Police say a 44-year-old resident beat his neighbor to death outside the building where both were living.
OAKLAND, Calif. — A 44-year-old Oakland man has been charged with murder after police said he beat a woman to death outside a residential hotel on San Pablo Avenue on Feb. 2, then returned to his room in the same building, where officers arrested him.
Authorities identified the defendant as Jeffrey McMaster Jr. and the victim as Leslie Marshall, 49. Investigators say the attack happened outside the Twin Peaks Hotel, a residential property in the 2300 block of San Pablo Avenue, and that surveillance video captured the assault. The case has drawn attention not only because of the violence described by police, but because McMaster was already on probation in an earlier Alameda County case when Marshall was killed. Court records and state registry information also show a longer history of violent offenses, including a prior conviction for assault with intent to commit rape.
Oakland police said officers responded at about 11 a.m. Feb. 2 to a report of an assault in the San Pablo Avenue area in the city’s Hoover-Foster neighborhood. When they arrived, officers found Marshall suffering from major head trauma. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Investigators later said McMaster, who lived in the same building, was taken into custody that day. According to police accounts reported by local media, investigators believe Marshall was attacked outside the hotel and that her body was found in a backyard area of the property. Authorities have said the beating was carried out with McMaster’s hands and feet. Police have not publicly described any weapon. They also have not publicly laid out what contact, if any, took place between Marshall and McMaster in the minutes before the attack. Officers later found McMaster in his room, according to reports citing investigators, and he was arrested without a public account of any standoff or chase.
Prosecutors charged McMaster with murder, and police have said he allegedly admitted beating Marshall. Even with those statements, several basic questions remain unanswered. Investigators have not publicly identified a motive. They have not said whether the two had a known dispute, whether drugs or alcohol are believed to have played a role, or whether witnesses saw the full attack beyond what security cameras may have recorded. Police initially gave the victim’s age as 47 in one statement, but later reporting identified Marshall as 49. That difference has not been publicly explained. What is clearer is the condition officers described when they reached the scene: Marshall had suffered severe injuries to her head, and police moved quickly to arrest a suspect who was still inside the property. The Alameda County jail roster later showed McMaster being held at Santa Rita Jail without bail while the case moved toward arraignment.
The homicide has also renewed focus on McMaster’s record. State registry information shows he was convicted in 2009 of assault with intent to commit rape in connection with a 2008 attack and later served a prison sentence before his release in 2013. Records reported by Bay Area media described that earlier case in stark terms, saying McMaster told police after the attack, “I am not fit for society,” and, “I keep doing s— like this.” State sex offender registry information available to the public has also listed risk scores meant to estimate the chance of sexual or violent reoffense. In addition to the older sex-crime case, McMaster was charged in 2023 with attacking a roommate at a residential care home in San Lorenzo, according to court records cited in local reporting. In that case, the victim said he suffered a fractured eye socket. Reporting on the same matter said McMaster later was accused while in jail of attacking a cellmate by biting his ear, stabbing him in the neck with a pencil and trying to suffocate him with a plastic bag. Those allegations add to the picture prosecutors are likely to face as the murder case moves forward, though each incident has its own record and procedural history.
The most immediate legal backdrop is that McMaster was not coming into this case with no active court supervision. In 2024, he pleaded no contest in an elder abuse case and was placed on probation, with that term set to run until July 2026, according to local court reporting. A defense lawyer in that earlier case reportedly argued that McMaster had mental health problems. Police and prosecutors have not publicly said whether mental health concerns will play any formal role in the murder case, whether competency issues have been raised, or whether the probation case could lead to separate violation proceedings on top of the homicide prosecution. Those questions often become clearer only after arraignment and later hearings, when prosecutors file fuller charging documents and defense lawyers begin making requests in court. For now, the known procedural step is the murder charge itself, the no-bail custody status and the expected arraignment in Alameda County court. From there, the next stages are likely to include a plea, scheduling decisions, disclosure of evidence and a more detailed record of what investigators say the surveillance video shows.
For people around the San Pablo Avenue corridor, the case landed at the intersection of daily life and a sudden burst of violence. The Twin Peaks Hotel is part of a stretch of Oakland where long-term residential buildings, traffic, storefronts and service providers sit close together. That made the allegation that a resident was beaten to death outside the building especially jarring. The surveillance detail also gives the case a harsh, public feel: investigators say the attack was not hidden, but captured on camera. In prior reporting on the 2008 case, the language attributed to McMaster stood out because it appeared to describe a man aware of his own repeated violence. Police have not said anything similar about the Feb. 2 killing beyond the allegation that he confessed to the beating. Marshall, by contrast, has largely appeared in public accounts through the bare facts of her death: her name, her age and the place where she was found. As the case proceeds, family members, neighbors or prosecutors may provide a fuller account of who she was and how her death has affected those around her.
The case now stands at the charging stage, with McMaster accused of murder in Marshall’s death and held without bail. The next major milestone is the court process in Alameda County, where arraignment and later hearings are expected to shape what evidence becomes public and when.