Unholy Sacrifice

by Robert Scott

  There was a lot of cleaning and burning that night at the residence on Saddlewood Court. Since Selina’s car was at Saddlewood, Justin drove it to a shopping center called Park ’n Shop, a few miles down the road.

  Dawn and Taylor kept burning evidence in the fireplace. Dawn said, “Selina’s blood on the kitchen area wouldn’t come up. We put a lot of water on the carpet too. We put the handcuffs and hammer in the dishwasher and cleaned them.”

  Neighbor Joe Shaman was surprised around 10:00 P.M. when the doorbell rang and Justin was standing at his front door. Justin asked if he could use their hose because the water was shut off in his residence. Joe told him okay.

  Joe mentioned this episode to his wife, and she recounted to him that she had seen a girl who was short, with long hair, going up the driveway with Taylor earlier in the evening. The girl had been wearing sunglasses and beach shoes. Taylor had put his arm around her neck and kissed her on the lips. Then they both went into the house. That had been around 8:00 P.M. and she hadn’t seen the girl since then.

  There had been a lot of racket coming from the strange neighbor’s house on Saddlewood Court. There was hammering and sawing going on, and it got so bad at one point that Kaye held the phone up so that her mother on the other end of the line could hear the noise. Kaye even said to her mother, “It sounds like they’re breaking bones.”

  Late that night, all the lights were turned off in the house with only the fire glowing. It was a scene straight out of hell, with shadows flickering on the walls and Selina’s blood staining the family room’s carpet. Taylor and Dawn talked about any loose ends that needed to be tied up. Taylor became worried about the fact that Selina’s mom, Jenny, had met him unexpectedly one day. This worry was intensified by a lie that Selina had told him. Perhaps because Jordan seemed so mysterious, she had told him that her mother was a private investigator. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

  One thing Selina had told him was true, however. She had said that her mom would be house-sitting her apartment while she was away at Yosemite. This seemed like a good opportunity to Taylor to eliminate Jenny. He didn’t want any person left around who could tie “Jordan” to him.

  To this end, he packed two guns and clothing into a bag and left with Dawn on a mission. Dawn said later, “It didn’t seem odd to kill Selina’s mom. Taylor was always altering his plans.”

  Taylor went to Justin’s bedroom before leaving, and Justin was lying down on his bed. Dawn heard Taylor give Justin instructions to go to Selina’s car and look for an address book. This was in case Jenny Villarin wasn’t staying at Selina’s place. If that was the case, Justin was to inform him by phone where Jenny lived; then Taylor and Dawn would go there to kill her.

  There were a couple of things Taylor didn’t know as he and Dawn drove on their deadly mission across the San Rafael Bridge toward Marin County. One was that for once Justin would not obey his orders, and the other was that Jenny Villarin had a guest staying over that night with her at Selina’s place. Her guest was Jim Gamble.

  Jim wasn’t even sure that he would go down to visit Jenny on August 2. He was visiting his mother in Yountville, up in the Napa Valley. She noticed he was vacillating a lot about going to Marin. Finally, around 2:00 P.M., he decided he would go.

  As Jim drove into Nicassio in Marin County, Gloria LaFranchi’s daughter just happened to spot him. She told her mother that Jim was in town, and Gloria met Jim at Rancho Nicassio. Gloria said, “We had a couple of drinks and decided to have dinner.

  “He talked about a trip that he and Jenny planned for Calistoga on the upcoming weekend. He had never been there and they thought it might be fun to visit the pretty Wine Country town.”

  Around 6:00 P.M., Jenny called from where she was working at the Paper Mill Creek Saloon. She talked to Gloria on her cell phone for a while and said that she’d like some dinner from the Rancho Market. Since James was already there, he volunteered to deliver the food to Jenny at Paper Mill Creek. He left Rancho Nicassio between 6:30 and 7:00 P.M.

  Once James delivered the food to Jenny, he decided to spend some time at Paper Mill Creek and visit with his friends. He had a good time there and, because the hour was getting late and he’d had a few drinks, decided not to drive back to Yountville. Jenny offered him a bed at Selina’s place, where she was staying, and James accepted.

  Around 2:15 A.M., Leora Soladay heard Jenny and James drive up in separate vehicles and they were talking in the front yard. As they went through the garage, she could hear them speaking and laughing. After a while they quieted down, but soon one of them was snoring, and the noise kept her awake. Unable to sleep, she went to a spare bedroom next to Ty’s, and there she drifted off to sleep. It was after three o’clock.

  Her husband, Jay, also heard Jim and Jenny come to Selina’s place. He said later, “I was in the master bedroom. I went to bed between nine and ten P.M. After a while, Leora left the bedroom.”

  Taylor and Dawn drove up on Redwood Drive in Woodacre and Taylor pointed out the Soladay home and Selina’s apartment. Taylor backed the car into a little turnaround spot and Dawn scooted over to the driver’s seat as Taylor got out of the car. In his hand, he carried the 9mm Beretta semiautomatic that Justin had purchased in June. Dawn had cleaned fingerprints off each bullet and reloaded the gun with them on the drive over from Concord. Taylor walked up the hill in darkness. Large trees cast shadows down on the yard. Within the house, all was still.

  Dawn waited in the car and seconds seemed like an eternity to her. It was very quiet in this forested neighborhood. Suddenly, without warning, six gunshots ripped apart the silence.

  Leora Soladay was startled awake by the noise that came from the lower portion of the house. She thought she heard five or six distinctive “bangs.” She was shocked into inaction for several seconds, until she heard hurried footsteps in the yard outside. She did not see who was running from the house.

  Jay Soladay had heard the gunshots as well. He raced into Leora’s room and whispered, “What the hell was that!” Then he yelled downstairs, “What’s going on down there?”

  At first he thought kids had thrown firecrackers against the house. But the more he thought about it, the surer he was that they were gunshots. He said later, “I heard seven or eight of them.” He claimed to have actually felt one of the shots reverberate on the floor below his room.

  With remarkable nerve, Jay made his way down through the garage area, armed only with a flashlight and cell phone. Incredibly, Mike, a neighbor, phoned him right at that moment and said, “I think I heard gunshots at your home.”

  Jay was unsure and he said, “I think those were firecrackers going off.”

  The neighbor phoned 911 and told the operator, “I’m in Woodacre and I thought I heard six gunshots. It illuminated our window. The shots came from outside of our house up the hill.”

  Meanwhile, Jay Soladay made his way through the garage area to Selina’s door. He said, “What’s going on in there?”

  For an answer, all he heard was a faint moan. Jay started yelling, but there was no response except for the groans. Jay began to push the door open, but it was blocked by something heavy. He got the door open a crack and saw a man’s arm and hand blocking the door. There was something dark on the man’s chest. Jay was sure it was blood.

  That was enough for him. He hurried back to the main part of the house. He told Leora, “There’s two dead bodies down there.”

  In the next few minutes, a conversation between the Soladays and the 911 operator took place:

  Soladay: There’s two murders at my house. There are people on a bed with blood. We heard a vehicle drive away a few minutes ago.

  Operator: Everyone stay inside the house. I understand you’re scared.

  Soladay: The person I went down to see. She came home with a guy.

  The operator wanted to know if the woman was the Soladays’ tenant.

  Soladay: No, no. Her mother is house-sitting, and it’s an older guy. The da
ughter is in Yosemite. I don’t know the guy her mother brought home. I cannot believe this is happening at my house.

  Operator: Was there an argument at your house?

  Soladay: No.

  Then Leora got on the phone, saying, “Please help us, right now. The people are dead.”

  The 911 operator contacted the county sheriff’s office and Fire and Rescue. She said, “We have a possible shooting in Woodacre. We don’t know if the suspects are still there.”

  A short time later, a sheriff’s patrol car parked nearby. One of the officers was Blair Benzler. At around 5:02 A.M., in his patrol car, he got a call that stated, “Shots fired at residence in Woodacre.”

  Officer Benzler was on a prowler call in Fairfax when he got the call. It was about five miles down St. Francis Drake Boulevard from his position to Woodacre. As he sped toward the scene of the gunshots, he passed a dark-colored sedan going in the opposite direction. Benzler said later, “I noticed in my rearview mirror that the driver activated the brake lights. It looked like a dark-colored vehicle.” There’s a good chance it was Dawn and Taylor headed back to Contra Costa County. Benzler did not take notice of the license plate number of the car, however. He had more pressing business at the time getting to Redwood Drive in Woodacre.

  Officer Benzler reported to the scene of the gunshots on Redwood Drive about ten minutes after the initial call from the dispatcher. He waited a very short time before another patrol car arrived at the scene. Then he and the other officer walked toward a house, where they met a man in the front yard. The man was Jay Soladay.

  At first the officers didn’t know who this person was, or if he was armed and dangerous. They made sure he didn’t have a weapon, and then they questioned him. When it became obvious that he was the owner of the house, the officers began to make their way through the garage area. They both drew their service weapons as they approached a door.

  Benzler said later, “The door swung halfway open and stopped. I could see a human hand blocking the door. There was blood on the carpet. There was a male victim, faceup, and a female victim, faceup, on the bed. The depression near her head was filling with blood. When I got in there, I tried to give aid to the victims. I checked their pulses. I heard gurgling sounds from the male victim. I checked, but the sound was blood filling the back of his throat. They were both lifeless.”

  The apartment did not appear to be ransacked as if a robbery had happened. Officer Blair Benzler began to look for shell casings. He found one on the bed near the female victim and noted it. Then he and his partner froze the crime scene and waited for detectives to arrive.

  Meanwhile, Dawn and Taylor made their escape back to Concord, undetected. Taylor didn’t talk to Dawn all the way back about what he had done, but she surmised that he had killed someone. Taylor was secretly stewing inside. He had given Justin a direct order, and Justin had disobeyed it. The plan had been for Justin to meet Dawn and him at the Two Bird Café. Justin was supposed to have checked Selina’s car to try to find the address for Jennifer Villarin, just in case her mom wasn’t at the Woodacre apartment. There was even a possibility that Taylor wanted to find an address of a coworker of Selina’s at the Two Bird Café. He would express later that he wanted that person killed as well. But Justin had not shown up at the Two Bird Café or even called Taylor, and he was furious.

  When they got back to Saddlewood, Taylor yelled at Justin, “Why didn’t you go to the car like I told you!”

  Justin answered lamely, “I was asleep.”

  Later that morning, Taylor called the Two Bird Café in an apparent attempt to create an alibi. Waitress Kabrina Feickert answered the phone. She recalled, “I picked up the phone. It was Selina’s boyfriend. He asked for Selina. I said Selina wasn’t there. I thought she was on vacation with him. He asked for Karen (another waitress). I said she wasn’t there.

  “He became very blustering. He started telling me he hadn’t seen Selina all week. He was frustrated. He was supposed to meet her, but he hadn’t. I thought this was strange, since I was covering her shift so that she could go camping with him.

  “He was tripping over his words. He seemed nervous. I told him to calm down. It was very confusing. There was no relationship before between me and him, as to why he should be speaking to me now. He said Selina was playing games with him and he was sick of it.

  “When he hung up, I told another waiter and Tony (the owner) about the call.”

  Even later that day, Taylor phoned a friend of Selina’s named David Levi, who lived in Marin County at a place shared with Jordan Miller’s boyfriend, Jesse Sullivan. Levi recalled, “Jordan was on the line. It took me a second to figure out who he was. He asked me if I knew where Selina was. Then he said he was worried about her. It wasn’t like her to be that late. He said, ‘Selina better not be playing games or fool with me, because I’m a lot older to be playing games!’”

  Sergeant Don Wick had been with the Marin County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) for sixteen years by the year 2000. He was with the Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) unit when he and Detective Steve Nash went into the house on Redwood Drive. They went on a preliminary walk-through with the deputies and then settled down to business. Wick began processing and collecting evidence and had police barrier tape set up around the residence.

  Detective Wick said, “We collected fragile things first—bodily fluids et cetera. Then we searched for shell casings. Some of these were clearly visible. One nine-millimeter shell casing lay on the bed next to Jenny’s head, while another was against one of her arms. Another casing lay on the nightstand near the bed.”

  After collecting shell casings, Wick and Nash began to collect bullets from the crime scene. One bullet had gone through the door frame into a vent. Another bullet was recovered from the mattress next to Jenny’s head. Other bullets were obviously lodged within the victims. Detective Wick noted that there were two bullet wounds on the woman’s face. One was near the eyebrows, while the other was in the left cheek. The woman was found faceup and probably shot from the left side of the bed, judging from the angle of entry.

  The man’s wounds were more numerous. There was one through his right calf, one went into the left arm, shattered the bone in his arm, entered through his chest near the armpit, and came out his back. A third wound grazed his right forearm, went through the chest cavity and lodged there. And a fourth bullet struck his neck. Even if he had survived, he would have been a quadriplegic.

  Items found in the bedroom included a purse with a wallet in it. The wallet contained $300 in $100 bills. There was also $1,000 worth of cash in a leather satchel under the nightstand. In the man’s pants was a wallet that contained $168. It was fairly evident that robbery was not the motive for the murders.

  One more interesting item was in the apartment. It was a journal that belonged to Selina Bishop. Detective Wick knew Selina personally, having met her in the past. Inside her journal were her expressions of love for someone named Jordan.

  Another detective arrived on the scene a short time later. This was Detective Erin Inskip. She had to drive all the way from her home in Sonoma County to Woodacre and it took a while to get there. By the time she arrived, both Wick and Nash were there, along with Lieutenant Rick Russell and various members of the CSI squad. A question soon came up among them: where was Selina Bishop?

  Jay Soladay told Detective Inskip that Selina Bishop worked at the Two Bird Café. Detective Inskip went there and spoke with waitress Kabrina Feickert. Feickert told Inskip about the phone call she had received from Jordan, Selina’s boyfriend. Feickert said that Jordan was extremely agitated and angry at Selina. He made several disparaging remarks about her and then hung up the phone.

  Feickert recalled, “She (Detective Inskip) and another detective sat down for a meal, and I was her waitress. They were very interested in where Selina was. They didn’t know if she was okay. At the end, she (the detective) gave me a card.”

  Feickert did one more important thing—she informed Detective
Inskip that Selina had a pager. Feickert thought that Jordan might have given Selina the pager.

  Detective Steve Nash noted that day, “Because detectives of the Marin County Sheriff’s Office have not been able to locate Selina Bishop, it is believed that the phone number from which her boyfriend called was the location Selina Bishop was to meet her boyfriend.” (Taylor had phoned from a pay phone.)

  “At this time, I believe it is important that Selina Bishop be located. She is the daughter of the deceased woman and is one of the persons most likely to have information relating to her mother’s activities.”

  The detectives had another unpleasant task to perform that day. They had to inform the friends and families that Jennifer Villarin and James Gamble had been murdered. One of the first persons they informed was Gloria LaFranchi.

  LaFranchi called David Villarin, Jenny’s brother, and said, “Your sister is gone.”

  David was confused and asked, “Did she run away?”

  “No,” LaFranchi said. “She’s gone for good.”

  David was stunned, speechless. This couldn’t be happening.

  Almost immediately he was worried about Selina. He knew how much she loved her mom and how this news would affect her.

  David was always considered the rock of the family and the burden of telling others in the family about Jenny’s death fell on him.

  Olga was over at her mother-in-law’s home when she got a message to call her brother, David. When David told her the news, Olga said, “I was shaking so badly, I couldn’t even drive home. And nobody knew where Selina was.”

  Robert Asuncion’s thoughts were also about Selina when he found out about Jenny. He didn’t want Selina to get her first information about her mom’s death in the newspapers.