The death of Oakland’s Mary Jesus, 21 years ago

The death of Oakland’s Mary Jesus, 21 years ago

Greedy landlords and screwed up system were behind the death of Mary Jesus

By Lynda Carson - December 13, 2025

Oakland, CA - It was around 21 years ago when Mary Jesus leaped to her death from the seventh floor roof of the Oakland Tribune Tower downtown Oakland, after she tossed down hundreds of copies of a suicide note blaming some greedy landlords for her death.

I knew Mary Jesus, when I resided across the street from her on Alice St., downtown Oakland years ago. She was the manager of an apartment building at the time, and made some extra money as a “phone sex worker.” She was always dressed in black, and wore sunglasses when I saw her taking care of the plants in front of the building she managed. At times we would take a walk together, or eat some food at a nearby Indian restaurant. I enjoyed chatting with her, and hearing what she had to say about life.

I was totally shocked and in horror when I heard that she committed suicide by leaping off of the Oakland Tribune Tower. The image of her death and what led up to it, did not rest easy in me, and it was hard to get her out of my mind. I heard about her suicide from a friend who called me up, to let me know what happened.

Time goes by so fast. It was on December 10, 2004, before a crowd of dozens of people below her, when Mary Jesus leaped to her death from the Oakland Tribune Tower. As she plunged from the Tribune Tower to her death below, she was last seen alive holding her nose as though she was jumping into a swimming pool, before she landed on the sidewalk below from seven stories above.

The horrified onlookers who screamed from below telling Mary Jesus not to jump, have probably never forgotten what they saw on that fateful day, or what they heard when she hit the sidewalk from above. Additionally, many office workers in some tall buildings across the street of the Tribune Tower could watch what was happening, and became horrified by what was unfolding before their very eyes.

Reportedly on December 10, 2004, “She entered the Tribune building about 1 p.m. and went onto the roof, unnoticed until she started throwing copies of a hand-written letter to the streets below.

The letter referred to a rent board case against the Dunsmuir Apartments on Alice Street, where Jesus was fighting a rent increase.

Although the Oakland Rent Board had ruled in her favor Sept. 1 because of improper notification, Alameda County Superior Court four weeks later ordered her to pay $1,018.77 in back rent to her landlord and vacate the residence.

Jesus had reportedly attempted suicide Tuesday — the same day the court upheld the Sept. 1 judgment — by setting herself and her apartment on fire. She was admitted to John George Psychiatric Pavilion and released Thursday afternoon.

An Oakland Tribune employee spoke to Jesus for several minutes before police arrived on the roof, and from below, worried onlookers pleaded with her to move back from the edge.

“Do you think I’ll feel it?” she asked police moments after they arrived. Officers spent about 15 minutes trying to talk her off the ledge of the building’s seventh-floor roof.

At one point Jesus dangled over the ledge, then moved back. Shortly before 2 p.m., she laid down on the 4-foot-wide ledge and officers inched toward her. She quickly sat up and said, “I know you’re going to grab me.”

Six minutes later she shoved herself off the ledge as the crowd gasped and screamed. Witnesses said she grabbed her nose and covered her mouth like she was jumping into a pool. She plunged, striking a light pole and tumbling to the ground.”

I still have a copy of the suicide note she tossed down to dozens of onlookers below before she died, including around an inch thick file or more of court documents pertaining to Mary Jesus.

The suicide note mentions four names that Mary Jesus wanted exposed. In the suicide note, Mary Jesus starts by saying, "Mark Roemer, James Lewis and Dean Miller. They are the catalyst!" Alameda County Superior Court Judge Yolanda Northridge was the only other name mentioned in the suicide note of Mary Jesus.

As it turned out, Mark F. Roemer and James L. Lewis were the landlords that owned the apartment building where Mary Jesus resided at 1515 Alice Street in Oakland. Dean .Miller was the attorney representing the landlords trying to evict her, and Judge Yolanda Northridge had ordered her eviction from the home she had loved for so many years.

Her suicide note stated:

"Mark Roemer, James Lewis and Dean Miller. They are the catalyst.

"Goodbye cruel world, and all that. Just look up the case, and you'll see why. Just listen to the August 31st 2004 Authenticated recording from rent adjustment. And everyone will say what they always say when something totally preventable wasn't prevented. `Why didn't anybody do anything.' A couple of people did, but they had no power, and those that did have power were more concerned with technicalities, than justice. Except for Yolanda Northridge, she just does this to people too poor to afford an attorney, and attorneys only take your case if you have money. It's all about money! The love of money is the root of all evil!

Mary Jesus

P.S. Just cremate me and I have no family.

At the time, this seemed like a horrific, tragic situation to me, and I wanted to talk to the people who screwed over Mary Jesus before she died.

On January 20. 2005, I reached Juanita Moore, the court clerk for Judge Yolanda Northridge, to ask how this tragedy could have come about. Both the clerk and the judge declined to comment on what had occurred in their courtroom, and how it led to the death of Mary Jesus.

Also on January 20, I contacted Dean Miller at his residence in Piedmont and he confirmed that not only was he the attorney that went after Mary Jesus, but he also mentioned that James Lewis and Mark Roemer are some longtime high school friends of his from Piedmont High, many years ago.

Before her death, Mary Jesus had resided for thirteen years at the beautiful Dunsmuir Apartments at 1515 Alice Street in downtown Oakland. The 29-unit apartment building was built in 1912. It was loaded with beautifully crafted oak trim on the doors and the windows that added a look of elegance and old world charm to the spacious building.

At the time, records showed that the Dunsmuir Apartments building may have been bought on January 16, 1998, for $1,320,000 by the landlords of Mary Jesus, listed as the Dunsmuir Apartments Limited Liability CX.

Presently, according to public records with the Secretary of State, Dunsmuir Apartments LLC (1997350100252), had an initial filing date of 12/16/1997. The status is still active, and in the name of James Lewis, 1035 Underhills Road, Oakland, CA 94610. Records show that it is a 2 bedroom home worth around $1,191,407.

Before she committed suicide, Mary Jesus told me that after buying the Dunsmuir Apartments, the greedy landlords James Lewis and Mark Roemer wanted to evict her and others in the building, so they could jack up the rents. I tried to help her out and hook her up with an attorney, but as a very poor person, she did not get the help she was looking for.

It was on October 18, 2004, that I received an e-mail from V. Vale of Re/Search Publications, asking for help to stop Mary Jesus' eviction. I immediately responded, and sent off a good-sized list of attorneys names and phone numbers, including the Eviction Defense Center. I gave instructions for Mary Jesus to take action as soon as possible to stop the eviction and to contact an attorney immediately for assistance.

I was happy to do what little I could to stop the profiteers from dumping her out onto the cold-hearted streets of Oakland. I live for moments like this.

Indeed, when V. Vale contacted me, he had no idea that I actually knew Mary Jesus, and was totally surprised that I knew a few things about her. I sent him a list of attorneys and instructions which he handed over to Mary Jesus. Vale also called some of the attorneys to see if he could line one of them up to help Mary Jesus in her time of need.

It felt good to hear back from Vale, and to receive a thank you for being there to help. I thought that I had done my part to help, and set my mind to other tasks. I did not see, I could not see, the dark future that was looming just ahead.

As it turned out, Mary Jesus stayed with V.Vale ( http://www.researchpubs.com ) the last night that she was alive.

In an email he said, “I’m known as a punk rock book publisher in some circles; and for this reason Mary Jesus called me up, out of the blue, back in 1999, wanting me to publish a book by her. She called late at night and we talked for several hours. She told me she had been a hard-core punk rocker starting at age 15 when she ran away from home, and began telling me anecdotes about the punk underground scene.

She was very intelligent, witty, charming and acerbic — absolutely full of ideas and opinions on everything wrong with society and the world. So I listened. Every couple months she would call me up, always late at night, and we'd talk for hours. She was very entertaining.

Mary Jesus continued to call me every couple months. When she first called me, she had told me that she lived in an apartment building in Oakland, and that she was the manager of the building. Her apartment was her refuge from the world and she almost always stayed at home. The only place she could normally afford to go was the public library.

We finally met in person in June 2001. The S.F. Art Institute hosted a book release party celebrating my new book, Real Conversations, featuring Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jello Biafra, and others. The event was so hectic I could only spend a couple minutes with her. She asked me to sign her book, which she had splurged on for the occasion.

At some point, her beloved apartment building was sold to investors or real estate speculators who apparently terminated Mary Jesus as manager, but I didn't find this out until last year when she started telling me her about tenancy problems.

Around August 2004, she told me she was in danger of being evicted: "My new landlords want to evict me because I've been here a long time and they think my rent is too low — they think they can get two or three times what I'm paying."

But she was intelligent, proud, and literate; and she told me she was confident she was going to win if things went to court, because she was in the right, and because she had started spending weeks at a law library learning the laws, and was determined to get a jury trial for her case. She believed in justice and her own honesty.

If I had life to live over again, I would have immediately said, "NO! You need to get a lawyer right away. There are pro bono (free) lawyers." But I just listened to Mary Jesus and silently applauded her determination to argue her own case in front of a jury and judge.

Later, after the case had" progressed to her appeal, I tried to help her find legal representation. It then became obvious that if your case has already gone to court, no free lawyer will touch you with a ten-foot pole.

When she finally called, she said, "If I'm evicted tomorrow, I have no choice but to kill myself. I have no resources, no savings, no money, and nowhere to go. I live on permanent G.A. (about $336 a month) and am classified as `totally disabled.' It's better to die on your feet than live on your knees."

I invited her to stay at my place. She said, "But I love my apartment — I've been here 13 years. It's full of all my beautiful things. I can't start over. I just can't."

Finally the day came, December 8, 2004, when Mary Jesus called late in the afternoon and said, "I'm in the loony bin. Last night I set fire to my apartment and tried to hang myself in my closet." She seemingly joked, "It's not so easy to kill yourself." But I was just on my way out, and couldn't talk to her then, and just quipped back, "At least you have a place to stay tonight." She left a phone number — the pay phone in the ward, which netted no answer the next day.

But that afternoon Mary Jesus called while I wasn't home, and talked to my wife Marian. Mary Jesus asked if it was still okay if she stayed with us. Marian said, "Yes," and Mary Jesus turned the phone over to a hospital administrator who merely asked for Marian's name and address, then handed the phone back to Mary Jesus. She apparently released Mary Jesus to her "custody" — oddly early, in retrospect, after a suicide attempt.

Mary Jesus came over and spent the night. Foolishly, I assumed she had gotten "suicide" out of her system, and had no idea that when she left for Oakland the next morning, she would throw herself off the Oakland Tribune Tower, or I wouldn't have let her leave. She left with a list of errands we had helped her plan out the night before, in order to get her life back on track: cashing a money order at the post office, putting in a change of address notice, getting a new G.A. card (all had been lost in the staged fire).

I learned another lesson: If someone threatens to commit suicide, you had better take the threat ultra-seriously, and do anything you can to make them feel 100 percent safe and secure. I wish I had told her, "Listen, whatever it takes to get you into a new apartment, we'll take care of it. Don't worry about not having money. We'll take care of it." We can always find money for what has to be done.

When somebody kills herself, especially someone smart, intelligent, sarcastic and funny, it makes you feel very disturbed. I felt I knew Mary Jesus quite well through our lengthy phone calls over six years, yet had spent almost no time in the same room with her, ever. If she hadn't been evicted, I feel she would still be alive today, living a mostly reclusive life in her beautiful apartment-refuge, and hopefully writing her manuscript.

If indeed the act of eviction killed her, then something is wrong with the social system that inadequately protects low-income persons from being evicted from apartments they've inhabited a long time. Maybe a mandatory legal defense procedure with a tenant defense lawyer must be instituted? I don't know. But there is something very wrong with this picture.”

During 2004, low-income areas below MacArthur Boulevard had cheaper rents than downtown Oakland, and the average minimal monthly rents being charged for one-bedroom units were only $650.00 a month then. But that was still way more than what Mary Jesus could afford since she became homeless, broke, and without enough money to get by.

That’s right. Mary Jesus, was permanently disabled and living on G.A. She made far less than the minimum wage. Losing her housing in the most expensive state in the nation was a life-threatening blow, and freaked her out. No money, no home, and no where to go.

With the convicted felon Trump administration being hell bent on destroying the safety net, I can only wonder how many people are considering suicide as a way out.

The Trump administration has sabotaged the Social Security Administration. The health care programs. The SNAP food assistance program is now all screwed up, and people are going hungry. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has been sabotaged, and HUD Secretary Scott Turner has betrayed the poor, elderly, veterans, and those with disabilities. HUD Secretary Turner wants to dump hundreds of thousands of people out of their permanent housing from the Continuum of Care Program. And he is just getting started in sabotaging HUD’s low-income housing assistance programs. Additionally, they are moving fast to privatize the VA Hospitals, leaving veterans needing medical assistance no where to go, in a system they cannot afford.

One can only wonder how many people will end up like Mary Jesus, after feeling totally destroyed, broke, and abused, with no where left to go.

In memory of Mary Jesus….

Lynda Carson may be reached at newzland2 [at] gmail.com


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