We wrote earlier this week on the wrestling match that transpired after a business owner tracked down the address of a Yelper who'd given her bookstore a bad review on Sunday night. According to Sean C., as he's known on Yelp, the woman who'd labeled him "pussy boy" and "stupid person" in e-mails pushed her way into his house and the two engaged in a shoving match.
Well, the owner of Ocean Avenue Books, who was cited for battery at the scene, has spoken. Diane Goodman told Valleywag her side of the story this week. When we called her up, she reiterated that it was actually Sean C. who started the fight after she showed up to apologize for the e-mails.
"I was about to go in and I said, 'This is about the Yelp thing,' and that's when he freaked out," Goodman told the SF Weekly. "And he rushed forward and grabbed me like, 'You fucking bitch!' And we both toppled over back down the steps. He kind of slapped me down. That's exactly how it went."
Ace political consultant turned politician turned real-estate baron Clint Reilly is going back where he started, signing up to lead a political campaign for the first time in more than a decade.
John Grubb, a spokesman for the Bay Area Council, confirmed what SF Weekly had heard through the grapevine: Reilly will direct his first campaign in 14 years in leading the charge for a state constitutional convention.
"I can't discuss details of his contract," said Grubb. "But let's just say we're getting a really good deal for the advice we're getting."
The Bay Area Council is a consortium of the region's 75 largest employers, including folks you've heard of such as Google, Yahoo, Wells Fargo, BART, The Chronicle -- and Clint Reilly.
Messages for Reilly have not yet been returned. But Grubb had an interesting rationale of why the BAC would, in essence, opt to play its coming political match with a wooden tennis racquet.
City officials have backed off from several of the more ambitious aspects of a planned overhaul of the local power grid that is intended to make San Francisco's energy supply greener and less dependent on Pacific Gas & Electric Co.
The promised land
The city's Public Utilities Commission and Local Agency Formation Commission -- commonly known as LAFCo, the commission helps formulate energy policy -- yesterday issued a Request for Proposals from potential bidders who would run the program. Called CleanPowerSF, the initiative is a "community choice aggregation" plan that would allow the city to pool all its power customers together and offer them to a private supplier.
CleanPowerSF's purpose is to break up PG&E's monopoly on the city's power supply, ushering in more renewable and local sources of energy. (As such, it has the support of many "public power" advocates, who have supported past unsuccessful efforts to gain voter approval for a city takeover of PG&E's local power grid.) But the softened bid requirements -- in particular the loosening of the city's commitment to CleanPowerSF providing rates for customers at or below those of PG&E -- raise questions about where the effort is headed. In theory, the less stringent bid request could lead to a program that is less green, and more expensive for the city's ratepayers, than what CleanPowerSF proponents have promised.
No more seaside views for this Mission Bay resident.
When SF Weekly reporters saw the Port of San Francisco cracking down on our bay side neighbors, we had to snap some shots of the demolition. This lean-to was so elaborate that tearing it down required more than five workers, multiple large dumpsters, and a backhoe.
One of the Port's workers told SF Weekly that the resident had been escorted from the encampment yesterday and taken to a homeless shelter. "We're just cleaning up what's left," he said. He didn't cite any particular reasoning for the demolition, just that the Port was doing its job. A call to the Port confirmed that they mostly work with the city's Homeless Outreach Team.
Anna McCarthy
SF Weekly has a call in to the Outreach Team to ascertain the former resident's whereabouts.
And you thought they were just harmless reviews. The bitter back-and-forth cyber-attacks between business owners and Yelpers turned real-world violent Sunday night when a bookstore owner allegedly forced her way into the house of a San Francisco man who'd given her a bad review and the two entered into a wrestling match.
"This is the craziest thing that's ever happened to me," Sean C., as he's known on Yelp, told SF Weekly. "If I had a gun she'd probably be dead right now."
The fiasco started when Sean C. posted a two-star Yelp review for Ocean Avenue Books in the Ocean View neighborhood last week, warning: "This place is a TOTAL MESS."
Kenneth Herron, who yesterday had the trespassing charge tossed following his foray into the San Francisco Zoo Grizzly Grotto, today beat the one remaining charge -- "willfully disturbing a wild and dangerous animal -- to wit, bears."
Herron, 21, who has a history of mental illness, will be released by the San Francisco Sheriff's department to officials in either Sacramento or Union City -- "both of which have criminal holds placed on the defendant for open criminal matters," according to San Francisco's District Attorney's office.
Earlier today we noted that even legal scholars were shocked that Herron beat the criminal trespassing charge -- until they noted that the fine print of the law requires not just wandering onto someone else's property, but doing so with the intent of residing there. "Holy mackerel," USF law professor Bob Talbot told SF Weekly. "You can go into a bear place, spend the night, and not violate any laws."
Soon the beloved 26 will be a relic, just like this '69 GMC fossil
We waited for you on Valencia for half hours at a time, expectantly stepping out on the street to see if your lights beckoned from afar. As you approached, we chanted "Be-van! Be-van!" in honor of the supervisor who lobbied to save you after Muni threatened to whack your faithful service last year. We then settled on board for your quaint, backroads route to Glen Park, dropping us right where we were going like BART never could. A crazy passenger once told us "You dropped your smile," and pushed up the edges of his mouth for effect. He was right: We shouldn't have stepped on board with anything other than glee in our hearts. Even when one of your late-night drivers always manned you like a veritable bat out of hell, taking the corners of sleepy Glen Park like a Formula One racer and nearly hurling us from our seats, we loved you still.
The problem was that we were always one of the only people on the route, and today MUNI announced you are being cut forever starting Dec. 5 to patch up a $129 million deficit for this fiscal year. You are not alone: The 4 Sutter, 7 Haight, 20 Colombus, 53 Southern Heights, and 89 Laguna Honda will be whacked as well. Surely, faithful riders of those routes are saddened, too, but we don't know about them.
On Friday we reported that BART's decision to split a multi-million dollar "emergency contract" was in jeopardy of leading to an unforeseen emergency of a different sort. With the contractor for a job installing lighting at North Berkeley station unable to come up with the proper bonding by the state's mandated deadline of Oct. 31, BART stood to lose nearly $800,000 in government grants.
Thanks to ink finding its way onto a hastily assembled contract Friday evening, BART escaped the specter of its Halloween trick being hundreds of thousands in wasted state funds. Still, the day of financial reckoning may not have been eliminated but only postponed .
BART's Oct. 30 pact with contractor Solar Eclipse allows the builder 10 business days -- starting from today -- to fulfill the bonding requirements it could not line up in the proceeding weeks. If the company is unable to obtain bonding at that time, however, the contract expires -- and, it seems, so does the state's offer of roughly $800,000 to redo lighting at North Berkeley BART.
"Let's cross that bridge when we get to it," said BART spokesman Linton Johnson when asked what would happen to the state grant if Solar Eclipse's contract was voided. "I'm not sure we know the answer to that just yet."
Scott Gerber, director of communications for California Attorney General Jerry Brown, has resigned after admitting last week that he had secretly recorded conversations with journalists, including a recent telephone conference call with a San Francisco Chronicle reporter.
Brown's office has released a resignation letter from Gerber, dated today, in which the former head of the AG's press office admits to "serious errors in judgment." He continues, "I suspect that the few reporters involved in the calls I taped would have readily said yes, but nonetheless it was wrong not to ask them first." Gerber states that, "as a result of my actions, I realize that I can no longer effectively serve the Office of the Attorney General."
Last week, the Chronicle reported that Gerber had taped an on-the-record conversation with Chron political reporter Carla Marinucci and two senior staff attorneys from the attorney general's office. While his actions were probably not illegal under state law, they ran counter to the typical protocols followed by both reporters and government spokespeople, and caused an unwelcome scandal for Brown, the current front-runner in the 2010 governor's race.
An duck soaked with oil by the 2007 Cosco Busan spill
What happens when two incensed fisherman and a seafood company owner walk into a lawyer's office? The answer is no joke, but the intuitive -- a lawsuit. Crab fisherman Mark Russo, herring fisherman Ron Alioti, and seafood company owner Russell Robinette on Friday filed a $10 million class action suit against the leaky Dubai Star ship and the shipping firms that run it.
The defendants "were negligent and spilled toxic diesel fuel and or bunker fuel into San Francisco Bay while taking on fuel," reads the complaint, which was filed in San Francisco federal court. "Defendants, their agents, operators, and managers are strictly liable to plaintiffs for all losses of income or property damage that are proximately caused by the wrongful conduct of defendant."
The $10 million sum is the class action suit's estimation of "loss of fishing profits and related fish-processing profits."
It's unlikely anyone has ever publicly announced he's taking a job so he can spend less time with his family. But countless folks turning in their resignation letters have chalked up the decision to jump ship to a desire to spend more time with the fam. Gavin Newsom joined that lengthy list today. And with his dead gubernatorial dreams still warm, the politicos on SF Weekly's speed dial speculated about what comes next for Newsom, San Francisco, and the governor's race.
One of the "wild rumors" Newsom has spent much time angrily dismissing -- along with the rumors he'd quit the governor's race shortly after the birth of his child, which turned out to be way off base -- was that he'd turn his flailing campaign for the top job into a more realistic shot at the lieutenant governor's seat. It's hard to rush off into a new political race moments after claiming your exit from your last race was undertaken so you could be a better father and mayor. But -- that's what politicians do.
Still, can you name our current Lt. Gov.? With the exception of Gray Davis, the position hasn't exactly served as the threshold to greatness -- and that may be the first sentence in which the terms "Gray Davis" and "greatness" were ever juxtaposed. For every Davis, there are many Garamendis, Bustamantes, and Leo McCarthys.
"I think it would be a mistake [to run for Lt. Gov.] ... if he's looking at his future," said political consultant Jim Ross, who ran Newsom's 2003 mayoral campaign. Yet Ross' opinion was far from unanimous. "I wouldn't be surprised if there's a deal in place for him to be lieutenant governor," said another Ross, Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi. For Newsom to drop out was "an astute decision -- but not one that was made in a vacuum."
California Attorney General Jerry Brown's spokesman has been placed on leave following revelations that he secretly tape-recorded conversations with reporters, the attorney general's office said today.
In a statement sent to SF Weekly in response to questions about the incident, Brown staffer Christine Gasparac said the spokesman, Scott Gerber, "has been put on administrative leave and appropriate disciplinary action will be taken." The San Francisco Chronicle reported today that Gerber had recorded a conference call with Chronicle political reporter Carla Marinucci without informing her beforehand.
"Mr. Gerber's recording of certain telephone conversations was done without Attorney General Brown's knowledge and in direct violation of explicit directions regarding office policy," Gasparac wrote. "These conversations were on the record and in no sense confidential. Nevertheless, the explicit agreement of all parties should have been obtained."
Audrey Fukuman, based on original illustration by @yiyinglu
Gavin Newsom and the Bay Bridge came up short this week
If you see a tall, handsome man with slicked-back hair wandering forlornly through the city on Halloween, it may not be a denizen dressed as Gavin Newsom. It may be the real thing.
The mayor's traveling political roadshow came to an end today when he fired off a press release acknowledging he is dropping out of the governor's race:
"It is with great regret I announce today that I am withdrawing from
the race for governor of California. With a young family and
responsibilities at city hall, I have found it impossible to commit the
time required to complete this effort the way it needs to -- and should
be -- done...This is not an easy decision. But it is one made with the best
intentions for my wife, my daughter, the residents of the city and
county of San Francisco, and California Democrats."
Newsom was far behind Attorney General Jerry Brown in both the polls and fund-raising. It is unclear if Newsom will, as many have speculated, set his sights on the lieutenant governor's chair.
In a definite candidate for the ironic hall of fame, the BART board last week awarded part of a multi-million dollar contract to Nedar Bey -- who had earlier accused that very board of being "servants of the devil."
Fittingly, hundreds of thousands of dollars in government money may be going straight to hell, as Bey has been unable to line up the necessary bonding -- insurance, basically -- required of BART contractors. In a flurry of distressed memos and in interviews with SF Weekly, several members of BART's board and management say that if this matter isn't finalized by Oct. 31, money from the State Transportation Improvement Program earmarked for lighting improvements at North Berkeley BART could simply go unspent. Up to $3.2 million in state money is earmarked for improvements at both North Berkeley and Oakland 12th Street stations. The North Berkeley operation's base bid was for $562,129 with options for an additional $218,000 in work -- a total of more than $780,000.
"If we don't get this settled, the money goes away," said BART's San Francisco-area board member Tom Radulovich. "North Berkeley doesn't get done." BART spokesman Linton Johnson confirmed that state money "evaporates tomorrow."
The diminishing ranks of loyal San Francisco Chronicle subscribers were greeted this morning with an above-the-fold, A-1 story that promised a juicy scoop: "Phone calls taped secretly; Brown's office recorded talks with reporters." Ooooh. Is Attorney General Jerry Brown, the current favorite in the 2010 gubernatorial race, stealing moves from the Nixon playbook? Can't wait to read on and find out.
Turns out that a flak in Brown's press office recorded a telephone conversation he had this week with Chronicle political reporter Carla Marinucci and two senior staff lawyers from the AG's office about a ballot measure on car insurance. The story -- by Marinucci and fellow Chron scribe Joe Garofoli -- takes pains almost immediately to imply that the action might have been illegal, citing a relevant section in the California Penal Code in the third graph.
So far, sounds like a great story: The state's top law-enforcement official breaking the law in a manner suggestive of the sleaze and secrecy that so many of us love to loathe in government. The only problem is that the actions of Brown's press office, while unquestionably stupid and a PR blunder, are almost certainly not illegal -- as the Chron should know.
A San Francisco jury convicted Phil Pitney, 19, of attempted murder Thursday, even after the victim he shot at was a no-show for the entire trial -- apparently because he was threatened by the defense attorney's investigator.
The Chron reported last week that Steve Vender, a private investigator working with defense attorney Eric Safire, had called Ladarius Greer, 21, on the eve of the trial and threatened that he would be arrested if he showed up for trial. The victim played police the investigator's message: Vender tells the victim that he knows he has an outstanding warrant in Solano County, and "it's a good time to visit the Fresno Riviera."
Police had no luck locating the Greer throughout the trial to testify about the shooting or identify the suspect, said District Attorney spokesman Brian Buckelew.
While Cal-ISO -- the state body that determines how much power generation municipalities require -- seemed amenable to shutting down the plant's Unit 3 smokestack when the highly touted transbay power cable comes online early next year, it was not willing to pull the plug on Mirant outright. Citing a potential city shortage of 25 Megawatts, Cal-ISO was not yet ready to give assent to close Units 4, 5, and 6. The body pledged to complete an analysis within two months regarding whether it is viable to shutter those units.
The city has long held that decreased overall power demand would allow San Francisco to meet its power quotas without adding any additional generation. At the August press conference announcing the city's settlement with Mirant, Public Utilities Commission head Ed Harrington described that so-called 25 MW shortage as "overly cautious": That figure assumed "two major
power transmission cables went down on the peak hour of the peak day
and no one ever made any change in their behavior when it happened."
In addition to the payment, the city has also agreed to train staff and install new safety equipment to avoid a recurrence of the fuel tank overflow incident that sent bus fuel into the Bay.
"There's been a laser-like focus on this issue," said Muni spokesman Judson True.
UPDATE: City, DOJ, EPA Agree on $250K settlement, see details here.
U.S. Department of Justice attorneys filed suit against San Francisco in connection with a 2005 bus yard fuel spill that released as much as 54,000 gallons of diesel gasoline into San Francisco soil and sewers -- with some of it ultimately reaching the Bay.
According to the complaint, filed on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency, personnel at the Municipal Transportation Authority's John M. Woods Motor Coach facility failed to heed an alarm triggered when its 20,000-gallon fuel tanks became flooded with storm water. The overflowing diesel fuel traveled through at least two miles of drain pipe until a Public Utilities Commission worker noticed a diesel smell at a sewage treatment plant. Coast Guard personnel, meanwhile, spotted a petroleum slick on Islais Creek.
A man on the scene has informed us that a suicidal person is threatening to leap off a building on Valencia between 16th and 17th Streets, and the area has been closed off since around 5:45.
Police spokeswoman Sergeant Lyn Tomioka confirmed that the 500 block of Valencia -- the "old Valencia Gardens" is off-limits to the public because of the potential jumper. Details were sparse -- including, even the sex of the person atop the building. Negotiator teams are purportedly in place.
More as we know more.
UPDATE: 10:30 P.M.: The SFPD informs us that negotiations are ongoing.
UPDATE: THURSDAY, 8:20 A.M. Police at Mission Station confirmed that the would-be jumper, a white male, was talked down by the SFPD and firefighters shortly after midnight. He is currently at General Hospital's psychiatric wing. The man's identity and rationale for contemplating suicide haven't yet been released to the public.
San Francisco Superior Court Judge Peter Busch ordered today that the Pink Diamonds be closed for one year, a victory for City Attorney Dennis Herrera in his efforts to crack down on the notoriously violent strip club.
"I am gratified that Judge Busch clearly recognized the significant threat to public safety Pink Diamonds posed," Herrera said in a statement. The judge also imposed fines of at least $690,000 on the club's owners.
The strip club at 220 Jones Street has been linked to numerous shootings in the Tenderloin, including a June incident when a patron was killed on the sidewalk outside the venue. According to the complaint filed with the court by Herrera's office, Pink Diamonds has also been the site of illicit drug deals, prostitution, and extended-hours permit violations. The city attorney's office says it has required more than 230 service calls by police in the past six months alone.
The 1927 Carquinez Bridge also had issues with eyebars -- and aging
The Bay Bridge isn't the first local aging span to have problems with torn and failing eyebars. Yet the low traffic load and easy alternate route available to the engineers who remedied the last situation aren't applicable when it comes to the Bay Bridge.
Mark Ketchum, one of the Structural Engineering Association of Northern California's designated experts on bridge design and failure, immediately likened yesterday's rupture to the failure of the eyebars on the 1927 Carquinez Bridge in the early 1970s. Like the Bay Bridge, that Carquinez span was an aging structure nearing the end of its useful life. But that's where the comparisons end.
Because the Crockett-to-Vallejo traffic is not on par with the East Bay-city commute, and also because the 1958 Carquinez span stood mere yards away and could easily be made to handle the traffic load, engineers actually undertook a lengthy study on whether to retrofit or replace the '27 bridge. They opted for the former and the old bridge served until the completion of the third Carquinez Bridge -- which Ketchum helped design -- in 2003 (the '27 span was dismantled in '07).
Obviously, those fixing the Bay Bridge don't have the same luxuries as their forbears who took months making the fix. Time is of the essence. And Ketchum adds that episodes like yesterday's show why it's a good thing that the eastern span of the Bay Bridge is on its way out.
Jack Moehle -- a U.C. Berkeley engineering professor and one of the Bay Area's acknowledged experts on freeway and bridge failure -- said that Caltrans' initial claims that high winds contributed to yesterday's rupture on the Bay Bridge is "a credible explanation." Still, he's taken aback that the failure occurred just weeks after the installation of the parts in question.
"Wind can result in resonance of a cable or rod, which can amplify stresses," wrote Moehle in an e-mail. "Normally, this is a longer-term problem associated with high-cycle fatigue (steel can fail at a stress below its one-cycle strength if millions of cycles are applied). What is surprising is that it happened just six weeks (or so) after initial installation."
Here's the professor's explanation in more layman-friendly terms: Wind makes cables and rods vibrate, which induces wear and tear ("wear and tear" is the blue-collar way of referring to the engineering term "fatigue"). "One-cycle strength" is, essentially, steel's breaking point. But steel can actually fail at less than its breaking point, if minor stresses are persistently applied over time. The analogy that springs to mind is "death from one thousand small cuts."
To reiterate what is certain to be plastered on every front page and uttered by every person on every oral and visual medium there is for quite some time, the Bay Bridge section speedily repaired during "Operation S-Curve" on Labor Day weekend crashed to the upper deck this evening.
No word yet on when life will return to normal (we called CalTrans spokesman Bart Ney several times -- but, apparently, so did everyone. His voice mail box was full).
UPDATE, WEDNESDAY 8 A.M.: We've placed calls to a pair of engineers who are among the Bay Area's most prominent experts on bridges -- and why they fail. More when we hear more.
Legislation that would reform how San Francisco's nightclub-industry watchdog agency operates was approved by the Board of Supervisors' City Operations and Neighborhood Services Committee today, and is headed for a vote by the full board next month.
Are changes coming to SF nightlife?
Following a three-hour hearing that featured extensive public comment from both supporters and opponents of the legislation, the three-member committee unanimously approved the new law, which would grant the Entertainment Commission added powers to crack down on problematic nightclubs as well as establish stricter oversight measures for how the commission operates.
In a separate vote, Supervisor Chris Daly voted against an amendment in the ordinance drafted by board president David Chiu. The measure would establish limits on how many late-night event permits could be granted by the commission in a given year. Chiu and committee chairman Bevan Dufty voted for the measure, giving it the needed votes to pass on to the full board.
San Francisco Police Captain Gary Jimenez, who oversees the crime-plagued Tenderloin district, has announced that he will step down next month as Tenderloin station commander. He will be replaced by Dominic Celaya, a former lieutenant at Mission police station, whose promotion to captain was recently announced by SFPD Chief George Gascon.
Jimenez announced the move via a terse paragraph in his latest community newsletter. He said he will be taking on a new job as a "night supervising captain" in the operations bureau. He offered no explanation for the move, although it is common knowledge that the newly arrived Gascon is in the middle of a shakeup of the SFPD brass.
As captain of the Tenderloin station, Jimenez was well-liked by residents of the beleaguered district and developed a reputation for candor with neighborhood leaders and the press. But he was unable to staunch the rampant drug dealing and violence that consumes the Tenderloin. One of Gascon's first publicity stunts during his tenure as SFPD chief was to conduct a high-profile sweep of Jimenez's district that netted hundreds of low-level drug arrests.
John Brown is the only one of the seven men who has been formally charged since the arrests took place on Oct. 6. DA office spokesman Brian Buckelew said that prosecutors will soon decide whether to press charges against the other men, who have all been released. Brown remains in custody, according to his attorney, Deputy Public Defender Michael Fox.
Brown and six others stood up in court when a witness in a murder trial was asked to identify the alleged shooter, defendant Charles Heard, who has been accused of killing a man over a medallion depicting The Flintstones character Bamm-Bamm. Assistant DA Michael Swart immediately called the move "out-and-out intimidation of a witness" and ordered them arrested. Eric Safire, Heard's defense attorney, said he had asked the men to stand to ensure a more fair identification process for his client, who was seated at the defense table in jail-issue orange clothes.
A San Francisco police officer who cheated death in the wee hours this morning during a traffic stop gone awry has been released from General Hospital and is "doing better," according to the department.
A white 2006 PT Cruiser like the one driven by Antonio Dalbello
At 1:42 a.m. the officer -- whose name has not yet been released -- pulled over a man named Antonio Dalbello after the latter was observed weaving in his white PT Cruiser while driving southbound on Ashbury just south of Haight. When the officer claimed to smell alcohol on the San Francisco resident's breath and initiated a DUI investigation, things went badly.
The SFPD claims Dalbello reached for the ignition and the officer reached into the car to prevent him from doing so. A struggle ensued and the officer soon found himself hanging halfway out the driver's side window, careening down the street at speeds estimated between 40 and 45 mph. Dalbello's car struck several parked cars on the right side of the road while the officer was dangling out the left side; after around two blocks the officer freed himself and fell to the pavement.
Things are still drying out at Northern Police Station in the Western Addition, which was flooded with four inches of water in Monday's deluge. Why all the flooding? Turns out the station doesn't have a lousy check valve -- an item likely smaller than a stereo.
The station really needs this valve. Oftentimes when there's heavy, fast rain, water flows down the Turk Street hill to where the station sits at Turk and Fillmore, and will course up through the building's drain system.
"If we were going to make a lake, we would be at the bottom of the lake," says Station Captain Croce Alexander Casciato.
Did you hang around the 'Loin in 1984? Does this face ring a bell?
On April 10, 1984, San Francisco police found 9-year-old Mei Leung's dead body in the basement area of the residential hotel at 765 O'Farrell Street where she lived with her family. Her 8-year-old brother was the last one to see her alive -- they had walked home from a friend's house together just before the slaying.
Police never found her killer. Now, two-and-a-half decades later, the SFPD say they have new DNA evidence proving that notorious serial killer Richard Ramirez, better known as the "Night Stalker" for his characteristic method of sneaking into his victims' houses after dark, may be responsible for her death. The SFPD declined to go into much detail because the case, they said, is still under investigation.
Los Angeles area police caught Ramirez in 1985, and, in 1989, he was convicted of 13 murders and sentenced to death. He is now on death row at San Quentin. At a press conference today, police announced that yesterday inspectors paid Ramirez a visit to obtain current DNA samples from him to confirm his connection with Leung's murder. Matt Gabriel of the department's Crime Scene Investigations unit said that the DNA lab has been working on the case for the past five years. "We have probably 100 unsolved homicide cases that we have tested over the years," said Gabriel. "... we're constantly working on these cases."