The tragic story of an apparent murder-suicide in San Francisco’s Westwood Park neighborhood earlier this week gained some details on Thursday, and we now know that the perpetrator of the murders appears to have been the mother.
A string of failed businesses, a home that was forced into a foreclosure sale, and mounting debt appear to have been factors leading 53-year-old Paula Truong to end the lives of her children and husband, before taking her own life. That is the implication as details emerge about the deaths of 57-year-old Thomas “TR” Ocheltree, and daughters Alexandra and Mackenzie Ocheltree.
The girls were 9 and 12 years old, according to police. An Instagram account linked to Thomas Ocheltree shows a photo of an infant from August 2013.
As the Chronicle reports, Truong, who sometimes went by her husband’s last name, immigrated from Vietnam and the couple were married in 2006. Prior to moving to Westwood Park and having children, the couple appears to have owned a building on 24th Street in the Mission, living in an apartment upstairs and leasing the ground-floor restaurant space to Wise Sons Deli — as Wise Sons’ Evan Bloom tells the SF Standard.
In recent years, a coffeeshop business that was launched by Truong, Orbit Coffee, specializing in Vietnamese iced coffee, had shuttered all of its locations. And a deli/convenience store near the couple’s home on Monterey Boulevard, which they bought in 2020 and transformed into a high-end liquor and wine store, turned out to be a bad bet and closed in 2023.
As the former owner of the deli, Almir Zalihic, tells the Standard, “They just raised the prices and scared away all the locals.”
A tax accountant who had worked for Truong for 15 years — before she allegedly stopped paying his invoices — describes her to the Standard as a “very driven and accomplished entrepreneur.”
But debts continued to pile up. By 2019, Truong had taken out loans totaling more than $2.7 million, including $500,000 in loans from private individuals.
By late 2024, their home of 11 years at 930 Monterey Boulevard was being foreclosed upon — leading to what appeared to be a sale on Zillow in November 2024 for $2.05 million.
As the Chronicle reports, that forecloure came after Truong and Ocheltree took out a $2.24 million second mortgage on the home in March 2022, but then defaulted. The home is currently owned by a financial company who bought it at public auction, and must have been leasing it back to the couple.
Truong also had a court judgment against her in April of this year, relating to credit card debt, and was ordered to pay $18,000.
The person who reportedly made the gruesome discovery at the Monterey Boulevard home on Wednesday was Thomas Ocheltree’s brother, Robert Ocheltree of Danville. He told police that he had not heard from his brother for six days before he showed up at the home on Monday, expressing concern. As the Chronicle reported Friday, he told police that Truong answered the door, stepping outside and not inviting him in, and told him that Thomas was coming back from a golfing trip in Monterey and had lost his phone.
The brother also told police that he received a worrying text message from Truong a day later, on Tuesday, asking for help with Thomas. “He is not himself, and the girls and I are scared,” she allegedly texed.
When Robert Ocheltree again could not reach the family, he returned on Wednesday and broke into the house, finding his brother and nieces dead in their beds, and Truong hanged in the garage. Ocheltree was reportedly found with blood around his head, and he had noticeable swelling in his faces — causes of death for him and the children have not been released and may still be under investigation.
One of the girls reportedly had pink foam coming out of her mouth.
Neighbors noted that the garbage and recycling bins belonging to the home were brought out to the curb but never brought back in, as they typically would have been on Monday, per the Standard.
The timeline suggests that the husband and children could have been killed days before Truong took her own life, though investigators have not provided any further details.
No neighbors or friends have suggested that anything abnormal was going on with the family, though one neighbor, Belinda Hanart, tells the Standard that there appeared to be less activity at the home in recent months. “We were wondering if they put the house for sale or something, because we couldn’t see as much movement as before,” Hanart said.
As Bloom, who also lives in the neighborhood, tells the Standard, “They were a completely warm, normal family from what I could see.”
Ocheltree and Truong appear to have also owned an auto-repair business in West Oakland, Zentrum Motors, which remains open. At one point, the ownership of their home had been transferred to this business.
A relative of Ocheltree gave a statement to ABC 7, saying, “We are devastated. Thomas Ocheltree and his beautiful daughters are the real victims here. They played no part in this tragedy.”
Previously: Four Found Dead In San Francisco Home, Including Children, In Possible Murder-Suicide