A Family Torn From Within

Fourteen-year-old Danny Connolly was a Little League star with devoted parents, a shelf full of video games and a life of camping expeditions and quiet evenings spent playing board games at home.

His mother, Cindy, was the baseball team Mom who cooked his favorite--chicken-fried steak--when he felt blue. His father, Phil, took him fishing and hunting.

He lived with his parents and younger sister in a quiet cul-de-sac, the kind of haven that families seek to escape the random violence of larger cities.

The strategy worked until Feb. 22. That day, both sides agree, Danny picked up a gun during an argument over being grounded and shot his mother dead.

No one, not even Danny, can explain what happened that Thursday afternoon. His relatives have spent anguished weeks mining their memories for clues that might have predicted the slaying of Cindy, a 42-year-old dental hygienist.

Instead of an answer, there is only the same, maddeningly serene family portrait.

“It’s like he woke up possessed one morning and became a different kid for a day,” said Phil, 45, a captain in the Orange County Fire Authority. “Then he snapped out of it and it had been done, and he can’t undo it.”

Now, Danny’s father and his 9-year-old sister, Caitlen, struggle through sleepless nights and a bewildering tangle of emotions toward Danny, who is being held in Juvenile Hall.

Phil is tortured by the conflict between his instinct to protect his only son from the legal system and his rage at his wife’s killer.

“Part of me hates him for what he did. But he’s only a boy and he needs help. We’re not going to abandon him,” he said.

The family’s tragedy has spilled into the courtroom, presenting a Juvenile Court judge with a rare and difficult decision: How to handle the case of a youngster with no criminal past under a tough new state law that requires young murder suspects to be treated as adults in almost all circumstances. The law was aimed at violence by gang members who have escaped long prison terms because of their age.

Presiding Juvenile Court Judge Frank F. Fasel will be asked Thursday to consider whether the law contains exceptions for serious crimes committed under very different circumstances.

Among the questions embedded in the case is one of fairness, experts say: Should a son of the suburbs escape the treatment doled out to a big-city gang member?

Danny’s father and his lawyer argue that the law--which allows life sentences and gives judges little discretion to treat young murder suspects as juveniles--was not meant to cover family conflicts. Moreover, they say, it was not designed for someone like Danny, whose worst previous offense had been taking a puff on a cigarette.

Although the law and the circumstances of the crime appear to give him little chance, Danny is seeking to have his case handled within the juvenile system.

If convicted there, he could be incarcerated in the California Youth Authority until he is 25. If convicted as an adult, he faces up to 25 years to life in state prison. Juvenile convicts can serve part of their adult prison sentences in the California Youth Authority, but only until they are 25.

“This is primarily a familial tragedy,” Michael P. Giannini, Danny’s public defender, said after a court hearing in March.

One juvenile justice expert who opposes California’s new law says it, nonetheless, should be applied evenly.

“Let’s not make a distinction between white kids and black kids. The law’s the law,” said Barry Krisberg, president of the San Francisco-based National Council on Crime and Delinquency. “This is who such laws catch.”

The California law follows a national trend toward stiffer punishments for young offenders, who historically have been funneled into a juvenile system that focused on treatment rather than imprisonment. At least 40 states allow children 14 or younger to be tried as adults, depending on the crime, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

If prosecutors have their way, Danny would be among the first California youngsters tried for murder as an adult under the year-old law, which lowered the age at which children can be punished as adults from 16 to 14.

Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. David L. Brent, who filed the murder charge, defended his decision to seek adult punishment because of the “sophisticated way in which the killing was carried out, which showed planning.”

Authorities cite signs they say show that Danny had planned the killing for days. A finding of premeditation would make it all but impossible for a judge to keep the case in Juvenile Court.

Brea Police Det. Terry Fincher, who investigated the case before he was killed May 22 in an accident, said Danny’s schoolyard buzzed with rumors that he had talked openly of killing his mother, or both parents, and possibly himself. Authorities said Danny put a silencer--made out of a plastic bottle--on the .22-caliber handgun that was used to shoot his mother. He allegedly discovered the design on the Internet.

Giannini said Danny has not tried to conceal the shooting, so he does not know why he used the silencer. He said Danny got the idea for the device from a movie he and his father watched. Both of them had agreed that the gimmick would not work, said Giannini, who added that using a silencer he knew was worthless indicates his client’s immaturity.

Investigators said it appeared that Danny stalked Cindy through the house, firing until she fell dead outside the master bedroom. Then, in tears, he called 911 and said someone had shot his mother, Fincher said.

Police said Danny later confessed.

Phil said Danny told the family pastor: “I couldn’t take the nagging anymore.”

Two California youths under the age of 16 have been convicted of murder since the law took effect.

A Long Beach gang member was sentenced to 29 years to life in state prison for being an accomplice in the execution-style slaying of a gas station clerk during a robbery in Seal Beach. A San Diego gang member faces sentencing June 18 in the ambush killing and robbery of a pizza deliveryman.

San Diego authorities are seeking adult murder charges against a youth with a history of violence who allegedly killed his grandparents, parents and sister in Vista in February. A hearing on whether to send him to adult court began Tuesday.

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In the Connolly home, where family photos still show what life was like before “the incident,” Phil and Caitlen have tried to resume a normal routine while awaiting Danny’s hearing. Afraid to spend nights alone, Caitlen sleeps on a trundle bed next to her father. Both have undergone counseling.

“She’s real mad at Danny for what this has done to our lives,” Phil said. “She also misses Danny. She’s sad that he won’t be with us anymore. We’re all dealing with the same feelings. We just can’t figure it out.”

Nor, apparently, can Danny. From his Juvenile Hall cell, he wrote a letter of apology to his grandparents.

“If I could have one wish, it would be to go back in time and relive that day,” he said in the two-page letter. “I want to be back at home sitting and watching TV with Mom and Dad and Caity.”

Phil said Cindy and Caitlen would bake cookies while he and Danny chuckled at the weekly TV predicaments of “Drew Carey” or “Friends.” Other nights were spent playing Pictionary or Trivial Pursuit. Sometimes, Danny hung out in his room, engrossed in Nintendo.

When it was time for bed, the kids would hug each parent, a practice Danny continued as a teenager.

“We got along real well, you know?” Phil said.

Friends of the Connolly parents said Danny and Cindy were particularly close. Cindy’s vivaciousness and hearty laughter complemented her son’s usually reserved and sarcastic humor.

“They had this connection,” said Peggy Consalvi, Danny’s godmother and a close friend of Cindy for 31 years. “They didn’t have to say anything to each other and would both smile out of the middle of nowhere, as if they’d just exchanged thoughts.”

During the frequent camping trips the family took with friends and relatives, Danny and Cindy were centers of attention in their respective worlds.

Cindy, with her flair for gourmet cooking and exuberant personality, urged the adults to eat and drink.

“She’d give me a hard time about anything,” said John McPhillips, a fellow fireman and friend of Phil for 15 years. “She was a real wit. Funny.”

Danny--blond, burly but baby-faced, was the idol of the younger campers. Although he was the oldest child in the group, he never adopted a superior attitude, said McPhillips, whose son is a year younger than Danny.

At nearly 200 pounds, Danny’s size helped him win a position on the freshman football team at Esperanza High School in Anaheim. And his power at the plate was measured by the way Little League outfielders moved back when he came to the plate.

As Danny’s bat earned him MVP honors and all-star berths, Cindy was sure to be in the dugout, keeping score.

Friends said he was “a fierce competitor” who encouraged teammates, but got down on himself when he made errors.

When he didn’t make this year’s high school baseball team, Charlene Cannan, a close friend of Cindy, recalled how Danny’s mother consoled her son: “ ‘It’s not you,’ she said, stroking his shoulder. ‘Next year, you will try out again and have a great season. It’s just how life goes.’ ”

“She loved him terribly,” Cannan said.

Cannan said Cindy was disturbed by Danny’s brooding in the weeks before the shooting. He had been grounded for smoking a cigarette, then lying about it.

“He was just being a typical teenager with the obnoxious comments and the sulking,” said Cannan. “But, he was Cindy’s oldest child. She didn’t know what to do with that.”

But Danny’s friends say he chafed under restrictions he felt were too tight, but nonetheless were puzzled by the slaying.

They say he frequently was grounded and voiced frustration about being punished.

“He couldn’t do a lot of normal things, like stay out later with the rest of our friends,” said Derrick Brandt, 15, Danny’s best friend.

Even when Danny wasn’t in trouble, Derrick said, “they’d make him stay home and sit around the house, just to be with them. He was always having to answer to his parents. He didn’t like it.”

Police say Danny’s frustration drove him to shoot his mother.

According to Brea police, Danny returned home from school Feb. 22 and began to argue with his mother about being grounded. Phil was running an errand; Caitlen was visiting a friend.

Danny got the pistol he and his father used for target shooting, loaded it and attached the silencer, sources said. He fired at his mother as she ran through the house, hitting her with four bullets, the sources said. There was no indication of drug use, Fincher said.

Phil drove up to find patrol cars surrounding his house.

“I left for an hour, came back and my life had been changed forever,” he said.

“There was so very much blood,” said Cannan, who showed up to help out after the shooting. “What’s overwhelming is the thought of Cindy during those last seconds running in terror from her first-born.”

After news of the shooting spread, parents of several Esperanza students called police. They said their children had heard Danny discussing his plans openly, Fincher said.

“Nobody believed him and I don’t blame them,” he said. “Everyone who has been a teenager has said they were so mad at their parents they could kill them. It just so happens, this one did it.”

But Danny’s friends dismissed those accounts as “rumors.”

“People said he went around saying he hated his mom and that he was bragging in class,” said Brad Fraley, 14, an Esperanza student who has known Danny for four years. “But nobody who really knows him heard him say that.”

Derrick said he is particularly baffled by the slaying. He and Danny frequently spent the night at each other’s homes and went on pheasant hunting trips with Phil. It was with Derrick that Danny took a drag from his first cigarette, to impress a girl he had met.

“He coughed about a hundred times,” Derrick said. “Not very smooth.”

He said that when he heard about the shooting, he was hurt and angry that Danny had hidden such rage: “You’d think he would have said something to me.”

Now, Danny isn’t saying much to anybody.

As he waits in Juvenile Hall for the crucial hearing, Danny keeps mostly to himself. He attends high school classes, writes letters and reads Tom Clancy novels and the Bible, he said in written answers to questions submitted by The Times and approved by his attorney.

“It’s extremely hard to explain to people why I’m here and that is the first thing people ask,” he wrote.

Updates from relatives and friends make “me think I still have a life left,” he wrote. But, in an earlier letter to Derrick he said: “I’m nervous as hell about court.”

On his father’s weekend visits, the two fumble at small talk about sports or the latest movies Phil and Caitlen have seen, Phil said. “In the beginning, we just sat and cried.”

Phil has concentrated on trying to shield his son, who has yet to enter a plea, by securing a sentence in the California Youth Authority and counseling for him--instead of incarceration in the adult prison system.

The Connollys’ odds are slim at best. The law allowing juveniles to be tried as adults is especially severe on murder suspects, placing the burden on them to prove why they should be treated as juveniles.

At any hearing like the one Danny faces, a judge is asked to consider the following: The seriousness of the crime, the degree of criminal sophistication shown, prior criminal trouble, previous punishment for criminal acts, and the likelihood the youth could be rehabilitated.

Brent, the Orange County deputy district attorney, said Danny’s quiet past and comfortable upbringing should be no insulation against charges that have been used against street thugs.

“I feel very strongly about treating people the same,” Brent said.

State Sen. Steve Peace, (D-Chula Vista), who helped push through the juvenile crime law, said domestic violence cases like Danny’s were taken into account when the legislation was considered.

Peace said membership in a gang “should not be a prerequisite” for trying a juvenile as an adult.

The law was proposed, he said, because of rising “violence conducted by juveniles and the inability of the juvenile system to rehabilitate those juveniles. Mostly, though, that applies to kids with multiple charges.”

Some juvenile justice experts suggest that Danny might want to take his chances in adult court, where a jury might view him sympathetically.

Until the hearing, Phil can only agonize over whether he will ever have his son back.

“If he goes to adult prison, he will be my age when he gets out,” he said. “They’re going to give me back a 40-year-old man who spent his entire life with the worst part of society and they’re going to say: ‘OK, here is your son back now.’

“What am I gonna to do with him then?”