Wilma Parker remembers well some very peculiar and alarming behavior from a police horse next to her South of Market home on Clara Street. It was a day in mid-May 2018. The place was 228 Clara Street. She recounted the story recently to the Bay Area Reporter.
A group of police horses was there to commemorate the historic dedication of the drayhorse stables that once stood on the site of her home. One of the horses broke away from the others and sniffed the doorway of the Clara Street residence. The horse became agitated and reared up on its hind legs as if it was spooked by something.
Three months later police would discover the rotting torso of a man in a fish tank there in one of the most grizzly homicides in San Francisco history. Parker believes her gay longtime neighbor, Brian Egg, 64, was already dead in the home and that the horse likely was the first to notice something was very wrong.
For weeks, neighbors say they phoned police about Egg's disappearance but they said those calls were not taken seriously. The case remains unsolved. The homicide will be the subject of a Fox Nation streaming true crime program scheduled to drop on April 1. It was originally supposed to be narrated by Nancy Grace, but she has since parted ways with Fox Nation and the program will instead be hosted by well-known and prolific author James Patterson.
Meanwhile, the San Francisco District Attorney's office appears to be taking a new look at the case. Parker told the B.A.R. that an investigator from the office recently questioned her and Egg's sister about the case. Calls and emails to the DA's office were not returned.
Benefit for Pippi Lovestocking
Egg's longtime neighbor and friend, actor and drag performer Scot Free, known widely as Pippi Lovestocking, was among the first to raise concerns about suspicious individuals and activity in and around Egg's home after he disappeared in 2018. Free, 56, is now dealing with his own health struggles.
Last year, he suffered a cardiac event after giving a memorial tribute to his friend, drag performer Heklina, aka Stefan Grygelko, at the Castro Theatre. That eventually led to him contracting a sepsis infection, resulting in the amputation of both of his hands and feet. He is living in an assisted living facility in Rancho Mirage, near Palm Springs.
A benefit to support a documentary on Free's life as drag performer Pippi Lovestocking and his current challenges will be held at the Palm Springs Cultural Center Saturday, March 30, at 6 p.m. The documentary is called "Parts of Pippi." (For more information on the fundraiser click here.)
Egg's home was purchased in 2019 for $1.5 million by Sonoma resident Shahram Bijan. He obtained an entitlement to build a five-story nine-unit building. He apparently decided to sell the property for a $3 million asking price. The listing includes an artist rendering of the building entitlement obtained by Bijan. Neither Bijan nor the listing real estate agent returned the B.A.R.'s calls.
Egg's former house remains boarded up. Parker said she has had to deal with a steady stream of squatters, including some who have crawled over her roof to wire electricity from a nearby construction project. The building is tagged with graffiti and the backyard strewn with trash, including what appears to be a small refrigerator. A couple of holes, including one with wires coming out of it, were punched into the side of the wall of the house next to a beware-of-the-dog sign in Spanish: "Cuidado Hay Perro."
The sign may not be discouraging any trespassers now, but when Egg lived in the house in 2018, his dog Lucky may have kept trespassers away. Neighbors believe, however, that the people who were responsible for Egg's death were likely not trespassers but people whom he invited into his home.
Lance Silva and Robert McCaffrey were initially arrested in connection with Egg's homicide. McCaffrey was released without charges two days after his arrest but Silva was kept in jail on an unrelated parole violation until April 2019, about eight months after Egg's torso and feet were found in a fish tank in his home.
Now, nearly six years since Egg's murder, no one has been charged or prosecuted for the crime. Egg's severed head and hands were never recovered.
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