SAN JOSE — As soon as Christina Bauer opened the door to her grandfather’s apartment searching for clues to his disappearance, she realized something was terribly wrong.

“I knew when we walked in that he was there,” said Bauer, who had been at the studio three times since he vanished on Feb. 5, but noticed a distinct difference this time. “I knew immediately from the smell of death.”

Then she found Stanley Jacobson Jr. — stuffed between mattresses topped with piles of laundry and a giant carnival teddy bear.

She peered under a foam egg crate pad three times before spotting a pair of decayed feet. Looking deeper she saw one side of his face and his hands, placed in a clasped slumbering position beside his head.

She didn’t know it yet, but Jacobson, 69, had been stabbed to death and the woman in the room with her — Regina Louise Butler — would soon be arrested and accused of killing him in a drunken, meth-addled state.

At the time, Bauer had gone to to the Hilltop Manor senior home on March 7 to confront the 46-year-old Butler, a convicted thief and prostitute who had been keeping company with Jacobson and was being sought by police for questioning.

Tipped by neighbors that Butler had returned to the complex, Bauer called police and pounced. With Butler in tow, Bauer entered the apartment.

As Butler poked around nearby in the little studio packed high with the piles of junk associated with a hoarder, Bauer shut the door and discreetly clicked the lock: “I thought that would give me an extra second if she tried to run.” Then Bauer rummaged through the bedding and made the startling discovery.

Butler went into “theatrics.” Bauer said, screaming his name and saying “Ahh, ahh, the love of my life is gone.”

“But she didn’t shed one tear, and then in the middle of that she got worried about what happened to a glass pipe that she’d left there,” said Bauer, 51, as she recounted the harrowing experience.

When detectives arrived they told Bauer it was now being considered a homicide, and everything clicked. She watched as Butler was cuffed and placed into a police car.

Butler — who authorities say confessed to the crime — was arraigned on a murder charge Monday in Santa Clara County Superior Court.

Bad influence

Bauer always believed Butler was involved in Jacobson’s disappearance — the woman had been chasing off friends and family since meeting him at a Denny’s restaurant on a rainy day over a year ago. She’d convinced him to give her a place to stay, “only for the night,” said Bauer.

Neighbors said the once affable man known as “The Magician” or “Mysterious Stan” for his penchant to show off magic tricks and escape acts became more and more unsocial after meeting Butler.

Michael Christian said he would bring Butler in late at night, and never introduced her. He said she’d been there more often than is allowed by Hilltop Manor bylaws for guests and was too young to be a resident. “I think he might have been trying to hide her from everyone,” he said.

Bauer knew from the get-go that she was bad news.

“I went to him and told him I’m concerned,” she said. “I said, ‘You’re not cutting your hair. You’re not taking showers. You are not doing what you need to do.’ She (Butler) was shoplifting, and without knowing it he was driving the getaway car.” The couple was even facing eviction from the senior home.

Awful stench

The first time Bauer went to to Jacobson’s apartment just weeks after he disappeared, she was buffeted by a horrible stench.

Six pieces of raw chicken had been left out on the floor and counter to rot. She believes Butler did it to mask the smell of Jacobson’s body.

Bauer said the body was so well camouflaged among the piles of junk that she isn’t surprised no one found it by sight alone. Not police, neighbors nor Bauer, who once spent 90 minutes there looking for clues as the body lay nearby.

She said arriving firefighters could smell the body but “they had to ask me to come in and point out exactly where he was.”

“If you walked into a neat, tidy apartment and in a corner was this big pile of stuff, it would stand out,” said San Jose police spokesman Sgt. Jason Dwyer. “But that wasn’t the case. I believe any reasonable person would have walked in there and not seen him.”

Jacobson had lived with a cognitive disability from a head injury at age 9. “It was a strange thing. He was a very sharp person, but he said he couldn’t read or write,” said neighbor Benjamin Ramos.

Bauer said family and friends did everything they could to get him away from Butler, but in the end he would tell them that he’s a grown man and can do what he wants.

“We tried, but she won on that one,” she said. “He thought ‘Somebody loves me,’ even if they’re crazy. It’s a woman and a single man, how do you fight against that?”

He had no family of his own and married into Bauer’s as her grandmother’s third husband 23 years ago — and Bauer had promised her she would always watch over him.

She kept her promise. Butler’s arrest was the culmination of weeks of 10-hour days spent combing homeless encampments and looking for clues. She told neighbors to call her if they saw Butler around, and that’s how she wound up there last week.

“I committed to it,” she said. “And that was the end of my commitment. I know that after he died, first my grandmother kicked his butt up in heaven, and now she’s consoling his soul.”

Contact Eric Kurhi at 408-920-5852. Follow him at Twitter.com/erickurhi.