Slaying Victims Leave Survivors Struggling to Cope : Bereavement: They deal with some of the same issues as others who have lost a family member, but experts say those who lose a relative to homicide struggle with a lot more.

After Elena Hancock’s only son was shot to death at a party on Thanksgiving Eve, 1992, she stopped working and started drinking herself to sleep at night with vodka.

When the 48-year-old home-care provider returned to work a month later, she wore an overcoat over her pajamas because, she said, she was too depressed to get dressed, apply makeup and sometimes to shower.

At that same time, Linda Cunningham, bereavement director for Kaiser Permanente in Panorama City, began a support group specifically for murder victims’ survivors. The only other San Fernando Valley-area group, Parents and Siblings of Murdered Children, met only once a month and at first did not allow friends or other relatives to join.

Kaiser’s group, which meets twice a month, is free and open to friends and family members whether or not Kaiser is their medical benefits provider.

Unaware of Kaiser’s group when she initially sought help, Hancock spent two months in two other bereavement groups until a member of one of the groups told the Sun Valley resident about the Kaiser program.

“In those groups, I didn’t fit in,” Hancock said. “Those people lost a father or a sister or brother because they were sick, and in the beginning it was OK. Later on I found out it was not for me.”

Although they deal with some of the same issues other survivors do, issues such as anger, denial and depression, experts say those who lose a relative to homicide struggle with a lot more.

“The catastrophe of murder makes people feel that they are not safe and they don’t have control over things,” said Dr. Ann Schofield, one of the facilitators for Kaiser’s group.

“Other people sometimes shun someone who’s had a murder (in their family) because it makes them aware of their vulnerability--that ‘This could happen to me.’ ”

Removing survivors of homicide victims from other bereavement groups also benefits those groups’ members, Schofield said, because the stories such survivors tell are often overwhelming.

On Sept. 8, 1992, Wendy Weiker, an American psychologist living in Israel, was gunned down in her office, along with three other women, by one of her patients. The 31-year-old was five months pregnant.

Her sister, Lisa Obligenarz, called Kaiser to inquire about her health benefits and learned that its group was to begin in two months. Like most homicide victims’ survivors, the Van Nuys resident remembers being in shock after her sister was slain. Obligenarz drew inspiration from others in the group who were experiencing the same debilitating shock, yet were courageous enough to attend meetings.

When she heard people describe how someone’s slaying had crippled their lives, she would accent the positive. “You’re out of bed, you’re here and you’re not on drugs,” she would tell them. Mere attendance at the group was seen as reason for hope.

“If somebody stayed in their pajamas the first week (after the murder), we knew why they did that and that it’s normal,” she said. “That’s the difference between that group and a widow’s support group or a cancer support group.”

The group meets at Kaiser’s Panorama City facility because the earthquake demolished their former Granada Hills meeting place. Attendance varies. Sometimes only a few people show up. At other times, there have been as many as 15, Cunningham said.

The survivors and two counselors spend 90 minutes, sometimes longer, sharing anger, fears and unique frustrations.

Schofield said group members often need to talk about “the slowness of the legal process” and how murder cases are being handled by the courts or police.

“A murder is not complete until they catch the guy and keep him from murdering other people,” said Nancy Marshall, whose 40-year-old son was killed Dec. 15, 1992.

Marshall and her husband, Sanford, of Mission Hills have all but given up trying to get the police to make an arrest in their son’s case. They say that their son was killed with a “hot shot,” a lethal injection of drugs, by a man he knew.

A coroner ruled Sandy Marshall died of a drug overdose. With no witnesses to say the dose was not self-inflicted, police determined Marshall’s death was accidental. The case is still open but there is no active investigation, Los Angeles Police Detective Frank Bishop said.

The Marshalls joined the support group a year ago and went as often as the group met, twice a month. Within six months, they were feeling “more comfortable” and not attending meetings regularly. Now when they go, they go to help others as well as themselves.

“You get a feeling for all those people that are in there and you hear all their stories,” Sanford Marshall said. “I don’t know how they could survive without the group.”

A 30-year-old Westside resident had survived without any support group for 15 years after her sister’s death, but with great difficulty. Her sister, then 14, was killed in a hotel while the family was vacationing. But her parents would not discuss the slaying, or let her discuss it.

Before joining Kaiser’s group last June, she sought help in individual therapy. Like some other slaying victims’ survivors, she said it did not help.

“The person that you’re talking to one-on-one doesn’t do what the group does,” Williams said. “The group makes it so that talking about (the murder) is such an easy, normal thing.”

Obligenarz agreed. “People are more willing to go and seek help (in a group) because you don’t feel like you’re there because you’ve got some problem.”