routines to worked out of evidence preserved and from O.J.’s ended abruptly on that dark from the old crime scene. Oct. 12 when a $2 million fire started in the What resurrects a cold case is kitchen flue. It set off sprinklers upstairs in new evidence or other new interest. the Moderne Hotel and water showered Sometimes, as the Mei Leung case down through the ceiling. Waiters, cooks, was with Pera, it’s a poignant mem- busboys, porters and cashiers fled across ory. “I pulled the Mei Leung case Taylor Street where they huddled in the rain because I remembered it from my and watched the billowing smoke and days as a patrol officer when I was heard the sickening crunch of Fire at Northern Station,” Pera later told Department axes. When the fire was out The Extra. “I thought it was worth and the firefighters gone, the restaurant and looking at.” kitchen lay in soggy ruin. There were sufficient fluids from The Tenderloin has reeled ever since the crime scene for the lab to exam- from that hit in its solar plexus. Not just Original Joe’s has been closed since a ➤ CONTINUED ON PAGE 6 kitchen fire Oct. 12. ➤ CONTINUED ON PAGE 3 Residents rally, but outlook bleak, for full service Tenderloin post office GOOD BY M ARJORIE B EGGS HE Tenderloin’s post office at Golden Gate TAvenue and Hyde Street has been going downhill steadi- for... ly for some time now, and NEWSfor... despite community efforts to clean it up and save services, BOEDDEKER PARK Friends of Boeddeker improvements are likely to be a Park has long wanted a bulletin board for the long time coming — if ever. front gate. Now the park will get it. The Friends It has to make money to received a $5,000 Community Challenge Grant justify improvement, U.S. Postal from the city and within six months the 4-foot Service public affairs rep James by 4-foot bulletin board will go up outside on Wigdel told The Extra. the fence near the Jones and Eddy streets gate. Wigdel was one of 13 peo- And it will be special. Metal sculptor Amy ple who met for an hour Feb. 25 Blackstone will create an ornate steel border in Supervisor Chris Daly’s office around it. She will unveil her design at the to powwow on the fate of the P HOTO BY L ENNY L IMJOCO Friends’ March 13 meeting in the clubhouse. Hyde and Golden Gate site, Tenderloin activists rally in front of the 101 Hyde St. post office that Blackstone has created sculptures at Helen Wills whose lease is up next year. It has been cutting services. Playground on Russian Hill and in Kid Power opened in 1991, after the ’89 Park in the Mission. “I tried to get a Tenderloin quake closed the 7th and artist but the one I called recommended Amy have been assaulted, one just evaluates its financial options, Mission post office. the previous week. it’s going to go where the busi- and so did Rec and Park,” Friends’ Chair Betty Community members and Traynor said. “I had her in mind myself.” Eight postal facilities are ness is. the Tenderloin police say it’s a within a mile of 101 Hyde, “Community input is impor- Community announcements and other material haven, inside and out, for drug- will be approved by park Director Al Wimberly. Wigdel told the group. Three are tant to us,” he said. “At the dealing, gang activity and loiter- in the Tenderloin, including a meeting, neighborhood people ing, and has so few postal serv- small full-service site in the gave us things to think about as TAX FILERS Families that earn $42,000 or less ices that customers are staying can get their 2007 taxes prepared for free at basement of the old Federal we go forward, like the informa- away. The stamp machine does- Building on Golden Gate and tion about growth in the area. eight central city sites, and may find they’re eli- n’t work, drop boxes for outgo- gible for the Earned Income Tax Credit, which Fox Plaza. Area growth means growth for ing mail were removed two The Postal Service has good us. We’re mandated by law to could put up to $4,700 back in their pockets. months ago and box holders Earn It! Keep It! $ave It!, a United Way-led coali- reason to look hard at all three make money.” can’t pick up their mail after right now. The 101 Hyde lease Wigdel said the next step tion of 230 community organizations, founda- 5:30 p.m. Until a year ago, the tions, government agencies, churches and finan- comes due next year, and the will be to turn over all the infor- building was open two nights a old Federal Building site — you mation about options to a Postal cial institutions in seven counties, sponsors 39 week until 8:30 p.m. Forty per- sites in the city and many more throughout the need to go through heavy, Service facilities group — “our cent of the facility’s 7,000 boxes heavy security to get stamps — real estate and building experts” region.

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