Stanislaus Family Justice Center Observes Week Honoring Victims

Saturday, Apr. 16, 2011
By John Holland

MODESTO -- Sandy Ranzo Howell stood Saturday on the doorstep of a place that might have helped her through horror 32 years ago.

She spoke to more than 100 people outside the Stanislaus Family Justice Center, which has aided crime victims and their families since opening last year on I Street in downtown Modesto.

Howell said there was no such place when her brother and sister-in-law, Phillip and Kathryn Ranzo, were murdered in their northeast Modesto home in 1979.

"Thirty years ago, there wasn't any counseling for the victims," she said. "You sat in the courtroom and in the hall alone until your name was called to testify."

Howell was the featured speaker at an observance of National Crime Victims' Rights Week, sponsored by the center and the Victim Services Program in the Stanislaus County district attorney's office.

The event started with a five-block march from Courthouse Park, with the Beyer High School band playing a medley of patriotic songs. Marie Ranzo, the 93-year-old mother of Phillip Ranzo, took part in a wheelchair.

Kathy Hogrefe of Modesto marched with a large portrait of her friend California Highway Patrol officer Earl Scott, who was shot and killed during a traffic stop near Salida in 2006. "I think it's important to remember that law enforcement officers are victims of crime, too," she said.

On the center's steps, director Tom Ciccarelli described its mission of providing a range of victim services in a single place. About 75 such centers have opened across the nation and twice that number are planned, he said.

Ciccarelli said the Ranzo murders were an apt example of the need to help victims and their loved ones.

"The Ranzo family was rocked many years ago, and this community was rocked, too," he said. "It was a heinous crime."

The Ranzos were killed June 26, 1979, after four teenage boys came to their home and pretended they needed to use their phone. The four — Marty Spears, Ronald Anderson, Darren Lee and Jeffrey Maria — remain in prison.

Howell said law enforcement officers and the district attorney's office "were wonderful" in the aftermath of the murders, but the lack of victim services still hurt.

Things were different in February of this year, when the district attorney's victim advocates helped the Ranzo family prepare for Spears' parole hearing. After testimony by survivors and others, parole was denied.

Howell said the family will continue to attend parole hearings as a way of keeping the slain couple's memory alive. "We didn't get a chance to say 'I love you' one more time," she said. "We didn't get a chance to say, 'Goodbye.' "