Turning Personal Grief Into Public Good

You have to wonder how much tragedy one person must endure.

And then marvel at how they keep on going.

There was Collene Campbell, victims rights advocate, two-time mayor of San Juan Capistrano, testifying in Washington last week on behalf of John Ashcroft. Whatever your feelings about President Bush’s embattled choice for attorney general, how could you not admire Campbell’s stoic voice on behalf of victims’ rights in that national forum?

Especially when it was the last place she wanted to be.

Just five days earlier, she had helped bury her 18-year-old grandson, Brian Campbell, who died from internal bleeding after a head injury. Mourning loved ones who left life early is something Collene Campbell and her husband, Gary, have had to do before.

Their 27-year-old son, Scott, was murdered in 1982. Six years later came two more family murders. Collene’s only sibling, racing promoter Mickey Thompson, and his wife, Trudi, were gunned down by two hit men outside their Bradbury home.

The Campbells had to go through three grueling murder trials spread over seven years in their son’s death. The Thompson murders remain under investigation.

Campbell reminded me of an incident that I’d long forgotten but has always been most vivid for her.

It took 11 months before undercover work revealed details of how Scott Campbell had been killed. That night, March 13, 1983, Collene, Gary and their daughter, Shelly, hurried to Anaheim police headquarters to find out what homicide investigators had learned. Shelly was nine months’ pregnant, but wanted to be there, desperate for whatever news could be gleaned about her only sibling’s death.

Waiting outside a police office, she went into labor. That night she gave birth to Brian Scott Campbell. The middle name, of course, was for her brother.

The Campbells’ ordeal, tragic as it is, has taken numerous other nightmarish twists.

To his parents, Scott Campbell was the perfect son. But he had his own difficulties. With a faltering business, he turned to a drug sale to perhaps save it. He confided in a family friend, Larry Cowell, who offered to fly him to North Dakota to complete the sale. Cowell took along an acquaintance, ex-convict Donald Dimascio. The two of them killed Scott to steal his drugs, then tossed his body from the plane, 5,000 feet somewhere a few miles past Catalina Island.

A Mother Had to Help Solve Son’s Murder Case

Because police cannot track every missing persons case to come along, the Campbells initially conducted their own investigation, finally finding their son’s dust-covered car a week later in the lot at Fullerton Municipal Airport.

It was the Campbells who discovered Cowell had erased his name from that day’s flight log. It was the Campbells who uncovered a witness who said Cowell got him to back his lie about where he’d flown that day. It was Gary Campbell who found his son’s blood in the small plane Cowell had rented.

Scott Campbell was unaware he was actually dealing with undercover narcotics authorities, who planned to arrest him when he landed in North Dakota. After that discovery, it was the Campbells who paid the way for a federal drug informant to come here to pose as a drug dealer, to learn from Cowell what had happened.

Cowell gave up Dimascio, who unwittingly confessed in a tape-recorded phone call. Dimascio was sentenced to life in prison. The jury spared him the death penalty only because he had a young daughter.

In my 10 years covering criminal courts, one of the most riveting scenes I witnessed was Collene Campbell holding hands with Dimascio’s father after the verdict, to let him know she understood his pain too.

Cowell was sentenced to 27 years to life in a separate trial, but then was freed for a few years after winning a new trial. The Santa Ana-based appellate court had found that Cowell’s confession had been coerced.

So once again, the Campbells had to trek back to court, this time without that key piece of evidence against their son’s killer. Thanks to a brilliant prosecutor, Tom Goethals, Cowell was convicted of murder again.

But as Collene Campbell told me this week, “It’s never behind you; it’s a nightmare always there.”

That’s because Cowell is already eligible for parole. A hearing date was set for last September, but because of a backlog of such hearings, it’s been postponed. The Campbells are making sure no one forgets to tell them the date.

“At one point I thought that sitting across the table from my son’s killer was more than I could possibly bear,” she said. “But I have to be at that parole hearing. I’ll have to do it.”

The numerous delays in the Cowell case, and so many key decisions that went against the prosecution (like the blood evidence being inadmissible), frustrated the Campbells into action. Collene became a leading advocate for victims rights statewide. She played a major role in the sweeping 1990 court reform initiative, Proposition 115, that has dramatically shortened the gap between arrest and trial in California.

Collene Campbell has always loved her city of San Juan Capistrano, and last year took a second turn as mayor. But a few months back she chose not to seek reelection.

She wants to help organize a drive toward a national constitutional amendment that would give victims more rights in the criminal justice process. It’s a longshot, she knows.

The only thing she wanted to do this month was mourn her grandson’s death. And be there for her daughter. But the Ashcroft supporters called. Would she come help?

At first she said no, explaining her personal tragedy. Then they hooked her with a question she couldn’t answer: Who else knows more about speaking up for victims? She paid her own way.

“The murder of our son was brutal,” she told the senators, “and our treatment at the hands of the justice system was inhuman, cruel and barbaric. Nothing in our life had prepared us for such injustice. . . . I have faith that the [Thompson murders] case will soon be brought to trial. I only hope our family can again endure the justice system.”

A Life Ended Early Lives On in Others

Whether you disagree with her views, or John Ashcroft’s, who can dispute that Collene Campbell knows the victims’ point of view?

Most years, on April 17, the anniversary of Scott Campbell’s death, Collene and Gary have taken a boat past Catalina, to drop roses from their garden into the water for their son. They had provided a family burial plot for him, but his body was never recovered.

Brian Scott Campbell this month was buried in his uncle’s grave.

Collene Campbell talked about how close Gary and Brian were, how grandfather and grandson spent every Tuesday night together while she toiled away at City Council meetings. And she talked about a young man half Brian’s age he had befriended, a boy who suffered from a debilitating illness. It led Brian to tell his mother that if anything ever happened to him, he wanted to donate his organs to the living.

Collene described it as an unbelievable sight to see a helicopter take her grandson’s organs, packed in ice, in a rush to help others. One was a 17-year-old girl given less than a few days to live without a new liver.

The report came back to the Campbells this week: Five people with Brian Campbell’s organs, ranging in age from 17 to 55, are doing well.

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Monday and Thursday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling (714) 966-7789 or e-mail to jerry.hicks@latimes.com