On the morning of Nov. 23, 2025, Cassidy Wyatt Allen, a 45-year-old transient and career criminal, broke into 38-year-old Jessica Sanchez Landaverde’s San Francisco apartment on Granada Avenue in the Ingleside District. The San Francisco Police Department report states that neighbors heard banging sounds coming from the dwelling starting at approximately 6:30 a.m. but no one called 911.
Nine hours later, around 3 p.m., one of Jessica’s roommates arrived at the residence and called police after unlocking the front door and hearing someone rush toward the door and lock it from the inside. The tenant returned to her car to wait for police, at which time a man wearing a Disneyland sweatshirt exited the building.
When officers arrived at the scene, they discovered Jessica deceased, lying on her back at the foot of the bed, soaked in a pool of her own blood. She had been brutally beaten, tortured, and strangled, with ligature marks on her neck and blood around her nose and mouth. There was a cord or rope fastened around her throat. Her jaw was so badly damaged that a medical examiner later concluded it had been broken as she fought for her life.
Allen, who left wearing only his left shoe (the right shoe was found at Jessica’s residence), was arrested that same night around 11 p.m. on 19th Avenue and Sloat Boulevard, where police found him lying on a sidewalk just 1.5 miles from the crime scene. Court documents detail a wound discovered on Allen’s right hand that resembled a bite mark. In court, Allen pleaded not guilty to residential burglary and a special-circumstance allegation of murder during a burglary. He remains behind bars.
From Mendocino to San Francisco, Allen’s rap sheet spans 25 years and includes arrests for robbery, vandalism, theft, and possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia. In August 2025 in San Francisco, Allen struck a number of people with his fist after they refused to give him money. He punched a 79-year-old man, pushed him off his bicycle, and pedaled off on the stolen bike. Allen was arrested and booked for robbery, battery, and elder abuse.
On Oct. 10, 2025, the public defender and the district attorney agreed to admit Allen to mental health diversion despite the fact he received a negative diversion report from a previous crime for failure to attend the program. Just 45 days later, Jessica was dead. In a tragic twist of fate, the previous crime for which Allen had been admitted to diversion also involved a 38-year-old Latina woman named Jessica — frightening similarities that don’t escape her. In an exclusive interview, Jessica Marie Condrey told the Voice a harrowing story about the night Allen broke into her San Francisco home two years prior.
‘This is how I’m going to die.’
“We lived in the Portola neighborhood on Ordway Street near McLaren Park. We have three kids — two boys, ages 16, 14, and our daughter, who is 10. My husband is a musician, and he was in Vegas at a songwriting retreat. Whenever he travels, my daughter sleeps with me; it’s like a tradition,” Jessica said by phone from her home in Georgia.
On Oct. 17, 2023, around 4 a.m., I heard footsteps. At first, I thought it was my oldest son whose bedroom was downstairs, so I dozed back to sleep. Around 5 a.m. I heard footsteps again, and I thought my son might be sick, so I got up to check on him. When I came to my bedroom door, this strange man walked past me in the dark, pulling up his pants. He didn’t see me, but I was thinking, ‘This is how I’m going to die.’ As he walked toward the kitchen, I could smell cigarette smoke, and I could see the doors to the backyard were wide open. I crept into the living room, and he closed the back doors and stayed inside.”
Jessica tiptoed back to her bedroom where her daughter slept, grateful that the box fan she slept with for white noise likely kept Allen from hearing anything. The man stayed downstairs drinking her husband’s juice, smoking cigarettes, eating their food, wandering into the garage, and taking a shower. He also went into the laundry room and changed into her son’s white hoodie.
Once safely in her bedroom, Jessica dialed 911. Fortunately, neighbors heard Allen break the back fences and had called 45 minutes ago. “The dispatcher told me to barricade my bedroom door with a dresser. I looked out the window and saw a patrol car, so I waved to get the officer’s attention, grabbed my house keys, and tossed them down so he could come in through the gate.”
“It’s your worst nightmare — you don’t think it will ever happen to you.”
— Jessica Marie Condrey
Jessica and her daughter crouched on the floor behind the dresser as she informed the 911 dispatcher that her teenage boys were in the house. That’s when she heard the stranger enter her daughter’s room, where he turned on the lights. “It’s your worst nightmare — you don’t think it will ever happen to you,” Jessica said, still noticeably shaken.
At that point, Jessica heard police officers come upstairs. The man, later identified as Cassidy Wyatt Allen, was yelling “Get out of my house!” at the officers as they arrested him. Inside her daughter’s bed, police found blood and “other fluid stains.” The shower downstairs was covered in Allen’s hair along with dirt and other debris, and there were cigarette butts and a lighter on a chair.
“I later learned from my neighbors that Allen had broken their fence and ours trying to get access to different homes. She shared a photo from her security camera of him in their backyard,” Jessica said.
Soon after, Jessica received a notice to testify against Allen. On Nov. 1, she went to San Francisco Superior Court and sat for several hours in the waiting room. “Then a person came in and said the hearing wasn’t happening and I could leave. Later that afternoon someone from the district attorney’s office called and said I didn’t need to testify at all because he was being ‘placed in a mental health program to get the help he needs.’ I didn’t know about diversion, so it sounded good to me. They also said the charges were being lowered to two misdemeanors and, since it wasn’t violent and he didn’t harm anyone, he would be released and would have a stay-away order from where we lived. They said he wasn’t from our neighborhood so we would probably never see him again. I didn’t really want him to see me in court — I didn’t know if he was on drugs or drunk or schizophrenic, so I thought maybe if he gets help, he will be O.K.”
‘I Googled him and saw he had killed another woman named Jessica’
The following year was incredibly difficult for Jessica — she suffered from severe panic attacks, crippling anxiety, heart palpitations, and insomnia. She relived that night over and over — “what if my daughter had been sleeping in her bed? What if Allen had found my sons?” And when her husband had to go out of town, she was on edge. “It was hard to be out on the street. Little things like having someone approach me triggered a panic attack. Even if one of my boys walked up it would startle me. Due to the severity of my anxiety and panic attacks, we left San Francisco and moved to Brisbane in June of 2024.”
When her husband had the opportunity to take a sabbatical, they moved back to Georgia. “We have family there and I got therapy,” Jessica said. “The last two years were what I call my refuge years.
Then she got a phone call that would send her spiraling yet again. “It was from a victims advocate for the other Jessica’s family saying he committed another crime and they wanted to get my story. I Googled him and saw he had killed another woman similar to me — same name, same age, both Hispanic, similar stories, but a drastically different ending. I felt so bad for her family. It was triggering.”
Jessica is still in therapy. “My anxiety is a lot better — I do meet with a therapist by Zoom. I did EMDR [eye movement desensitization] therapy with another therapist. It helps you process a memory and take it from a 10 to a 3. I thought talking about it would be enough, but I was still having nightmares. We process each little memory like what I felt when I saw the guy, or saw him at the back door, or when I moved the dresser. I would be exhausted, but the proof was in the pudding because after, I felt better.”
There are still triggers. “When my husband goes out of town, he lets people know to check in on me. At night I check all the doors. What helps is living in a safer place, journaling, praying, and processing.”
NEXT UP: How San Francisco’s Pretrial Diversion Program failed Cassidy Wyatt Allen’s victims and led to the death of Jessica Sanchez Landaverde.
