A Mother’s Grim Vigil Stretches Into Endless Nightmare

You will have to excuse a court reporter’s unbridled bias when it comes to Kay Brenneman.

Newspaper reporters try to develop a hard shell toward most murder victims’ families.

It’s not that we don’t care about their anguish. But we’ve heard it all before: Their son was the best son a mother ever had; the courts think only of the defendant’s rights, not the victim’s rights.

We listen politely and go on about our business. We know we cannot let the victims’ pain affect our commitment to fairness and objectivity.

With Brenneman, though, none of us bother much with objectivity. She crumbled our tough exteriors long ago.

Her 12-year-old son, Benjamin Lee Brenneman, was murdered seven years ago. His killer, Robert Jackson Thompson, who lived along the boy’s newspaper route in Anaheim, is now on Death Row.

A prison parolee, Thompson admitted kidnaping the boy, stuffing him, bound, in a trunk and leaving him in a rural field in Rancho Palos Verdes. He feebly denied the actual killing.

Kay Brenneman at the time was an Anaheim housewife and mother in her mid-30s. Unassuming, unfailingly polite, she came to court every day for Thompson’s case.

She was always surrounded by friends. Yet she always seemed so vulnerable, so overwhelmed by the system.

Crime victims always suffer. But consider Brenneman’s fate:

Her daughter, Judy, 11 at the time and very close to Benjamin, has been in and out of therapy since his murder. Brenneman is trying to save money for more therapy for the girl.

Brenneman, who became addicted to prescription drugs during the trial, ended up hospitalized for several weeks. She later wound up in therapy herself.

A year after the trial, her marriage fell apart.

“At first, a tragedy like this brings you closer together,” Brenneman said. “But finally, stress takes over and pulls you apart.”

Brenneman then had to join the work force as a single mother. She took college business courses to become an office manager. But the pay was never enough to meet her bills. She had to move three times because of rent increases.

She now has a pest-control license and is doing better. But illnesses have forced her to miss a lot of work.

She is no longer the timid housewife. She’s a leader in various victim-rights groups and has lobbied in Sacramento for judicial changes. She has also gained strength through her church work.

But it’s not enough.

When Benjamin’s class graduated from Loara High School last year, and she attended the commencement. Some students sang “We’ve Only Just Begun,” and she couldn’t stop the tears.

And always, there is Thompson’s appeal.

His hearing before the state Supreme Court was June 15, 1987. Since then, Brenneman has called the court clerk’s office daily--Monday through Friday for the past 12 months--to learn word about the court’s decision.

She knows that even if he is not granted a new trial, she faces some five more years of federal appeals.

She believes strongly that Thompson should suffer the death penalty. But an even greater emotion is involved.

“The day he dies, that’s when I know there won’t be any more hearings, or appeals, or court appearances,” she says. “That’s when my daughter and I can stop worrying about what’s next in his case.”

Whatever the Supreme Court’s news, she knows she will end up crying that day, for Benjamin.

And a few hard-shelled reporters will shed a tear that day too, for Kay Brenneman.