Hundreds Mourn Three Children Slain by Father

At 9:24 a.m. Friday, an altar girl carrying a tall wooden cross began the short, sad parade from the back of the church to the front, followed by more young helpers, a gray-haired priest and three white-shrouded coffins holding the bodies of Wendy Vernon’s children.

First came Amber, 12, a young poet mature beyond her years, then her 10-year-old twin brothers Matthew, smart and quick with a laugh, and Robert, an imp of a child who once plucked a rose from a stranger’s garden as a gift for a teacher.

All three were killed in Santa Clara last weekend as they slept, each shot by their father, Vernon’s ex-husband, who also killed his current wife and then himself because, he explained in a note to his mother, he couldn’t face the prospect of a second divorce.

At St. Pius V Church in Buena Park on Friday, 22 black-clad pallbearers rolled the coffins to the altar, where they formed a trilogy of loss that Father Kevin McManus struggled to put into a reassuring context.

“We know that their time here on Earth was short,” said McManus, who spoke of the children’s deaths as transitions. “Life has changed, not ended. We pray that they may be filled with every joy and blessing.”

The 80-minute service drew about 300 mourners, a mix of relatives, neighbors, schoolmates of the dead and the simply curious, who shared a morning of excruciating sadness that ended with the siblings’ burial, side by side, at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Cypress.

The service was to begin at 9 but got off to a late start, and that sense of hesitation carried through the service, a tacit acknowledgment of the difficulty in saying goodbye to children. Speakers included the young -- a friend and a cousin of the dead -- and a school principal.

Family members offered the most poignant thoughts.

“The reasons why you had to leave us we will never guess,” said Darion Hammie, Wendy Vernon’s sister. “I know that when we look up above, we know that you’re with us. Through God, we say hello.”

Jordan Hammie, a young cousin, told tales of childhood mischief, teasing and playing, and became so caught up in his reminiscences that his mother had to join him at the podium to steer him back to the painful present.

“You’ve shared the good times,” Hammie told him gently as she held him tight. “But now it’s time to say goodbye.”

So he did, saying, “I know that you’ve gone to a better place.”

He walked to the mother of his dead cousins and they embraced; then she clutched him to her lap and rocked gently as the church began singing, “Alleluia.”

A few minutes later the sad parade retraced its steps back up the aisle. First came the girl with the cross, then the altar helpers and priest.

Then, one by one, went the coffins of children, each bearing a piece of a stricken mother’s heart.