SR man wanted in mother's slaying jailed

A Santa Rosa man suspected in the fatal stabbing of his mother last month is in custody at the Sonoma County Jail after his arrest in San Francisco, where he was detained for trying to walk out of a Fisherman's Wharf restaurant without paying, police said.

Christopher Anthony Lavis, 41, had avoided apprehension for more than a week after being identified as a suspect in the stabbing death of Connie LaSalle, 63. The discovery of her abandoned car in San Francisco suggested he might be in the city.

Friday afternoon, in the thick of busy Fleet Week, Lavis tried to leave a Jefferson Street eatery without paying for his meal, Santa Rosa Police Sgt. Lisa Banayat said.

He was detained, apparently by restaurant personnel. San Francisco police were called and soon discovered Lavis was wanted in Sonoma County on suspicion of murder, police said.

Santa Rosa detectives brought him to the Sonoma County Jail, where he is being held without bail, Banayat said.

It was unclear where Lavis had been staying or what he had been doing, she said. "We don't know how he's been surviving," Banayat said.

LaSalle's body was found wrapped in blankets in her Stony Point Road condominium on Sept. 27, two weeks after friends and neighbors first began to worry because they couldn't reach her by phone and hadn't seen her around the condominium complex.

She'd been stabbed multiple times, police said.

LaSalle retired three years ago from her job as an operations specialist at Exchange Bank.

Friends and family said she'd supported her son, an unemployed computer technician, through years of his up-and-down battles with drug addiction but had recently told him he no longer was welcome in her home.

-- Jeremy Hay and Mary Callahan