|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
A Pleasanton man who reportedly turned himself into police and confessed to matricide last week has now been formally charged with first-degree murder and other allegations for the brutal stabbing death of his mother, who was a longtime and respected volunteer with seniors in town.
Marjory Tilley was remembered as a devoted senior services provider and a quiet woman of faith by people who worked and volunteered alongside her – but those friends also told the Weekly they knew very little about her home life and had never met her son.
“I was totally shocked,” Lorie Rohloff said on Tuesday. “Overall she was a great volunteer and her faith carried her through life … She didn’t want to share much, she was private. I can respect that.”
“She was wonderful … she will be missed,” Rohloff added.
“We are all just having such a hard time with this,” said Lori O’Sullivan, who also worked with Marjory Tilley at the now-defunct Senior Support Services of the Tri-Valley.
While difficult questions continue to linger for the still-reeling community around the Tilleys, an initial police report now made public in court records begins to shed more light on what transpired between son and mother in the house they shared a block from Amador Valley Community Park.
Malcolm Ian Tilley, 31, told Pleasanton police he had a fractious and argumentative relationship with his mom for pretty much his whole life and “he had enough” of her constant berating that afternoon, according to a probable cause declaration written by Officer Jonathan Chin.
Police found the body of 71-year-old Marjory Tilley — whose legal last name was Methvintilley — in a pool of blood with countless stab wounds in the family house on Alvarado Street in the late afternoon on April 1.
Malcolm Tilley, who told investigators he made the 1.5-mile walk to the police station to turn himself in about two hours after the murder, was arrested in the Pleasanton Police Department lobby and has remained in custody at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin with a no-bail hold since.
The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office has charged Malcolm Tilley with murder and four special allegations or enhancements related to causing great bodily harm and use of deadly weapons in the attack.
He was arraigned on April 3 and was scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday (April 9) for entry-of-plea. His case has been referred to the public defender’s office for representation, but an attorney has not been assigned to him yet, according to court records.
Little information is available about Malcolm Tilley, who has no apparent public social media accounts under his name and no occupation listed under his inmate record online. He graduated from Pleasanton’s continuation Village High School in 2011, according to Weekly archives.
Marjory Tilley, on the other hand, was well-recognized around the Pleasanton Senior Center and in the senior service provider community for three decades, as well as at her local church. Malcolm was her only child, and her husband died some years ago, as did her mother who lived in a senior care facility in Pleasanton, according to friends.
“She was a good volunteer. Came into Senior Support when she was pregnant … That’s how long she was with us,” said Rohloff, who had been volunteer coordinator with the former nonprofit that operated out of the city’s Senior Center.
Marjory Tilley held a variety of roles with Senior Support in volunteer and staff capacity until the organization dissolved amid financial and leadership uncertainty in 2022. She stayed on with its successor, CityServe of the Tri-Valley, as senior services care coordinator until her tenure ended in late February.
“We were all very, very shocked to hear the disturbing news about Marjory,” CityServe CEO Christine Beitsch-Bahmani told the Weekly on Tuesday. “Although Marjory was recently not a part of our staff anymore — she had a team that was used to her daily musings and connection to the cause.”
“Marjory Tilley made a lasting imprint in the Tri-Valley through her quiet strength and deep dedication to serving seniors. We’ll miss her poise, her PG Tips tea, and the kindness she brought to clients every day,” Beitsch-Bahmani added.
O’Sullivan, who worked with Marjory Tilley at Senior Support as registry administrator, remembered her friend’s “kind, gracious way”.
“Such a graceful woman, a woman of faith, quiet, never raised her voice, did her job,” O’Sullivan said. “She was a gentle lady … just a lady, very elegant.”
Some friends from the Senior Support days who still get together “did a tribute to her last Friday because everybody knew her”, according to Rohloff. Her former CityServe colleagues honored Marjory Tilley’s memory Monday by sharing some of her favorite pastry, Beitsch-Bahmani said.
These former co-workers and friends also seldom, if ever, recalled Marjory Tilley talking about her son, describing her as a very private person when it came to her family life.
“I never saw him,” Rohloff said.
The family’s house on the 4000 block of Alvarado Street, just off Santa Rita Road near Alisal Elementary School, sat still on Tuesday afternoon with a delivery package outside sitting untouched on the front porch – a far cry from the caution tape and police vehicles that surrounded the home one week earlier and foreshadowed the gruesome scene authorities found inside.
Malcolm Tilley walked into the police station on Bernal Avenue at around 4:45 p.m. April 1 and told a police cadet and records clerk in the lobby that he killed his mother two hours earlier, according to Chin’s declaration to the court.
Sworn officers quickly arrived, detained the man and interviewed him while colleagues responded to the Tilley house, according to Chin.
“He was not happy that she constantly degraded his masculinity, the way he looks and his worthiness to exist,” the officer wrote. “Tilley became angry to the point stating his relationship was not mother and son and refused to refer to Marjory as his mother, only referring to Marjory as ‘her’ or ‘she’.”
Malcolm Tilley told police he walked to the Safeway on Santa Rita Road to buy groceries after lunchtime that afternoon.
“He returned home and Marjory immediately began to berate Tilley as he returned and began to put away the groceries in the kitchen,” Chin wrote. “Tilley said she continued to berate him without stopping. He said he had enough and retrieved two knives from a knife block to his left next to the sink.”
Malcolm Tilley said he stabbed his mother in the neck countless times, “until the blade of the red knife he was using broke at the handle” … and then went back for a second knife and continued the assault, according to the officer. “He stated he killed Marjory ‘quickly’ and ‘humanely’.”
After he stopped and his mother lay lifeless, Malcolm Tilley said he vomited in the kitchen sink, took a shower and came back out, according to Chin. “He said he contemplated cleaning the scene but decided that would make his actions look suspicious. So, he decided to walk to Pleasanton PD to self-surrender.”
Officers found Marjory Tilley’s lifeless body in a pool of blood upon searching the house, according to Chin.
Lt. Nicholas Albert said in PPD’s press release last week, “According to department records, there are no prior incidents at the residence.” The investigation into the homicide remains active and ongoing.
Dublin Planning Commission gives final OK for Sunflower Hill’s new affordable housing project December 24, 2025 8:40 am
My son sent me a link about a killing near where he lives in Santa Cruz County. The victim was Colter White, who apparently made a short movie. Next to the pic of Colter White was a blank pic — no face shown — of a “Malcolm Tilley, Composer.” Just a strange coincidence? https://www.imdb.com/name/nm15372133/?ref_=tt_rvi_i_2