Nestor San Juan was 73. He lived at 520 Taylor, with the green awning, between a public parking garage and Les Nuits de Paris massage parlor and sauna. (It’s $80 for a 20-minute slack-fingered back rub, but then $300 more to do your whole package. They don’t tell you that, according to some Yelpers. They claim scam. What are they thinking? How could it possibly be in that neighborhood, and with the red satin window display?)
Mr. San Juan was 73 at 11:15 pm on September 9, 2008. That’s the way the video cameras will always remember him. He was next seen 36 hours later, on September 11 no less, in a plastic garbage bag inside a trash bin on wheels, in the building basement. The problem was ligature strangulation. Also, 8 broken ribs, 3 broken vertebrae.
Mr. San Juan was 73.
Police got a call that morning from a therapist whose patient said he’d helped a man move a very heavy garbage bag. Said it was a trade for some rice and oil. Said the bag broke open; blood leaked out. The bag man said it was just a dead dog. Nothing less. But the helper smelled a rat and ran to his therapist. From the waist down he was covered in blood. Police arrived at the building. One had an automatic weapon. Up went the yellow tape.
The next day police catch Frolian Marroquin, 37. Police have the videos of the victim coming into the building and later the defendant coming into the building and then a lot of coming and going.
On June 2, Jury said second-degree murder. Today, June 20, Judge said 15 to life.
Now what was this all about, other than life in the Tenderloin District, around the back streets off Union Square?
It was about an old man who let a young man stay with him for a while. According to SFDA, George Gascon, “The victim was a 73-year-old man doing a good deed for the defendant, letting the defendant stay with him out of the kindness of his heart. The defendant has forfeited his right to live in our community and will spend the rest of his life in prison.”
