Will of a Widow : Since the 1985 Killing of Her Police-Officer Husband, Norma Williams Has Proved She Is Indeed a Survivor

When Norma Williams heard last month that a fearsome collision between two black-and-white police cars had killed three Los Angeles officers and widowed a young wife, the shock and sadness she had felt Oct. 31, 1985, washed over her once again.

It was on that night three years ago that her husband of 17 years, Los Angeles Police Detective Thomas C. Williams, was gunned down. And “each time we lose an officer . . . it brings it all back again,” she said.

This was no ordinary police shooting. Williams, 42, was killed at his son’s Canoga Park school by a career criminal who fired 17 shots with an automatic pistol. The assassination was in retaliation for routine testimony Williams gave against his killer, Daniel S. Jenkins, in a robbery case that day in court.

In the three years since, Norma Williams has shown that she, too, is anything but ordinary.

The 44-year-old Canoga Park woman has helped her young son Ryan recover from the trauma of seeing his father die, and she has become active in the Police Department’s support group for officers’ survivors. She has taken an intense interest in the courtroom proceedings that have so far convicted two of the five accused in the assassination plot.

And she has done all of that, her friends say, with characteristic determination and good humor.

“Every day has been hard for her,” said childhood friend Yvonne Lewandowski, who now lives in Valencia. “Every time I see her, every time we talk, there’s the loneliness, the hurting.”

Lewandowski said tears flow at times. “But Norma will let it out, and then she’ll recharge her batteries and get back in there. She’s no quitter.”

Tom Williams was a man who loved family camping trips, who helped coach his son’s soccer games and who laughed at his wife’s jokes. In proceedings at Los Angeles Superior Court, Williams has seen all that, the life of a man, reduced to official evidence: ballistics data, coroner’s reports and detailed descriptions of meetings during which the crime was planned.

It was also in the Van Nuys courtroom, blocks away from the Williams’ first home, where she learned that Jenkins had at one point considered the execution of other family members.

“She’s there in the courtroom, not only for herself, but also for us and for my dad,” said Susie Williams, 19. “No matter what she sees in court, she’s strong.”

Perhaps the most difficult experience for Williams has been the discovery that the justice system that her slain husband dutifully defended is not always considerate of crime victims’ survivors.

Defense lawyers succeeded in barring her from attending most of the trial of Jenkins and co-conspirator Ruben A. (Tony) Moss, which opened last January, because she was considered by prosecutors to be a potential witness.

From February to the trial’s end in June she had to settle for detailed, daily reports from a friend inside the courtroom. She also quizzed Deputy Dist. Attys. Richard P. Jenkins and William Gravlin, who prosecuted the case, and major crimes Detective Michael Thies, who investigated it.

Death Sentence

Jenkins was convicted and sentenced to death for planning and executing the murder of Tom Williams. Moss, a Jenkins lieutenant who knew about the plot, was convicted and was sentenced to life without possibility of parole. (Three other men are charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder; their trial started in November and is expected to last until March.)

When Jenkins was sentenced last September, Norma Williams told the court about her husband, the man, the lover, the friend. But she had to fight for that right too.

Williams was told the night before Jenkins’ formal sentencing that she would not be allowed to make her statement, a right guaranteed her by the 1982 California Victims’ Bill of Rights Act.

She was told that a 1987 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a case known as Booth vs. Maryland had superseded California law in death-penalty cases and that statements from survivors could not be considered before sentencing. Williams was allowed to make a statement to the court, but only after the formal sentencing had occurred.

“The defense portrayed Jenkins as a loving father, a guy who would do anything for his children, who was torn up when his grandmother died,” said Williams bitterly.

“They are allowed to seek sympathy. Then why can’t the victims have that equal right to give a character reference for their loved one? Each side should be given equal consideration.”

When Moss was formally sentenced Dec. 15, Williams was there again. This time, because the jury had given Moss a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, Williams was allowed to make a statement before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Judith M. Ashmann imposed the sentence.

“Tony Moss, you deserve everything you’ve got coming to you,” she said, looking into the eyes of the young man who sat less than 10 feet away. “You are a calculating, cold-blooded murderer, and you deserve every bit of pain and anguish coming to you all the days of your life.”

Meanwhile, Williams has tried on her own to restore routine family life, to soothe a hurt and to fill an emptiness that will never truly be soothed nor filled.

For three weeks after the killing, Williams and her family were under continuous police guard. When police became convinced that the assassins had been arrested, the guard left. But the terror continued in a different form.

The past three years were rough for Ryan Williams, now 10. There were incidents of shoplifting, of lying, of destroying his belongings. “It frightened me because I didn’t know how long it would go on,” Williams said.

The boy, who was 6 when his father was killed, is still in therapy. His father was picking up Ryan from First Baptist Church school in Canoga Park, and he probably saved his son’s life when he yelled at him to duck.

Norma Williams said Ryan gradually “has evolved from being a very angry little boy to being a very loving, very social little boy.”

She has tried to do her husband’s job, as an active team mother for Ryan, who is developing his father’s broad shoulders and long legs and becoming quite a presence on the peewee football field.

But it is not easy. Ryan, Williams said, “is really having a rough time not having a dad.”

And, now that her children’s shock has passed, “they are more aware of the emptiness without their father.”

One source of understanding and friendship during the past 3 years has been the Los Angeles’ Police Department’s Family Support Group. The group was formed to help surviving spouses and children of police officers who die, whether or not it is in the line of duty.

When she heard about the deaths of Police Officers Derrick C. Connor, 28, Manuel Gutierrez Jr., 26, and David Hofmeyer, 25, the morning of Dec. 11, Williams was quick to call Detective Kena Brutsch, the department’s liaison to the group. Connor and Gutierrez had been single. But, Williams learned, Lynn Hofmeyer was 5 months pregnant with the couple’s first child.

Within hours after the death of a police officer, Brutsch visits a surviving spouse to determine what the group might to do help out. Then Brutsch contacts Williams and another group member, and they pass the news along to the rest of the group.

Special Contribution

Part of Williams’ involvement is to return the concern the support group has shown her. But she also knows that she has something she alone can contribute.

“What I bring to that new widow is that basic experience that no one else could understand,” she said several days before the Police Department’s latest tragedy. “I feel good that I’m able to express myself and let her know that the feelings she’s feeling or going to be feeling are very normal.”

Brutsch said the wives of police officers are often overshadowed by their husband’s careers and that, when a police officer dies, “the first goal is to get the ladies to feel better about themselves.”

The second goal is to help the women see that they still have a future and to help them seize control of their lives.

Within the support group, Brutsch said, Williams is a “natural leader” and openly talks about her feelings and about her husband. Such openness, Brutsch said, has helped other women in the group to express themselves.

Sandy Verna’s husband, Paul, was murdered in 1983 while stopping a car for a traffic violation. It was Verna who came to the Williams’ house, representing the family support group, soon after Tom’s death, and during the past three years, she and Williams have become fast friends.

“Norma’s faced everything with a lot of intelligence,” said Verna, 39, of Thousand Oaks. “She was not afraid to ask for help. She was not afraid to ask, ‘What did you do in this situation?’ ”

Marine Lt. Col. Roger Rowe, who grew up with Tom Williams in Van Nuys and was his closest friend, said the most important change he has observed in Norma Williams is “the way she has taken the helm.”

Rowe said that before his death Tom Williams was clearly in charge in the Williams house. Even now, his gold-plated badge, service revolver and other keepsakes are prominently displayed in the family living room, along with pictures of him taken during various stages of his 13-year Police Department career.

Williams has surprised herself as well. She said that four years ago she never would have thought of herself planning a major home expansion and renovation that is nearing completion. Or planning to push for legislation that would make killing a police officer a federal crime punishable by death.

(A number of states, including California, Texas, Florida and Maryland, have such a law on the books. But, according to Susan Sawyer, the executive director of Maryland-based Concerns of Police Survivors, not all states follow the directives of the laws.)

Williams said she imagines conversations that she might have had with her husband. “I can honestly say that the reason I have maintained my strength is Tom, Susie and Ryan,” she said. “They are my source of strength. My friends have helped me evolve, but everything I have done has been with the thought of Tom.”

Despite appearing calm and determined, Williams said she feels the stress. The Christmas holidays, she said, were particularly difficult.

But she is confident that her time will come. She holds a degree in counseling from Cal State Northridge, and worked for a number of years in personnel before her husband’s death.

Pensions and insurance policies have left her financially comfortable, but eventually Williams would like to return to work, to establish another relationship, to see her children grow up and provide her with grandchildren.

But, whatever happens, she intends to see the legal process through. She has attended several sessions of the second trial, of Reecy Cooper, 33, Voltaire Williams, 25, and Duane Moody, 30.

The prosecution alleges that the first two had agreed to murder Williams for Jenkins but then backed out, and that Moody assisted in the plot in other ways.

She plans to appear at every appeal and every hearing for Jenkins and Moss and even, she hopes, at Jenkins’ eventual execution.

“I hope my input will have some value,” she said. “I definitely would not just tuck it away and say, ‘Well, it’s over and done with.’ It’s not over. It will never be over.”