When S&M goes awry, is it murder?

[+ glutes]

(07-19) 13:53 PDT SAN FRANCISCO SF Chronicle-- Police have arrested a San Francisco man in connection with the death of a neighborhood activist during what investigators concluded was a sadomasochistic bondage session that went awry, authorities said today.

 

Terry D. Frazier, 40, was arrested Wednesday in the July 11 death of Joe Konopka, 65. Police found Konopka's body at his home on the 500 block of Ashbury Street in the Upper Haight after someone called authorities from the address. He was bound and his face was covered with plastic.

 

Konopka once presided over monthly meetings of a now-defunct neighborhood watch group known as RAD, formerly Residents Against Druggies, whose members crusaded against street-level drug dealers.

 

"We knew when we started it we were putting our butts on the line," Konopka, who had lived in the Haight since the late 1970s, told The Chronicle in 1993. "But we're in danger of losing the neighborhood, and we refuse to leave. We refuse to give up the neighborhood."

 

Konopka also ran twice for city supervisor, then faded away from neighborhood activism.

 

In recent years, police said, Konopka engaged in sex and bondage sessions, always on Wednesday evenings while his wife, a school administrator, attended San Mateo Union High School District board meetings.

 

Investigators believe Konopka was killed during one such session. Officers arrested Frazier at Sixth and Market streets Wednesday afternoon without incident, police said.

 

Konopka came to the city in 1976 from the East Coast, his wife said, and recently retired from a career in the food business, which included working as a chef and managing restaurants and banquets.

[Kevin Slater]

If a jury determines that the death was accidental, it would be manslaughter but not homicide. Homicide (what most people think of when they say 'murder') requires an intent to kill. A death like this, even if resulting from gross negligence (but without the specific intent to kill), is manslaughter, a lesser offense.

 

Kevin Slater