Victims Had Ellie Liston in Their Corner

Ellie Liston was one of those rare people whose capacity for caring for wounded souls seemed boundless.

In 1979, she helped launch the victim assistance program of the district attorney’s office, and in the years since provided a shoulder to cry on for hundreds of people.

She helped women beaten and raped regain a sense of security in their lives. She eased the apprehension of molested children called to testify against their abusers. And she held the hands of wives and mothers who struggled to comprehend why their loved ones were murdered.

“Your daily work is with people who depend on you to make them feel better,” Liston once told me. “And I do that.”

And she continued to do that for two decades, almost up until her death last week of breast cancer.

Three years ago, Liston sat with widow Jenifer Clark during the trial of Daniel Tuffree, the former schoolteacher who fatally shot Clark’s husband, Simi Valley Police Officer Michael Clark, in August 1995.

Liston supported the family of slain Ventura County Sheriff’s Deputy Peter J. Aguirre Jr. during the 1997 trial of Michael Raymond Johnson, later convicted of his murder.

And later, she held the hand of Karlyne Guess, the mother of slain Ventura homemaker Sherri Dally, during the trials of Michael Dally and Diana Haun, who were eventually found guilty in that case.

It was common to see Liston--a former emergency room nurse and grandmother of six--shepherding Guess to and from court through a snarl of newspaper photographers and TV cameras crammed into the fourth-floor hallway at the Hall of Justice in Ventura.

Tall with short-cropped hair, Liston would slip through the crowd with her eyeglasses dangling from a chain around her neck and a protective arm wrapped around Guess.

“She has just been my Rock of Gibraltar,” Guess said at the time. “She has been my encouragement and my strength through all of this.”

Advocates perform a variety of roles. They keep track of court dates and provide referrals to support groups, shelters and counselors. They help file restraining orders and, in cases involving children, sit beside the young witnesses when they are called to testify.

Last year, the program--which has been copied by counties across the state--provided assistance to more than 1,300 crime victims and now boasts a staff of 21 advocates.

Liston, who trained many of those staff members, often compared her role as advocate to her earlier career in nursing. She had spent 18 years at Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura. That is where she landed after coming west from New York with her husband, Tom, in 1960. She worked in the emergency room and later became director of nursing before retiring to spend more time with her three children--Tom, Matthew and Delia.

But Liston needed to be useful, and soon applied for a volunteer job at the district attorney’s office. Within a year she was hired to help launch the victim assistance program. Her first case was a rape trial prosecuted by Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury.

Over the years, Liston represented the interests of countless other victims and worked tirelessly to ensure that their fears and concerns were given a voice. Last fall, after 20 years of fighting for others, she retired to concentrate on a battle of her own, one against breast cancer.

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I didn’t know Ellie Liston well. I interviewed her a few times over the years, and saw her in court during those high-profile murder trials.

But her death last week at age 62 from complications of breast cancer hit me hard just the same.

Partly, it was the suddenness; it was only a few months ago that I heard that her prognosis was good. But her death also hit close to home. Just last fall, my mother also was diagnosed with breast cancer--an illness, thank God, she is beating. Perhaps it is why the passing of Liston, a woman whose tough spirit seemed impenetrable and familiar, touched me.

None of us wants to believe we are vulnerable--not to crime, not to disease--yet in her life’s work Liston showed that people who fall victim to crime can get through the darkest days and move on with their lives.

I wish fate had allowed her to do the same. But if people achieve immortality through the memories of others, Ellie Liston will live for a thousand years.

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Tracy Wilson can be reached at 653-7550 or by e-mail at tracy.wilson@latimes.com.