May 21, 2005
Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writer
San Francisco Chronicle
Photo: Dr. Robert Lull. Courtesy of UCSF Department of Radiology
Police have recovered two credit cards that investigators believe were stolen when a prominent San Francisco doctor was stabbed to death in his Diamond Heights home, but they are still searching for the slain man's car, authorities said Friday.
Dr. Robert Lull, 64, was found Thursday near the front hall of his home on Gold Mine Drive, stabbed several times in an attack that investigators believe happened Wednesday night.
Lull's gray, tan or beige four-door 1995 Geo Prizm is missing, investigators said Friday, along with the keys. Police issued a statewide bulletin Friday for the car, license plate 3KOA282.
Lull's wallet was found in the house, but there was no cash in it. In addition, two of Lull's credit cards were found at 11:30 p.m. Wednesday by a 35-year-old man walking to Kate O'Brien's bar on Howard Street, police said.
He found the cards in the 500 block of Howard, just east of the bar. It is unclear whether the cards had been used since Lull was killed.
On his own, the man called the credit card companies Thursday morning to cancel them. "They said he could either turn them in, or he could cut them up, '' said homicide Inspector Holly Pera.
"He was going to cut them up, but by the time he got around to doing it, he saw the news account on the 19th and recognized the name as being on the cards,'' Pera said.
Despite the missing car and apparent credit card theft, Pera said investigators aren't convinced that robbery was the sole motive for Lull's killing. She said a robber would typically have taken more valuables from Lull's home than what the killer left with.
"This is a real whodunit,'' Pera said. "Usually, one of the first steps we take is look for the dark side of the victim. But we have been unable to find one so far. It seems he was well-liked and respected throughout his circle and family.''
Lull had been chief of nuclear medicine at San Francisco General Hospital since 1990 and served as a radiology professor at UCSF.
He was past president of the American College of Nuclear Physicians and the San Francisco Medical Society and served as editor of the medical society's journal, San Francisco Medicine, from 1997 to 1999.
Police said that Lull's home was largely undisturbed and that the doctor had been attacked near where he was found. "If there was a struggle, it happened right there,'' Pera said.
Investigators still aren't sure what to make of one odd clue left at the scene -- more than a dozen cherry pits scattered on the walkway leading to the home as well as some inside, on the living room rug.
Pera said investigators had found an open bag of cherries in the refrigerator but don't know whether Lull or someone else ate them.
It was first thought the pits could have fallen out when the doctor took out the trash, but the garbage can was never taken to the curb.
Lull's former wife, Lee Lull, said Friday that she didn't think her husband would be so untidy as to leave cherry pits all over the place.
Pera said authorities planned to run DNA tests on the cherries in hopes that could lead to a suspect. But the fruit's acidity could damage any DNA, she said.
Lee Lull said robbery was the only likely scenario, given her ex- husband's character.
"Knowing Bob, he doesn't incur too much ire in people -- he was a reasonable person," she said.
She said Lull loved music and sometimes played trombone in a group called the Las Galinas Valley Sanitary District Non-Marching Band.
"It's a funny name," she said. "They would go to all the parades and then not march.
"I just can't express enough that this is a loss," she said. "His death is a loss to anybody who knew him.''
Funeral services are pending.
E-mail Jaxon Van Derbeken at jvanderbeken@sfchronicle.com.
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