A few days after Kristen was reported missing, and in the midst of the media frenzy that surrounded her disappearance, the local ABC-TV affiliate (KGO) received an anonymous phone call.
The caller was male. He said that Kristen had been riding in the back seat of a car with two women, and she had gotten into a heated argument with them.
The argument got increasingly violent, and Kristen was killed by these two women in the vicinity of Market and Castro Street. The caller added that the women proceeded to drive north over the Golden Gate Bridge about an hours drive to Pt. Reyes, where they placed Kristen's body under a wooden bridge. Finally, the caller said that one of the women was a supervisor at the main YMCA branch located on the Embarcadero.
The caller then hung up.
Officer Mahanay of the Oakland Police went to the YMCA and was able to locate the two women implicated by the caller. After questioning, however, it was determined that these two women were completely innocent and had nothing to do with Kristen's disappearance.
Mahanay asked the women, "Who on earth would want to set you up like this?"
The women told Mahanay that a man named Jon Onuma had been trying to get them in trouble, so they felt that he should be questioned. The police determined that Onuma was Asian, 38 years old, 5'3" tall, and 130lbs, with long hair
down his back. They also uncovered his violent track record of abusing women both emotionally and physically.
So they find Onuma and he at first denies making the phone call to KGO. But after further questioning, Onuma admits that he was the caller.
"Yeah, it was me," he admits, but I just made the story up. I don't like those gals at the YMCA and wanted to cause them some trouble."
He denies having ever met Kristen and swears he had nothing to do with her other than making that phone call.
Personally, I couldn't believe that people would actually do stuff like that but Mahanay once told me that it happens more than he cares to admit. "Some people are filled with so much hate that this is nothing to them", Mahanay told me.
Although Jon Onuma's decision to make his phone call was stupid and reprehensible, he did not break any law by doing so, and after questioning he was released.
When I first arrived in San Francisco, one of the first things I did was request a meeting to meet Officer Mahanay and let him get a chance to know me first hand.
The meeting was scheduled for the following Monday, and I drove over to Oakland to meet the person in charge of the investigation into the disappearance of Bob and Debbie's beautiful young daughter.
