The Truth Hurts Worse : Murder: It was hard enough for Cathy Brock to visit her father in jail when she thought he was innocent. Now he’s confessed to the murder of her abusive husband. She still blames herself.

Cathy Brock had only been to see her father once at Orange County Jail in all the months he was there. It had been too hard on both of them, she said.

But she had written to him. She had told him how sorry she was that “you had to give up your life to see me happy.” The letter upset him. He told the family: Tell Cathy she is not to blame. She is not to blame.

James Joseph Rovida Jr., a 55-year-old Los Alamitos truck driver whose life revolved around his wife, his five grown children and his grandchildren, was convicted last month of first-degree murder in the death of Cathy Brock’s husband, Robert Brock.

Brock was shot to death just after 3 a.m. on July 6, 1989, in the front driveway of his sister’s home in Orange, where he was living during the couple’s latest fight. Brock had just gotten off work at a printing plant in Fullerton, where prosecutors say Rovida had followed him--then fatally shot him in the head and chest.

Brock’s death put an end to the stormiest marriage those closest to the Brock couple had ever seen.

“We went from downhill to the bottom,” Cathy Brock, 31, said in describing their final days together.

Last week, Rovida was sentenced to 27 years to life in prison by Superior Court Judge Robert C. Todd. He will be almost 70 before he is even eligible to apply for parole.

Her father did not do it, Cathy Brock insisted. But she blames herself anyway. There had been that dramatic confrontation on the Riverside Freeway, her husband tracking her down and shouting threats, furious that she was taking their two children on a Rovida family trip against his orders.

Her father had shot out Brock’s car windows. If that hadn’t happened, Cathy Brock insisted, police would never have tried to pin her husband’s murder on her father. And she was to blame for what happened on the freeway.

She was to blame for her father, an innocent man, being in jail.

Except her father is not innocent. After his trial, he finally confessed. He had kept it from his family, even from his own lawyer. The confession was played out by the prosecution in open court on Wednesday.

The freeway incident, Rovida told a probation officer, had led him to confront Brock, to let him know that Rovida just couldn’t take it anymore. Rovida denies he meant to kill him. But he admits it happened.

“Cathy just cannot accept losing both her husband and her father, so she blocks it out, just refuses to believe it,” said her sister-in-law, Joann Shaw, Robert Brock’s sister, who had found him dead in her driveway.

At her new home in Bellflower, where she’s raising their daughters, ages 9 and 5, Cathy Brock looked at a picture of Robert and her on their wedding day. They looked happy.

“But there weren’t a whole lot of good times,” she said. “I always had to get my butt kicked--even when he was just mad at himself over something, I was in for a beating.”

Robert Brock had been her only real boyfriend. They began dating when she was 16 and moved in together when she was 18. They married four years later.

Two of Robert Brock’s sisters interviewed defend their brother, in part. Cathy was often the aggressor in the arguments, they said. Joann Shaw says her brother still had a bruise on his cheek at his funeral caused by an assault from Cathy Brock. But even they don’t deny their brother could be violent.

“We begged them to break up,” Joann Shaw said. “We said, ‘Look what you are doing to each other. Look what you are doing to your kids.’ ”

They lived in Buena Park, Cypress, Fullerton, anywhere they could stay a jump ahead of rent payments due. Robert Brock was an electrician, but had been laid off.

Cathy Brock describes a life of hell. Twice a month or more he would beat her with his fists, she said. Once he used shearing scissors to tear up all her clothes, she said. Another time, she claimed, he even put razor blades in her shoes.

She has a scar on her arm from the shearing scissors, when she tried to stop him. And another from an ashtray fight. She told about one incident in which he stole her driver’s license and car registration, took her plates off the car, then reported the car stolen. She spent a night in jail before the mess was straightened out, she said.

Three times she went to court to get restraining orders against him during their many break-ups. The problem was, restraining orders don’t amount to anything when the man is determined to ignore them, she said.

The problem was, Brock’s sisters say, Cathy Brock never gave the restraining orders a chance. Because she always went back to him. Always.

Even that last dramatic week, when they were down to nothing and nowhere to live, she had planned to go back to him. She said so in court.

Their problems came to a head in November, 1988, when she lost her job. She claims her husband could not accept her working while he was unemployed and got her fired by constantly harassing her at work. They skipped town owing back rent at their apartment in Fullerton in May, 1989. He had picked up a minimum-wage job, enough for them to survive, living in a run-down motel in Anaheim.

“You can’t know how that feels,” she said. “Two kids and not even a home for them.”

Fourth of July week, 1989, the Rovidas had asked her and the children to join them for a family trip to the Colorado River. She claims Robert did not want her to go. She went anyway.

“My kids needed some fun in their lives,” she explained. “But Robert warned me: ‘You won’t make it to the river.’ ”

Two carloads of Rovidas were heading north on the Riverside Freeway when Robert pulled alongside them in his own car, shouting threats, they all say.

“He said that if we went ahead to the river, he’d burn my parents’ house down,” Cathy Brock said.

Then, family members told police, Brock pulled his car in front of Rovida’s. The Brock family disputes that he tried to run anyone off the road. But the Rovidas say clearly he was harassing them. That’s when Rovida shot out Brock’s windows.

Paul S. Meyer, Rovida’s lawyer, says the real tragedy of the case is that Rovida is probably not guilty of the crime he was convicted of: first-degree murder.

“If we’d had the facts, we probably could have shown the jury this was a voluntary manslaughter,” Meyer said. “But Mr. Rovida was too ashamed to admit to his family what he had done. So he kept it from everyone, including me. What a terrible, terrible consequence he must pay now.”

Cathy Brock remains torn about what happened. She did love her husband, she says. And she is definite that she did not want him dead, especially because he was close to their younger daughter.

But still, she feels free.

“Now I’m actually a person; I have self-respect, I have things, and a home for my daughters,” she said. “I’m no longer just someone who needs her butt kicked.”

And she has also made a commitment to Brock’s family. Despite the wishes of some of her siblings, she is letting her daughters spend time with Brock’s sisters, whom they adore.

“My kids don’t deserve any more punishment,” she said.

Gloria Creighton, another of Brock’s sisters, said they appreciate Cathy “not using the children as weapons between the families.”

“My brother’s kids are like my own,” she said.

Creighton added that the Brock family is angry that Rovida, in none of his court appearances, ever showed remorse for Robert Brock’s death.

“But I do feel sorry for Cathy,” she said. “If only she and Robert could have stayed away from each other.”

Cathy Brock’s task now is to confront the truth about her father.

She still won’t admit his guilt. And her mother has persuaded her it’s best if she does not return to Orange County Jail to see him before he is shipped to prison this week. But she says she does have something she wants him to understand.

She explained: “I have to let him know, that I know I’m the one to blame.”