Previous: By No Means Ask Alice
2021 rolls by w/out much news on the girls’ goings-on.
We do know that, after the protest, at least some have lost their housing— their landlords have balked at the thought of renting to ppl who got one-or-more SWAT team(s) called on them.
We do know that Ziz’s parents have been doxxed, & the girls have been receiving continuous death threats from ppl who (being, presumably, computer whizzes) have tracked down their legal names, the names & addresses of their family members, their phone numbers, etc.
They have also— as mentioned in pt. 30– been fired from their jobs, which do not wish to be associated w/ “cult members”.
In early 2022, Gwen’s houseboat breaks down.
The girls abandon it in Pillar Point Harbor, & some (including Somni) end up homeless.
Luckily, Gwen has struck upon the idea of “stealth RVs”: white box trucks which they are able to park anywhere, thanks to an ingenious mechanism— that is to say, thanks to holes which they have cut in the cab floors, & thru which they can discreetly wriggle in & out.
***
It’s spring of 2022 when we next catch sight of them— or rather, catch sight of an absence of one of them: Gwen fails to show up for a hearing on the protest case— which has, indeed, been dragging on since late 2019.
The judge issues a bench warrant for her arrest, in response to which Gwen’s attorney— some months later— asks for a stay in the case. His client, he reports, may have died by suicide.
That night, the Coast Guard receives a frantic call from Ziz’s sister: Ziz has fallen overboard from her boat into the frigid bay waters. A search party deploys in force, but there is no sign of her. Two weeks later, an obit (using her deadname) runs in Ziz’s hometown paper: “Loving adventure, friends and family, music, blueberries, biking, computer games and animals, you are missed.”
***
Somni & Emma, at this point, have left San Francisco, & have parked their stealth RVs in Vallejo: on the sprawling, “junkyard”-like property of a retired dockworker named Curtis Lind. Gwen & Ziz had made Lind’s acquaintance a few years prior, & had been impressed by his plan to acquire the property, along w/ some RVs, & rent out both to ppl unable to afford San Fran’s sky-high rent rates. In exchange for lowered rent, the 80-year-old Lind had planned to ask tenants for help around his property.
It is at this point in our story that we fall into what will be the first of 2 black boxes: that is, we know what goes into the scene we are about to describe, & we know what comes out— but we don’t know what goes on in between.
What goes in is Somni & Emma living on Lind’s land. What comes out is Emma dead, & both Lind & Somni gravely injured. As for what happens in the middle— we just don’t know: it is a black box.
The news reports will disagree: they do know what happens in the middle— and spoiler: it does not look good for Somni or Emma. We used to agree w/ the news reports: we used to agree that Ziz & her friends were, in all likelihood, a crazy cult. Bloodshed, from this perspective, seemed downright inevitable— almost required!
The trouble is that, after writing pts. 1-30 of Strange New Vegan Death Cult Murders, we no longer believe that these girls are crazy or cult members. We would, in fact, like to apologize profusely to them for having ever believed such nonsense.
Our disbelief of these “cult” accusations does not necessarily mean that Somni & Emma are innocent in the scene we are abt to describe! It rather means that, if they are guilty, the scene becomes that much more difficult to wrap our heads & our hearts around.
We have no trouble admitting that, in the course of this investigation, we've grown awfully attached to these girls— which is saying something, given that, a few short weeks ago, we had them pinned for crazy cultists!
W/ all that said, we will be presenting 2 scenarios which may have happened in order to lead from Somni & Emma living peacefully in their stealth RVs, to Emma being dead, & Somni & Lind being gravely injured. We’ve flipped a coin to decide which we will present first. Up first is the scenario which looks very bad indeed for our girls.
***
In Vallejo, our girls have not been paying rent to Lind under the COVID moratorium. The moratorium has ended, & they have continued to not pay rent. Lind has finally decided to evict them, & has won a $60,000 lawsuit against them.
The girls & their friends respond to this by throwing rocks at Lind’s trailer; &— in Somni’s case— by meaningfully showing Lind a long knife.
Early on the morning of November 13th— two days before the eviction is set to take place— a friend of the girls— a young Rationalist named Suri Dao— lures Lind out to Emma’s RV, saying that they are having water issues. No sooner does Lind arrive than he is jumped by “multiple” people, who hit him on the head so hard that he blacks out.
When he comes to, a katana is sticking out of his stomach; one of his eyes has been impaled; skin on his face is sliced off; & there are knife wounds to the back of his neck, as if someone had tried to decapitate him.
He shoots wildly w/ a gun that he happens to have on hand— killing Emma & injuring Somni.
Blood “squirting” out of him, Lind stumbles to the trailer of one Patrick McMillan, who calls 911. Patrick will later speak to the press: “I guess,” he will say, “they figured if they killed him, they couldn’t be evicted.”
EMTs arrive; Lind & Somni are rushed to the hospital- along w/ a mysterious blonde who had been staying w/ the girls, & who appears to be having a medical emergency.
Patrick & a few others will then explore the girls’ abandoned RVs, in which they will find lots of expensive electronics, several solar panels, & giant containers of lye: big enough to dissolve a body in.
This is esp. baffling & sinister— according to news reports— bc Lind had, initially, been on good terms w/ the girls. He’d been the type of man to keep ducks on his houseboat, & to spend his retirement thinking of new ways to help the homeless. He’d even taken a few of the girls’ friends to buy their first bras at WalMart.
***
😮💨 Scenario #2 comes to us via tumblr user @aflowerbynoothername— who is, seemingly, a Rationalist ally of Emma’s.
@AFBNON will say that, au contraire, Lind has not been on good terms w/ the girls. He has been openly transphobic— stating that they are “men posing as women”. He has— after learning they are “in a cult”— spread this rumor to other tenants, effectively ending the “good terms” which Somni & Emma had previously enjoyed w/ their neighbors.
Lind & his “best friend” Patrick McMillan have been harassing Somni & Emma for months: slipping threatening notes under their doors; saying that they are willing to escalate to physical violence; & otherwise trying to intimidate the girls. In this scenario, Lind buys his gun specifically as a threat to them.
At one point, a tenant attacks one of Emma’s friends, tackling her to the ground & punching her head repeatedly. Tho this is “clearly unprovoked”, Lind declines to evict the tenant.
In the weeks leading up to Emma’s death, he has steadily escalated his hostility, & “Emma and her friends [fear] that he [is] a threat to their lives.”
The girls, btw, are not paying rent in @AFBNON’s version either, but this is bc they a) have been fired from their jobs, and b) are still embroiled in legal proceedings from the protest. They've prioritized paying their lawyers, having decided they would rather be homeless than in prison.
Through all of this, they have continued to receive death threats from the Rationalists, one of which @AFBNON includes:
These indefatigable Rationalists have tried (& failed) to blackmail the girls; they have threatened to SWAT Emma (again), & even to bomb a Rationalist meetup so that they can blame it on Emma. @AFBNON calls this last threat “credible”.
When one of Emma’s friends flees an abusive relationship, the Rationalists work “in tandem” w/ the abusive partner to find her, & monger fears that “the cult” is behind her ~mysterious~ disappearance. They threaten to tell police that Emma, w/ “cult-member” Somni, has murdered her own friend.
On Nov. 12th, Emma & Somni stay up late, frantically packing to leave Lind’s lot. McMillan will eventually tell the press that it was on this night when rocks were thrown at Lind’s trailer. He will say that he called 911; then he will change his story: it is now Lind who has called 911.
@AFBNON claims to have obtained the record of “calls for [police] service” from that night, & to have discovered that no one in Lind’s area called 911.
According to @AFBNON, Emma & Somni had planned to sue Lind— presumably, to counter his $60,000 suit against them. Lind discovered this, & determined to kill them— perhaps believing that, if they were to die on his lot, he would gain possession of their expensive electronics & solar panels, & could sell these to pay off his debts.
***
On the morning of Nov. 13th, Lind takes his gun & walks to Emma’s RV, where he finds her at her desk. She has just finished a bowl of cereal. He shoots her thru her the heart & lung. From the angle of the wounds, @AFBNON says, it’s possible Emma was already on the ground when Lind fired. Blood fills Emma’s lungs; “she [dies] within twenty seconds, violently coughing up chunks of… lung tissue onto her face and hair, in a futile attempt to clear her airways.”
Somni, hearing the shots, runs out of her RV, perhaps w/ a katana & potentially w/ a kitchen knife. It is at this point that she stabs Lind thru the stomach & eye, lacerates his face, & cuts up the back of his neck (in no particular order).
Note: we have learned of Lind’s injuries from news reports, & are unclear whether these news reports have gathered their info from hospital records, or from the perhaps dubious testimony of Patrick. The only injury we can confirm is to Lind’s eye:
Lind shoots Somni five times, thru the neck & stomach.
“One of Emma’s friends”— perhaps the mysterious blonde, whose name is Julia Dawson— is asleep when she hears the gunshots.
She rushes outside, but hides when she sees “Lind staggering about, still brandishing his gun.” Once Lind leaves to seek out Patrick*, she goes back inside to find Emma & Somni lying in pools of blood.
*Who @AFBNON shocks us by mentioning is ex-CIA. We can neither confirm or deny.
Somebody, at this point— maybe Suri Dao, maybe Julia?— calls an ambulance.
Somni isn’t breathing. Julia performs CPR on her; Somni comes to & says that she can’t feel her legs. Somni will “stop breathing multiple times that morning”. @AFBNON says that they “think [they] heard that her heart stopped at least once.”
Julia then turns to Emma— who she’d assumed had gotten shot in the head (due to the bits of lung in Emma’s hair.) Finding no head wound, she again attempts CPR, to no avail. At one pt., she thinks she can hear Emma’s heart beating, but this is just the blood rushing in her own ears. She will crack Emma’s ribcage she is trying so hard.
The EMTs arrive. Julia carries Emma to them, explaining that there is another victim whom she has to go back for, whom someone has to keep breathing. The cops, who have arrived w/ the EMTs, threaten to shoot Julia, & tell her to “get on the ground, don’t move, put your hands up”. They cuff her, & “dawdle” over saving Somni. The EMTs announce that Emma is dead, & Julia “[howls] like a wounded animal”. She then appears to have her own health emergency (unsurprisingly!), & is rushed to the hospital along w/ Lind & Somni. She will later say that, in the hospital, she cannot get the taste of Emma’s blood out of her mouth. She keeps coughing; she thinks that some of the blood has gotten into her lungs.
@AFBNON finishes by saying: “Emma was her home. She said she will never be ok again.”
RIP EMMA 😭😭😭😭