When Seeking Justice Is a Long Family Nightmare

Department 45 on the top floor of the Orange County Courthouse in Santa Ana is three times the size of most other courtrooms.

That’s why it gets so many high-profile murder cases: It’s one of the few courtrooms large enough to accommodate the many families of victims who show up seeking justice.

It’s where Randy Steven Kraft was convicted of 16 Orange County murders and sentenced to death in 1989. It’s also where opening statements were heard Monday in the Charles Ng murder trial.

Ng, whose trial was sent down from Northern California on a change of venue, is charged with 12 murders, the most of anyone since Kraft.

Both cases involved long, long years of waiting for these families, who are victims themselves.

Some on Monday came great distances. But traveling to face Ng is nothing new for Virginia Nessley of Granville, Ohio, near Columbus. Ng is accused of killing her son, Paul Cosner, who was 39 and living in San Francisco.

Nessley traveled to Calgary, Canada, to face Ng in court when he was arrested there in 1985. She faced him again in Calaveras County six years later, when he was finally extradited. She came to Orange County last October, only to learn the trial would be delayed yet again because of legal issues.

This time, after driving cross country, she’s here for the long haul.

“We’ll stay until the trial’s over or we run out of money, whichever comes first,” she said.

She’s with her husband Dave, who was Paul’s stepfather, and Paul’s sister, Sharon Sellitto. Sellitto took notes during Monday’s trial testimony, her mother listened intently on a special set of headphones that made it easier for her to hear the proceedings.

Prosecutors say Ng was involved in these murders with Leonard Thomas Lake. It was a fluke arrest that led authorities to discover numerous bodies buried on the grounds of a reclusive Sierra Nevada foothills home in Calaveras County where Lake lived.

On June 2, 1985, police were called to investigate a shoplifting incident at the South City Lumber and Supply Co. in South San Francisco.

Prosecutors contend Ng disappeared before police got there. But Lake was found outside the business in a 1980 Honda Prelude. It turns out the car was stolen; it belonged to Nessley’s son.

Monday, despite retelling these events countless times over 13 years, she couldn’t repeat them without crying. Even so, she insisted in going on. She wanted one more person, even an inquiring columnist, to know what a fine son she had.

“He was fun-loving, just wonderful. We were so very close. The only thing he did wrong was to advertise his car for sale.”

Authorities believe Lake and Ng killed Cosner to get his vehicle.

“It was a Friday, Nov. 1 [1984] and he was going to go home to his fiancee, Marilyn. They were going to watch ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ on a tape that night.”

But Cosner never made it. Nessley heard from her daughter Sharon, who lived near Cosner, that he was missing.

“My husband and I flew to California immediately. The police didn’t seem that interested, since he was an adult and could do as he pleased. What they did not understand was that this was so uncharacteristic of Paul. He was always so considerate; he’d never leave.”

Seven months later, Nessley endured the first of many shocks, when she was asked to identify her son’s car found at that lumber yard.

She learned that Lake had committed suicide, and that Ng was a fugitive. When he was finally caught in Calgary a month later, Nessley thought this nightmare was finally drawing to a close.

“We had absolutely no idea that we’d be sitting in court 13 years later. This is not how we expected to spend our golden retirement years.”

But Nessley is determined not to be anywhere else.

“Actually, it’s easier being here than back in Ohio,” she said. “Seeing him here right in front of us, that makes it real. Back home, where you’d hear all these names [in the case] but not see any real connection, it was like a long, bad dream.”

There may be one more similarity between the Ng and Kraft cases. If she thinks California justice has been slow, wait until she sees the appeals process if Ng is convicted.

Kraft has been on death row for nine years, and his appeal has barely gone past first base. If Ng is convicted and sentenced to death, there’s a chance she won’t live long enough to see this case concluded.