Accused killer Gary Scott Holland, who plead not guilty Friday to the brutal murder of Kathleen Horan in her Russian Hill apartment, had been calling the Castro Hotel on Vallejo Street home since being paroled and leaving a half-way house on August 20. As the Examiner reports, Holland was a "high-control" parolee, having served 11 years of a 13-year sentence for the attempted murder of a Fresno woman in 1999, but parole officers may not have been performing the sort of surprise checks on his residence that they probably should have been performing.

Had they performed such checks, they might have found a bag of syringes that police found when they searched Holland's room, or found evidence that he'd been drinking, which he was not allowed to do. According to John Falxa, whose family owns the Castro Hotel, “He just seemed like a typical guy who worked hard and had a couple drinks on the weekend. Other than that, he just kept to himself.” Holland was known to frequent a couple of bars in North Beach, though it's unclear which ones. Falxa was disturbed to know that Holland had returned to his room at the Castro after allegedly committing the murder, because Holland's room is directly next door to the one that Falxa's mother sleeps in.