Drunk Driver Who Killed 4 in Glendale Gets 11 Years

A Glendale man convicted of killing two women and their two daughters while driving drunk was sentenced Wednesday to 11 years in prison.

Pasadena Superior Court Judge Carol J. Fieldhouse sentenced William Conway, 28, after hearing the victim’s relatives ask for the maximum term and the defense attorney read a letter from Conway pleading for leniency.

His voice cracking at times, Fieldhouse told the hushed courtroom that the sentence was the harshest he felt that state law would allow. He said he felt “almost as sorry for the defendant and his plight as for the survivors of the victims.”

“Bill, listen to me,” the judge told Conway. “If you’re feeling put upon, if you’re feeling badly treated . . . you’ll see it’s one year out of your life for each life you took.”

Fieldhouse said Conway could be eligible for parole in four years.

“What you can do when you return . . . is, if you’re a passenger in a car . . . with a girlfriend or a buddy, and they drink and get behind the wheel and you stop them . . . then those people won’t have died for nothing.”

Conway, a former Glendale parks and recreation worker, was convicted Feb. 7 of four counts of gross vehicular manslaughter and two counts of causing an accident with injuries while driving under the influence of alcohol.

Deputy Dist. Atty. James Rogan successfully argued that Conway was legally drunk and driving nearly 80 miles an hour on July 13, 1988, when he hit five pedestrians waiting on a traffic island to cross Verdugo Road in Glendale.

Patricia Carr, 36, and her daughter, Caren, 6, and Valerie Cramer, 32, and her daughter, Brianna, 9, were killed. Billy Cramer, now 13, was able to dive out of the way.

Conway could have received a maximum term of 15 years. Fieldhouse gave him 719 days credit for time spent in jail and under house arrest at his mother’s Glendale home, which reduces the 11-year sentence to about nine years.

The victims’ families called the sentence fair.

“By today’s standards, that’s the best we can hope for,” said Patrick Carr, who had earlier told Fieldhouse that even a maximum term would be “little consolation.”

Before the sentencing, Public Defender Michael Allensworth, who asked Fieldhouse to “temper justice with mercy,” read a letter Conway had written to the judge.

“I feel ashamed and sick inside,” Allensworth read from the letter, his voice cracking and drawing tears from Conway’s family members and onlookers. “I am so very sorry. I love children so much that I would gladly give my life for those taken.”

During a break in the proceedings, Conway hugged family and friends at the back of the courtroom.

“Bill is wonderful,” said a tearful Felicia Herbstreith, a friend of Conway’s sister, Louise. “He’s taken care of my kids many times.”

But the victims’ families told Fieldhouse they wanted Conway to serve as an example.

“There have been few things in my life that have given me as much joy as my marriage to Valerie, and my daughter Brianna. Not too long ago, everything was going our way,” said William Cramer, who sat on the witness stand and read in a flat, unemotional voice a letter he had written to the judge.

“But my life was shattered in seconds by a thoughtless, drunken stranger,” he said. “I resent Mr. Conway. He took away a piece of my heart, something I can never get back. As the gray cloud is lifted and we go forward. . . . I would like to know that Mr. Conway’s life is changed.”