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Murders can happen pretty much anywhere, and hotels, idyllic or otherwise, are no exception.

The oldest hotel murder in San Diego is believed to be that of Roger Whitaker, a gambler who was shot to death in room 309 of the historic Horton Grand Hotel which now stands at Third and Island. (The four-story hotel, built in 1886, originally stood on F Street part of the site of what was, until recently, the Horton Plaza mall, the first — and, in retrospect, misguided — step in the revitalization of the Gaslamp Quarter. Earmarked for destruction when the mall was built, the hotel was subsequently disassembled and rebuilt, brick by brick, at its present site.) Shortly after the Horton Grand opened, Whitaker booked himself into room 309 and then proceeded to walk down the street to the nearest bar. He got into a card game and was pegged as a cheater. When he couldn’t pay up, the men he had cheated chased him with a gun as he ran back to his room. They reportedly shot him to death as he hid, shaking, inside his wardrobe.

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To this day, room 309 is believed to be haunted by his spirit. According to the Ghosts and Gravestones website, “Guests who have the unlucky experience of staying in room 309 have told many accounts of inexplicable events, some spooky, others terrifying. For some, the bed shook while they slept, causing them to awaken in a fright, only to find there was nothing there to cause it. Lights flicker and off, items in the bathroom seem to move and the armoire door often opens and closes in the middle of the night.”

Much more recently, murder stopped for a brief stay at the Hilton San Diego Airport Harbor Island Hotel at 1900 Harbor Island Drive. According to the Hilton website, it’s “one of the finest Hilton hotels in San Diego, and sits on beautiful San Diego Bay, with stunning views of the marina and city skyline.” Built in 1970, the nine-story hotel was sold in 2015 to hometown hospitality company Bartell Hotels for $37.7 million, and was subsequently given a $5 million renovation, completed in 2019. Tubs were converted to showers, and more marble and granite was installed, to further the hotel’s high-end look. The investment paid off. The hotel has since gotten rave reviews on websites such as TripAdvisor.com, where one guest who stayed in January wrote, “The hotel itself is terrific. Everything appeared to be in new condition. We enjoyed walking the grounds which are park-like and also sitting on our little patio. This is a beautifully run, first-class hotel in a wonderful location.”

Such an idyllic spot might seem to be an unlikely setting for a grisly murder-suicide, but last November 15, that’s precisely what happened. Shortly after 2 pm, hotel staffers placed an urgent call to police, telling them they had found two dead bodies in a room on the eighth floor. Staff had entered the room when the guests had failed to check out. Police arrived and found the two people, a man and a woman, dead of gunshot wounds. They also found a handgun. The victims were subsequently identified as 57-year-old Sri Kumar Rangarajan and his 27-year-old wife, Kayla Jakob.

According to a San Diego Police Department press release, “it appears the most likely scenario is that Rangarajan shot Jacob, and then shot himself.” A gentleman who works at the front desk said that the room, outfitted with two queen beds, “was put out of order for several weeks. We redid the entire carpeting; the mattresses and the bed frame were thrown out; and everything was deep cleaned and sanitized. We even had a priest come in and bless the room, just to make sure all the spirits are positive in there.”

Murders can happen pretty much anywhere, and hotels, idyllic or otherwise, are no exception. The American Hotel and Lodging Association says that murders are among the five most common crimes in hotels, although no firm numbers exist – largely because hotel operators aren’t exactly eager to broadcast the fact that someone has been gunned down or beaten to death in the corner suite. It’s out of step with the Egyptian-cotton sheets, Keurig coffee maker, and panoramic ocean views. For that matter, it’s out of step with your average roadside motel that’s just trying to stay in business by offering a clean, safe place to spend the night. And while the term “hotel murders” tends to conjure up images of hardboiled detectives kicking in doors in shabby joints and discovering dead bodies pockmarked with bullet holes, the truth is that murders aren’t restricted to downtown flophouses or seedy roadside inns. (Hello, Hilton & Company.) Some of the most gruesome hereabouts have taken place at some of the swankiest places.

A murder-suicide eerily similar to the Holton Harbor Island affair took place 16 years ago in another ritzy waterfront hotel, the San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina at 333 West Harbor Drive. Now known as the Mariott Marquis, the four-star hotel stands just a short walk from the San Diego Convention Center. “Every hotel room and suite has impressive views of the city or San Diego Bay,” boasts the hotel’s website. “Recharge on indulgent bedding and take advantage of the relaxed reading chairs, flat-screen TVs, desks and Wi-Fi; many rooms have private balconies.” But none of that mattered much to the unfortunate couple found dead in their seventh-floor room on the evening of Friday, July 6, 2007, after another visitor reported hearing screams and gunshots just after 7:30 pm. Police later identified the two people as Harold Michael Kent, 54, and Lisa Walsh, 43. Police believe Kent shot Walsh and then himself. The two worked together as personal trainers at the Spectrum Club in Thousand Oaks, and were in San Diego for a five-day fitness convention at the Marriott. At the time, San Diego police lieutenant Kevin Rooney said the two were “coworkers who had been involved in a relationship in the past.” The murder-suicide took place in Kent’s room; Walsh was staying at a different hotel.

At the San Diego Mission Bay Resort at 1775 East Mission Bay Drive, “the best of the Southern California lifestyle is at your fingertips – sun, sand, and so much more.” According to the hotel’s website, guests are invited to “indulge in the heart of San Diego, where you’ll enjoy waterfront dining, endless outdoor activities, luxurious spa treatments, poolside relaxation, and — best of all — proximity to everything you could want to do in our vibrant city.” Formerly the Hilton Mission Bay, the resort opened in January 2020 after a $21 million “reimagination and renovation,” its website says. A little more than a year later, on May 16, 2021, police received multiple calls in the early morning hours about shots being fired there. When they arrived, they found 20-year-old Raysean Green of Perris “down in a hotel room suffering from ballistic trauma to his torso,” a police lieutenant said. Green was pronounced dead at the scene. According to police, witnesses said “an altercation took place in the hallway and the hotel room culminating with at least one gunshot.” Two males were spotted leaving the hotel in a white, late-model sedan. The case is believed to remain unsolved.

Ventura County Star article remembering Lisa Walsh, killed in the San Diego Marriot Hotel in 2007.

Another downtown San Diego hotel murder occurred on January 31, 2021, at the Days Inn by Wyndham at Eighth and Ash. Shortly after 9 pm, police found an 18-year-old Escondido man, Carlos Ledesma-Diaz, inside a hotel room, suffering from gunshot wounds. He was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he died. Police said the victim had been in the room with several other people before he was shot. Three men walked away from the room, including the suspected killer. The trio then fled the scene in a small, light-colored car, heading north on Ninth. A week later, a 16-year-old boy was arrested for the killing.

The next stop on our hotel murder tour is up in North County, in Oceanside, San Diego County’s northernmost city. The Oceanside Best Western Inn at 1680 Oceanside Boulevard, just west of the intersection with Interstate 5, boasts on its website that “the golden beach is minutes away,” and maintains that it is “designed to be family-friendly and a home base for the vacation of a lifetime.” But it wasn’t anything of the sort for 30-year-old Nathaneal Neumann, who met his untimely end there in the early morning hours of November 20, 2006. A skinhead gang leader known to his friends as “The Joker,” Neumann was shot once in the chest in the doorway to his hotel room by Daniel McKinney, who would receive a life sentence for the slaying. Witnesses said McKinney, a parolee, shot Neumann with a .45 caliber handgun. The two had been friends, but their relationship soured and Neumann, fresh from prison, had reportedly threatened to stab McKinney.

According to a February 2009 Coast News story, McKinney “said he feared for his family’s safety after he heard Neumann had threatened their lives and his. Drunk, fearful, and angry, McKinney said he went over to Neumann’s motel room to talk to him. When Neumann answered the door, McKinney said a brief confrontation occurred and he pulled the gun out to intimidate Neumann. However, the victim grabbed the gun, causing it to fire. The jury didn’t buy it and found McKinney guilty of second-degree murder.

Remember how we told you that hotel murders aren’t restricted to seedy motels? That certainly doesn’t mean they don’t happen there. One of San Diego’s most brutal hotel murders took place in December 2015. Early on the morning of the 15th, employees of the nearly century-old 500 West Hotel in downtown San Diego found a dead woman in a communal bathroom area on the second floor. The hotel, situated off Broadway and Columbia, was built in 1924, and for nearly 50 years, it had been home to the Armed Services YMCA. Downtown’s renaissance had passed over the old building, and it gradually sank into disrepair, becoming what’s known as a “budget” hotel — the kind with shared bathrooms, similar to a hostel. On Yelp, the review average was two stars out of five, largely because of the bugs, the shabby furnishings, and the creepy guests. The dead woman, 26-year-old Jhordann Reann Rust of Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, had checked in three days earlier, on December 12, with her boyfriend. A few hours after they had settled into their room, the boyfriend was arrested and jailed for an alleged domestic violence incident. Shortly after midnight, Rust called her mother in Wisconsin on her boyfriend’s cell phone; during the call, prosecutors said later, the mother “heard a struggle and was told by her daughter that she was being attacked by a man named Jason.” The mother called San Diego police, but when they got to the hotel for a welfare check, there was no sign of Rust. The boyfriend was released from jail on December 14, but he, too, could not find his girlfriend. It was after midnight when hotel employees discovered Rust’s body in a bathroom shower. She had been beaten to death.

Witnesses told police that the same night the boyfriend was arrested and taken away, they had seen Rust enter a hotel room occupied by 40-year-old Jason Bradwell Lewis. Just before that, the two had been caught on a surveillance camera buying a bottle of wine at a nearby 7-Eleven convenience store. Police found Lewis’ fingerprint near the body, and the boyfriend’s cell phone and a bloody mattress pad in a nearby trash can. Police said the legs of the bed in Lewis’ room were damaged, suggesting a struggle. A large suitcase with blood inside was also found in Lewis’ room; prosecutors later said they believed Lewis had used the suitcase to transport Rust’s body out of his room and into the bathroom. Lewis, a registered sex offender, was convicted of first-degree murder. Almost exactly a year after Rust’s body had been found, on December 16, 2016, Lewis was sentenced to 56 years to life in prison for beating Rust to death in his hotel room.

As for 500 West Hotel, it shut down shortly after the murder. But redevelopment gave the place a new lease on life, and it reopened in 2019 as The Guild, a Marriott San Diego Tribute Portfolio Hotel. Today, the hotel, according to its website, “seamlessly blends historic charm and modern amenities for an inspiring stay in America’s Finest City…. Explore and indulge in an unforgettable taste of modern nostalgia. High ceilings, original tilework, elegant archways and exposed brick walls complement our Riviera-style courtyard and Grace Garden, an outdoor urban oasis suitable for romantic soirees…”

A decidedly unromantic encounter: last year, on April 28, police in the early morning were called about a possible assault at a National City hotel. They found a gravely wounded man, Calvin Martin, near the Motel 6 at 1125 East Plaza Boulevard. Paramedics were called, and they took Martin to the UCSD Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. Police interviewed witnesses and wound up arresting 44-year-old Amalia Samaniego for his murder. A few days after the attack, in which prosecutors allege Samaniego stabbed Martin and then beat him with a broom handle, Samaniego pleaded not guilty to a murder charge, maintaining at her hearing that the victim had strangled her and threatened to kill her.

Continuing our seedy sightseeing: on July 30, 2014, a man was stabbed to death at the Villa Embasadora Hotel at 1556 East Main Street in El Cajon, where one Yelp reviewer wrote he “had to switch rooms because of roaches.” Police were called around 7:15 in the evening about a possible fight. When they arrived, they found a 28-year-old man bleeding and unconscious inside one of the hotel rooms. He had been stabbed and later died at a hospital. (The hotel, built around a parking lot accessed through a huge arch topped with red Spanish-style tiles, has since been converted into the Vista Oaks Apartments.)

Another notorious El Cajon hotel murder, in contrast, occurred at one of the East County city’s ritziest resort hotels. On February 10, 2021, 28-year-old Dylan Michael Brooks was shot to death in a hotel room at the Singing Hills Golf Resort in the Dehesa Valley. The 100-acre hotel, built on the Sycuan reservation, is part of a 425-acre resort that also includes 54 holes of Ted Robinson-designed golf. Sheriff’s deputies and Sycuan police officers went to the hotel at about 6 pm; there, they found Brooks, a Lakeside resident, lying on the bathroom floor of his hotel room. He had been shot. He was rushed to a local hospital but died of his injuries a short time later. A day later, 33-year-old Frank Eldon Billeter, also of Lakeside, was identified as a suspect. Brooks was the boyfriend of Billeter’s cousin and, prosecutors said later, the two men had “some history of disliking each other.” The suspect was already in custody, having been arrested about four hours after the murder for driving a stolen Land Rover. He was carrying a loaded gun, which matched the casings found at the crime scene, prosecutors said. They also said Billeter had prior convictions that included assault with a deadly weapon in a case in which he stabbed another person. Two weeks after his arrest, Billeter pleaded not guilty to a murder charge.

Chippewa Herald Telegram obituary for Jhordann Reann Rust who died in the 500 West Hotel.

Short of a Google search, it’s hard to ascertain whether the hotel you’re thinking about booking has been the scene of a gruesome murder. According to a recent article in The Thrillist, after a murder takes place in a hotel, and once the police have finished their initial investigation and the body is taken away by the medical examiner, the staff wastes no time in bringing in crime-scene cleanup crews to prep the room for the next guest — preferably as quickly as possible. “Usually they throw away anything with a permeable surface: sheets, blankets, mattresses, wooden tables, lamp shades, or anything else that would get wet if you threw water at it,” the article states. “Most electronics also get tossed, since small amounts of blood and other matter can get into the devices’ crevasses, making them nothing you’d want to plug in and turn on. Carpet gets ripped out, too, as does any permeable linoleum or other flooring. Headboards, artwork, also gone. Pretty much all that’s left are the bathroom fixtures, the walls, the ceiling, and maybe some metal furniture — at which point, everything gets sanitized and cleaned with solutions not available to the general public, like synthesized bovine enzymatic cleaner (used to sanitize slaughterhouses) or industrial-strength hydrogen peroxide. Once that’s done, someone has to sand down or fill holes in walls that may have caught a bullet or other debris. Wallpaper gets torn down and replaced, or the room is repainted.”

You can’t tell by looking, and while real estate disclosure laws in California require property owners attempting to sell a house, condo or business to divulge any violent deaths that occurred there, that rule doesn’t apply to hotels, since no property is changing hands. “Hotels are interesting,” says Dr. Randall Bell, a real estate appraiser who specializes in Real Estate Damage Economics, or REDE. “I am not aware of any disclosure laws on that, and frankly hotels are a whole other deal. You can actually pay to stay at the bed-and-breakfast where the Lizzie Borden murders happened and pay extra to stay in the room where the murders occurred. There’s actually a segment of society that seeks these places out.” Even on the sales front, he says, “I haven’t seen any diminution of value” in hotels where someone was murdered. A spokesperson for the American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA) would only say, “Policies vary by property, but in such an instance, hotels are obligated to follow the instructions of the local authorities of jurisdiction.”

So how can you tell there’s been a murder in your hotel room? According to Thrillist, there are several tell-tale signs. Among them: “There’s an odd bump in the wall. If it’s smaller than a quarter, it’s probably a bullet hole...The room is only partially renovated. If you see, say, half the room with what appears to be fresh wallpaper, and another half with stuff that looks a little faded, chances are something happened in there that required only part of it to be taken down... If the bed and nightstands are completely new, but the kitchenette and bathroom are older-looking stuff, that means cleaners went in, did something in the living area, and didn’t do the turn on the rest of the hotel room...The A/C unit smells awful. It’s the most commonly missed item by crime scene cleaners, and often has human remains stuck in the vents after a death. The blood and other matter seeps through the vents and into the wiring, and the air blowing out of it will smell like decomposing flesh. Most guests are likely to mistake it for garbage and write it off as ‘stinky A/C’ in a two-star TripAdvisor review...The ceiling is noticeably different than the rest of the hotel. Ideally, a crime scene cleaner can scrape whatever needs to be scraped off the ceiling, sanitize the ceiling, and fill it in to look new. Since imperfections aren’t as easily noticed on the ceiling as a wall, it’s typically an easier fix. But if you look up and see a janky ceiling, it can be a sign of a particularly nasty death.”

A frequent business traveler, Frank Silva is a 60-year-old sales executive for an Israeli company who lives in Carlsbad. He says he has not knowingly stayed in a hotel room where a murder occurred, although the thought of doing so doesn’t really bother him. “The biggest fear I have in entering any hotel room is whether I find bed bugs,” Silva says. “I don’t consider anything more. Have you ever been bitten by a bed bug? That’s real.” Dave Saviage, a 53-year-old executive in the financial services industry and resident of North County, also travels quite a bit for work. “I’ve stayed in one hotel where I know a murder happened,” he says. “It was here in San Diego.” Was he creeped out? “No, actually not,” he says. But would Saviage stay in a room where a murder took place? “No – I would be a little more creeped out,” he says. “Just ‘cause you can start visualizing bad thoughts.” Joe Donnelly is a 57-year-old sales executive who lives in San Marcos. When he first moved to San Diego in 1993, while looking for a place to live, he stayed at the Four Points by Sheraton hotel on Aero Drive in Kearny Mesa, near Montgomery Field. A coworker later told him someone had been killed at the hotel, but that didn’t bother him, he says. “I wasn’t overly concerned for my safety,” Donnelly says. “It’s a nice hotel, San Diego is a big city, and murders unfortunately happen in every community in America.” But when it comes to actually staying in a room in which someone has been murdered, Donnelly, like Dave Saviage, has a different perspective. “I would not knowingly stay in a room where a murder has happened,” he says. “I wouldn’t be upset if I found out after I ended up staying there, but if someone proactively told me, ‘You’re staying in a room where someone was killed,’ I would not do it. It’s someone’s life, and it’s sad to know that someone lost their life in that room.”

An Internet search found no sign of an early 1990s murder at the Four Points by Sheraton. But more than two decades later, on November 15, 2015, the hotel was the scene of a grisly murder-suicide. San Diego police say Carlos Sanchez, 43, shot and killed Delores Zoraya, 36, before turning the gun on himself. The two had lived in Las Vegas. Since then, there’s been more tragedy at the Four Points. In February 2022, a 23-year-old man was stabbed multiple times outside the hotel around 8:15 pm after dropping off a woman in the parking lot. Before he could drive off, a man ran up to him and began stabbing him. The victim walked into the hotel and someone called 911; he was rushed a nearby hospital with non-life-threatening wounds. Just weeks later, someone detonated a pipe bomb on the hotel’s second floor.