Saratoga News

Cover Story

Photograph courtesy of Joseph Baratta

Bob Baratta-Lorton (left) and his wife, Mary, were both teachers who wrote mathematics books for children.

Cold Case

Mary Baratta-Lorton was killed nearly 30 years ago--the case remains unsolved.

By Jason Sweeney

A young Saratoga teacher was murdered. Two bullets were fired at close range from a .38 caliber revolver into her head. No one was arrested for the crime.

It has been nearly 30 years since the tall, thin, 34-year-old brunette was murdered in San Francisco.

Mary Baratta-Lorton was a Saratoga resident at the time of her death. She had a teaching credential from UC-Berkeley, and over the course of her teaching career taught elementary school in some of the roughest parts of the Bay Area. In the 1970s, Mary and her husband, Bob Baratta-Lorton, a Stanford graduate, were idealistic educators attempting to shake things up in their field.

By the late '70s, Mary and Bob were running a nonprofit organization, called the Center For Innovation In Education, out of an office in Saratoga. Between time spent writing education books and hosting education conferences, Bob and Mary ran math workshops for teachers and children and sold their books out of their Saratoga office.

Mary's experiences teaching children from low-income homes had led her to develop a teaching method based on the writings of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget. In the years before her death, her books on teaching mathematics had gained national attention and had become financially lucrative. She spoke at education conferences across the country, telling fellow educators about her method for teaching math to children. Educators were interested in what this young teacher from Saratoga had to say.

In the latter half of the '70s, Mary's professional life was gaining momentum, but her private life was in turmoil. In a letter to her brother dated August 1978, Mary wrote, "This is a horrible time. Everything is changed. ... There have been some incidents that hurt so deeply, the scars will never completely heal over and I'm glad. I never want to forget, and I never want to remember or feel this pain again. My life, and Bob's, has been three years of living hell. ... I'm relieved it's over, but the pain is so great because we dreamed great dreams and lived those dreams for many years. ... I was almost dead. And now I am alive and remember how close I came. Praise God. I will be OK by October." According to Joseph Baratta, her brother and the last surviving member of her family, Mary began making arrangements on Aug. 25, 1978, to divorce Bob. She planned to move to Portland that fall.

The murder

Aug. 27, 1978, was a Sunday. Mary was alone that night in a rented house at 1455 28th Ave. in San Francisco. Seven teachers had been staying at the house with her that month for an education workshop in the city.

When the workshop ended, the teachers packed up and said their good-byes, but Mary stayed behind.

She planned to stay in the house alone and then catch a flight out of San Francisco International Airport the morning of Aug. 28. Bob was to drive up from their home in Saratoga and meet her at the airport. They were flying together to Richmond, British Columbia, where they were hosting an education workshop.

Mary was wearing blue running shoes, blue jogging shorts and a white blouse that Sunday night in the rented house in San Francisco.

Someone came to the door. Mary let the person inside. When she turned her back, a .38 revolver was raised and aimed. A shot was fired.

The bullet struck Mary in the back of the head. She collapsed to the hallway floor.

The shooter then walked over to her and placed the barrel of the revolver onto her right temple. The trigger was pulled once again.

According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, a next-door neighbor reported hearing two loud noises at about 10:30 p.m. that night. The noises sounded "like something falling or someone slamming a car door."

When Mary failed to show up at the airport the next morning, Bob tried calling her but got no answer, he told investigators. He then drove to the house in San Francisco. The front door was closed but unlocked. He found his wife's lifeless body on the hallway floor. He called the police at about 11 a.m.

Homicide inspectors Frank Falzon and Mike Mullane detected no signs of forced entry and no signs of a struggle. Mary's purse with all of its contents intact was found inside the home.

The inspectors concluded Mary was murdered by someone she knew and trusted.

The murder weapon was never found. The Chronicle called it a mystery slaying.

Someone killed a young teacher with a bright future. Someone got away with murder.

San Francisco--1978

The career of retired homicide inspector Frank Falzon reads like something out of a pulp fiction crime novel. In fact, actor Frank Pellegrino played Falzon in the television movie, Execution of Justice. Shoot-outs, murder investigations and navigating the politics of city hall were all part of Falzon's real-life job.

When Mary was found murdered on Aug. 28, 1978, George Moscone was the mayor of San Francisco. Dianne Feinstein, Dan White and the city's first openly gay supervisor, Harvey Milk, were on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Charles Gain was chief of the San Francisco Police Department. Joseph Freitas was the district attorney. Jim Jones, whom Moscone had earlier appointed to the San Francisco Housing Commission, had left a year before to Guyana with nearly 1,000 followers of the Peoples Temple cult that Jones had founded.

As the investigation of Mary's murder progressed, Falzon and Mullane gathered what Falzon called "strong physical evidence." They began constructing "a very strong circumstantial case."

"It wasn't mysterious at all," Falzon said in an interview last May. "Whoever came to the door blew her away."

Today, Falzon is retired from the SFPD and works as a vice president of marketing sales for a title company in the North Bay.

"I was one possessed detective," he said of his prior life. "It was paramount in my mind to solve every case that I worked on."

Falzon said that suicide was ruled out as a cause of Mary's death. "For a guy that has 22 years of homicide investigation experience, I would be shocked if it was just someone that rang her doorbell and shot her for no reason."

Two months after Mary was killed, spectacular events rocked San Francisco and made headlines across the country. On Nov. 18, 1978, Congressman Leo Ryan, NBC reporter Don Harris, NBC cameraman Robert Brown, San Francisco Examiner photographer Greg Robinson and Peoples Temple defector Patricia Parks were slain in Guyana during an investigation of the Jonestown settlement. Following the slayings, 914 members of the Peoples Temple, including Jim Jones, killed themselves in a mass suicide.

Nine days after the Jonestown massacre, two more spectacular killings would create another media storm. White, who had previously resigned from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, crawled through a window at San Francisco City Hall carrying a loaded .38 revolver and extra bullets. After Moscone finished meeting with then-Assembly speaker Willie Brown, White entered Moscone's office. White was angry Moscone had refused to reappoint him to the board of supervisors. White fired two bullets into Moscone's chest and two more bullets into his head. He then left Moscone's office, passing Feinstein in the hallway. He confronted Milk in a conference room and shot him five times.

Falzon and White were close friends. Shortly after White killed Moscone and Milk, he confessed his motives to Falzon.

Falzon participated in the investigations of both the Jonestown Massacre and the assassinations of Moscone and Milk. Falzon testified at White's trial.

Dan White's trial, made infamous by the "Twinkie Defense," resulted in White being convicted of manslaughter, not first-degree murder, which could have meant the death penalty.

The man who prosecuted Dan White was assistant district attorney Thomas Norman. The failure to convict White of first-degree murder caused widespread anger in San Francisco's gay community. Following the announcement of the verdict, the "White Night Riots" broke out on May 21, 1979. Gays and police battled in San Francisco's streets and bars.

It was in these tumultuous times that Falzon and Mullane were investigating the murder of Mary Baratta-Lorton.

Was the investigation of Mary's murder overshadowed by the more spectacular killings of the times? Did infighting and upheavals at the SFPD and City Hall compromise the investigation?

In an email, Falzon stated, "Mary's case was totally investigated with no known clues left unturned. ... Having also worked the White case and [being] active in the Jim Jones murders, I can tell you that those investigations played no part in the effort to solve Mary's murder. ... Mullane and I would have loved [to have made an arrest] based on our findings, but the DA would not support our position."

In another email, Falzon said, "We were to put together a very strong circumstantial case but never strong enough for the DA to file murder charges."

The assistant district attorney who determined that the evidence gathered by Falzon and Mullane was not strong enough for an arrest was Thomas Norman--the man who prosecuted Dan White.

Cold case

Nearly three decades after Mary's death, her case lies dormant in the files of the SFPD Homicide Detail. San Francisco homicide investigator Lt. John Hennessy said Mary's case was never closed, but that no investigator is currently assigned to it.

Her case lies dormant, but Mary has not been forgotten. Joseph Baratta, a history and political science professor, has kept notes, Mary's letters and has compiled information about his sister that he keeps in his Boston home. He hopes his sister's contributions to the field of education will be remembered. He still hopes for a break that will bring Mary's murderer to justice. He hopes someday the information he has compiled might be useful.

"Murder is the deepest injury to a civilized and law-abiding society, apart from mass murder, as in war," Baratta said. "Apart from my family and the police, nobody knows what I have had to bear."

Falzon said even after all these years, Mary remains vivid in his mind. As the murder investigation stalled and then died, he said he related to the pain the Baratta family had felt during the ordeal. He recounted how Mary's parents had hired a well-known private investigator named Hal Lipset to further investigate the case. But after the family spent thousands of dollars in fees and nearly bankrupted themselves, Lipset turned up nothing new.

Falzon said for an arrest to be made today, new evidence would have to be found. Perhaps over the years, the murderer spoke of the crime. Falzon said if someone were to come forward with new evidence or with new testimony, Mary's murderer might still be brought to justice.

"Everything Mike Mullane and I learned about Mary supported the fact that she was truly a nice, gifted person who loved children," Falzon said. "I've learned over the years that what goes around will come around."

Whether the case is ever resolved, the impact Mary made during her life is still felt today. Her influential books remain available for purchase at the Center For Innovation In Education.

Her husband, Bob Baratta-Lorton, lives with his two godsons in Saratoga, where he still runs the center the couple founded so many years ago. A domain name search on networksolutions.com, however, also reveals that a pornography-related website is registered in Bob Baratta-Lorton's name.

Baratta-Lorton, who appeared in the Saratoga News last fall after an arson fire destroyed a house he owned on Komina Avenue, declined to be interviewed for this article. But he did post a tribute to Mary on the Internet.

In the tribute, he wrote, "Mary was like all of us. Her room was a mess. She usually could not find her car keys. She fell asleep in front of the TV. She was afraid of spiders. She thought keeping track of summer workshop expenses meant writing down what you bought, not how much it cost. She wished she was better-looking and more intelligent. She loved country music and thought her feet were too big. She was human. Maybe what we can learn from Mary's life is that what little separated her from many of the rest of us shouldn't be a separation at all. Mary wasn't brave, but she took risks. When she did take risks, it was to stand up for the children. She didn't have all the answers. She searched constantly. But she would only teach what she felt was right for the children. She believed she was the spokesperson for her children. If she didn't stand up for what was right for them and protect them, who else would? Mary is gone. Who will protect the children now?"