Trigger warning: this post talks about murders, suicides and death. It’s disturbing content, so some of you may not want to read any further.
Life in the park includes death, a tragic fact made all too vivid Sunday night when the body of a woman stuffed inside a duffel bag was found scarcely a five-minute walk from where thousands were joyously partying down on the final night of Outside Lands. A dog walker discovered the body and called the police just about the time Megan Thee Stallion was wrapping up her set.
Whether it was that horrifying detail of the duffel bag, the proximity to a famed music event, or the combination, the story became instant clickbait. News outlets across the country, and as far afield as Britain and India quickly picked it up. No such widespread coverage when the remains of a longtime park resident, then known only as Kurt, were found in 2021.
By Monday, the woman had been identified as Kelly Koike Brock, age 37.
Koike Brock grew up in Castro Valley, her mother told the San Francisco Standard, and graduated from culinary school with hopes of becoming a professional chef. She was “a creative soul,” her mother said. ”She had so many aspirations.” But at 16 she was diagnosed with schizophrenia, catatonia and bipolar disorder and those illnesses eventually got the best of her. She ended up living on the street four years ago. Sometimes she lived in the park. The park rangers on the Homeless Outreach Team were trying to connect her with services. It’s not yet clear what happened to her, but news reports say the police are treating it as a suspicious death.
Bodies are found in Golden Gate Park more often than you might think, I’ve been told by various people who work there. I like to think the park brings out the best in people. But of course, it’s not immune to the same dark happenings that shadow the rest of the city. The park has been witness to murders, suicides, and accidental deaths since its earliest days, if my quick scan through city newspapers over the past few days is any indication. Many of the headlines are some variation of “Was it Murder or Suicide?”
When was the first human corpse found in the park? It may have been September 1, 1879 – just eight years into the park’s creation, when it was still remote from the city’s core and difficult for most to reach. A brief story in the San Francisco Chronicle reported the discovery of a man’s body hanging from a “piece of bayrope” tied to an oak tree. He was one of “two strangers to seek oblivious repose” in the city that day, the paper said. Like most news reports of unidentified bodies found in that era before dental records, fingerprints or DNA, the story provided a detailed description of his appearance and the clothes he wore in the hope that someone might be able to name him.
The first murder in the park may have been a few years later. “A Stranger Killed,” the Chronicle reported on April 10, 1886. According to the story, the body of a man half buried in sand was found “in a lonesome spot” near Strawberry Hill. Someone had placed a scrap of blue fabric on a nearby pine sapling to attract attention to the spot. From footprints and buggy tracks at the site, police deduced that the man had arrived in one of two carriages the previous night and that there had been at least one other man and a woman at the scene. The men fought, perhaps over the woman, perhaps as part of a robbery, and the victim was struck and smothered. I don’t know if crime was ever solved or the victim identified.
Until the Golden Gate Bridge was built, the park seems to have been a favorite destination of those who wanted to kill themselves. Sometimes they died anonymously. Sometimes they left heart-breaking notes: “I am going to take cyanide tonight. I am too worn out. I am a wreck and could be saved but for some party too much interested in me,” read the note from Albert Stauber whose body was found on Feb. 25, 1894. “Anna, forgive me, but I had no pardon, so I do what I will. Tell the children I am all right. Good-by Martie and George. Papa goes to heaven. Good-by Anna.”
In 1940, a 62-year-old widow, Stella Calvin, traveled from Seattle to San Francisco to end her life by eating a poisoned cookie in the underbrush at 19th Avenue and Lincoln Way. Police later found a note in the hotel where she’d been staying that explained her decision. “All my money is used up. I do not mean to beg or go on relief again. I see no reason why I should be a useless burden to my daughter. They would be willing to help me, but I see no reason for it. I hope to be dead when this letter is delivered, for I want no senseless try at reviving me.”
I’ve often wondered why someone who wanted to end their life would seek out a place like Golden Gate Park. “I think people are attracted to that sense of calm in gardens, and the park is peaceful,” one gardener said when I asked him about it. But maybe they also want to ensure that their body will be found, and that it won’t be a loved one who has to make that grisly discovery. Unfortunately, that’s meant an all-too-common trauma for the gardeners and others who work in the park.
Based on my unscientific survey of news stories, those who have died in the park, by their own hand or by others’, come from all walks of life. I read about the deaths of laborers, sex workers, housewives, office workers, young people, old people, people with alcohol or drug issues, unhoused people and even a millionaire. (Wealthy prospector John Stinson disappeared in 1898; it wasn’t until 1906 police determined his was the body found in Stow Lake and buried in Potter’s Field eight years earlier.) I guess such a cross-section is not surprising considering the park is the great crossroads of the city. But it’s also true that unhoused people, like Koike Brock, are the most vulnerable.
A few days after learning about Koike Brock’s death, I went by the spot where her body was discovered. Someone had left an ad hoc memorial of two candles and a wreath of bright gold and orange nasturtium. A volunteer was working there, watering some of the baby trees. We talked a bit, agreed how upsetting it was to think of her being left in a duffel bag there.
We try to make sense of death, and try to find a way to understand the eruption of violence that snuffs out a life. It’s hard, painful, almost unfathomable to think of that occurring in a place so abundant in life as Golden Gate Park.
The volunteer I spoke with speculated that maybe Koike’s body wasn’t dumped, maybe it was placed in that spot. Maybe her death wasn’t violent, but was an overdose and friends brought her to that spot because it’s a beautiful place framed by pines and covered with nasturtium and yarrow. Maybe the duffel bag wasn’t a cruelty but a makeshift attempt at kindness. I doubt it, but wouldn’t that be nice.
Yes, as you wrote, the quiet of the park may be an important lure. I’m glad it’s OK that I posted Jeff’s piece.
A lovely, sensitive post, Susan. Readers might also be interested in the late Jeff Stryker’s piece on what became the new favored destination for those seeking “oblivious repose.” https://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/09/weekinreview/ideas-trends-an-awful-milestone-for-the-golden-gate-bridge.html