FEB 12, 2021
“Please tell Lara to check her messages. It’s urgent,” Chris Woitel, a 50-year-old computer programmer living on Guerrero Street, wrote to his niece just after 3 p.m. on Jan. 9.
LH, his sister, tried to call him back, but there was no answer.
To this day, that message – left in a tone of panic – is the last anyone has heard from Woitel, according to his friends and family.
[...]
In the days leading up to Woitel’s disappearance, family members said he was acting strange and paranoid — writing unusual posts on Facebook, obsessing over the D.C. Capitol riots, asking for money to replace a lost cell phone and talking about an escape to the mountains.
[...]
“Do me a favor and put some money in my account,” Woitel texted LH, explaining he wanted to stay with friends in the mountains. “75 bucks isn’t going to get me very far.”
Soon after, Woitel stopped responding to calls and texts. On Jan. 8, Woitel’s bank account ceased activity. His friends who owned property in the mountains told Woitel’s family they had not seen him.
Surveillance footage inside Woitel’s three-story apartment building at 65 Guerrero St. shows him enter his third-floor apartment on Jan. 8 at 8:38 p.m. But cameras never captured Woitel emerging from his apartment in the following days, according to a report by private investigator Scott Williams.
[...]
“There were no signs of Christopher and no signs of any foul play,” Williams wrote, noting that the chain lock on his front door was still engaged.
The only way Woitel could have left, Williams noted, was through the back door and the back steps. But Williams reviewed surveillance footage of the back steps, which captures movements at night.
Woitel was nowhere to be seen.
[...]
... in recent years, he fell out of steady work and lived on disability because of his depression, his family said.
Despite the troubles he faced, everyone Mission Local spoke to for this story described Woitel as a man of extreme generosity.
[...]
That generosity often extended to some of the many people living on San Francisco’s streets. After Woitel’s longtime romantic partner died roughly a decade ago, Woitel coped by “taking care of people,” LH said. “One of his big things is homeless people.”
SW, Woitel’s longtime neighbor who moved last August, said Woitel would bring food to homeless people as often as once a week. Sometimes, SW said, Woitel would let them use his shower.
[...]
Several years ago, Woitel helped a homeless man who goes by “Bood.” At some point in the last several years, Woitel invited Bood to stay at his Guerrero Street apartment to recover from a leg injury, friends and family said. The two men developed a friendship.
[...]
Over the course of their friendship, Woitel became romantically infatuated with Bood, according to Woitel’s close friend JR, who met Woitel through friends. Although Bood did not reciprocate the attraction, Woitel often allowed Bood to spend the night at his apartment. He frequently gave Bood money and paid his phone bills, Reyes said.
Friends who observed the relationship worried it was toxic. “He would waste his bank account on whatever Bood wanted,” JR said, noting that friends felt the arrangement had gone too far.
[...]
But Woitel was allured by Bood — his burly build, dominant presence, and his affinity for Satanism and the occult, JR said. JR warned Woitel to be careful: Bood could turn on him one day.
On Jan. 7, at 9:54 p.m., less than 48 hours before Woitel went missing, surveillance footage captured Bood entering Woitel’s apartment. The next day, at 5:45 a.m., the footage shows Bood leave. He did not return, according to footage reviewed by Williams, the private detective. Between Jan. 8 and Jan. 9, there is no footage of Bood entering or leaving the apartment.
But that night, the night before Woitel went missing, Woitel messaged Bood on Facebook. Bood had been using Woitel’s Facebook account to send messages to people Bood knew.
“You *advertiser censored**ing *******! DONE. THAT’S IT. ENOUGH. You are on your own,” Woitel wrote to Bood. “You are far too much trouble. Phone number? Get your own. I’m not paying for you to harass people. You are an *******. Don’t ever come here again!”
Bood did not respond. Soon after, Woitel went missing.
Three weeks later, on Jan. 29, Bood wrote on Facebook that he heard Woitel had been “jumped and robbed for his computers.” He added that Woitel was “killed” by people named “Nigel, Alonzo, lc, and Eric.”
Bood had a similar story for Williams, the private investigator.
On the morning of Feb. 2, Williams visited Bood at a homeless encampment near SAE Expression College on Shellmound Street in Emeryville. It is unclear how Williams knew Bood was in possession Woitel’s phone, but he asked Bood why he had it. Bood responded that Woitel had sold it to him for $100 when he visited Woitel on Jan. 7. (Friends and family believe Bood may have stolen the phone or Woitel lent it to him, as he had in the past).
Bood showed the detective the phone, and it was “dead and wet,” Williams wrote in his report.
[...]
He blamed the killing on “Alonzo” and someone named “William.”
“[Bood] was rambling nonsensical things ... I asked him why they would do such a thing to Christopher and he replied, ‘they robbed him for his computers.’”
Despite believing that Bood was “bad news,” JR believes that Bood would have had difficultly harming Woitel by himself given his bad leg. “He couldn’t have moved his body,” JR said, “because he could barely walk.”
[...]
The most peculiar part of the case, Williams said, is footage showing Woitel entering his apartment but none of him leaving. “That’s what makes this case so strange.”
LH, Woitel’s sister, said she met with the police on Thursday. They told her they would begin investigating Woitel’s disappearance in earnest because there were “unique circumstances that led them to believe they should start investigating,” she recalls them saying. She said police were vague on what those circumstances were.
Haben also said they would issue warrants to enter Woitel’s apartment and other “things” — which they did not specify.
[...]
HN, Woitel’s neighbor, had another theory. He often noticed Woitel try to avoid two friends that frequently visited him at his Guerrero Street apartment — men HN could only describe as “funky” and “thugs from the underworld.”
“It seemed strange he would have these friends,” Nelson said.
[...]
