Mia Sagote, 36, was found guilty today of first-degree murder with special circumstances for kidnapping and torture in a crime that made national headlines in 2007. She and another woman were responsible for kidnapping, torturing, and burning a drug-addicted formerly homeless woman named Jill May.
May was, like many of San Francisco's homeless, addicted residents of the Tenderloin, a woman who had led a rough life. That life came to an even rougher end in January 2007 when two women kidnapped her off the streets, drove her to the Candlestick parking lot, and burned her alive.
The motive for the murder was revenge for being a snitch. The previous day May had told police that a known drug dealer in the neighborhood, Mia Sagote, had stripped her clothes off of her, beaten her, robbed her, and left her behind a dumpster. Hearing that she'd ratted her out to police, Sagote and a friend grabbed Jill May off the street on the afternoon of January 12, 2007, drove her to Candlestick, doused her in gasoline, and set her on fire.
The incident that led up to the crime was that May's longtime boyfriend, a pimp known as "Slick Rick" Smith, had stiffed Sagote for $150 for crack. May and Smith were addicted to both crack and heroin, had been for years, and when Sagote came to collect and only found May, she beat her up and threw her against the wall, and later stripped her and robbed her when she saw her on the street.
Sagote's trial began on September 30, and today she was convicted based on some incriminating phone calls she made to her boyfriend while in jail, as well as cell phone records that showed her in certain locations the day of the murder. Also, a sock found in the trunk of her car matched one that was found on the victim at the scene.
Jill May was profiled by The Chronicle in 2004 as she was part of a program under the Newsom administration to reach out to the chronically homeless, and by the fall of 2006 she and Smith had actually been given permanent housing, though her addiction kept her on the street, usually Jones between Geary and Ellis. As Smith said after her death, "She used to get on my nerves. I loved her, though. Jill had a one-track mind. She never had enough drugs."
In 2004 she said to a reporter, "Just one day before I die, I'm going to see the Statue of Liberty. I'm going to get on a Greyhound bus, see the country. Go to school, get a job. I want to do normal things."
You can read more of her story here.
