The mother of a man thrown to his death from a plane in 1982 criticized state officials Tuesday for moving up a parole hearing for her son’s killer without notifying her, a move that Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas is seeking to block by filing a lawsuit alleging it was against the law.
Collene Campbell, a longtime victims’ rights advocate and former San Juan Capistrano mayor, told reporters how she often drives for hours to parole board hearings for her 27-year-old son’s killer, former family friend Lawrence Rayborn Cowell, only to be told they’re canceled or rescheduled.
At Cowell’s last parole board hearing in October 2016, the convict was told he would not get another hearing to determine if he is suitable for release until 2019. A state official, however, moved up that parole board hearing to May 23.
Rackauckas revealed Tuesday that he filed a lawsuit against the state Department of Corrections on April 11. The county’s top prosecutor alleges that the state “bureaucrat” who moved up the parole board hearing was not legally authorized to do so, and that the rescheduling was done without properly notifying Campbell, which would be a violation of her rights as a crime victim.
“What happens to victims is very unfair,” said Campbell, who was spurred to activism by her son’s murder and the 1988 slayings of her brother, race car legend Mickey Thompson, and his wife Trudy.
“We’re hurting anyway, and we’re trusting the justice system and the parole board to help us get through the stress, but, more often than not, those parole hearings are changed or canceled after you’ve driven the distance…,” she said. “It needs to be changed … It’s very unfair and demeaning to a family that’s already hurting.”
Campbell, who’s in her 80s, added that with the death last fall of her husband, Gary, it is more of a hardship to get to the parole hearings that she feels compelled to attend to advocate on behalf of their son.
Campbell and Rackauckas were joined by Broadcom co-founder Henry Nicholas III, who spearheaded Marsy’s Law, which guarantees rights to crime victims that he said were being undermined as the state grapples with prison overcrowding.
“What’s going on in this state — they are undermining these constitutional rights,” Nicholas said.
Rackauckas agreed, alleging that Cowell’s parole board hearing was moved up as part of the broader effort to relieve prison overcrowding.
“I see this as part of that because it is a continuance of this movement to get people out of prison,” Rackauckas said.
Messages left with Corrections Department officials were not immediately returned.
A hearing on Rackauckas’ lawsuit is scheduled for May 16.
Cowell was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison on Jan. 26, 1990. He and co-defendant Donald P. DiMascio, who was convicted in a separate trial, conspired to kill Scott Campbell for money on April 17, 1982. Cowell rented an airplane and hired DiMascio to kill the victim, who got on the plane thinking he was completing pilot training with DiMascio as his instructor.
DiMascio beat and strangled Campbell with Cowell behind the controls of the plane. Both men smashed in Campbell’s face and hurled his body into the ocean near Catalina Island, hoping the bloodied face would draw sharks and the victim would never be found, prosecutors said.
Campbell’s worried parents called Anaheim police later in the day, and Cowell, who had Campbell’s Pantera sports car, which was being stripped for parts to be sold, was later arrested.
Cowell was out on bail awaiting trial for a drunken driving crash that killed his passenger, Robert Leon Ferguson, in July 1980, when he killed Campbell, whose body was never recovered, prosecutors said. Cowell was convicted of vehicular manslaughter for Ferguson’s death and sentenced to six months in jail in August 1982.
While out on bail in the Campbell murder, Cowell attacked his father and bit off part of his mother’s finger when she tried to break it up, prosecutors said.
After Cowell’s first conviction in Campbell’s murder was overturned on appeal, he was awaiting a new trial when he was involved in another drunken driving crash, this time on the water, on June 10, 1989, on the Colorado River.
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