(San Diego Reader April 15, 2025)

On March 5, 2001, using a stolen 22-caliber revolver and reloading the gun twice, Charles Andrew "Andy" Williams wounded 13 classmates and killed two fellow students at Santana High School in Santee. Local outrage, within easy memory of Columbine, fed on a national desire for vengeance as well as assembled a cruel paradox—an adolescent who lacks reason and restraint as a boy is, because of the random atrocity, also adult enough to be tried as one. In other words, Williams, at 15, was a natural-born killer. Such was the law, and the prosecutorial charge. Consequently, he pled guilty to first-degree murder twice and received two consecutive 25-years-to-life sentences.

Four years later, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Roper vs Simmons that capital punishment constituted the sort of “cruel and unusual” punishment forbidden by the Eighth Amendment. Part of their considerations involved matters of brain development: the American Psychological Association had filed an amicus brief that read in part, “in late adolescence, important aspects of brain maturation remain incomplete, particularly those involving the brain’s executive functions.” In 2016, California passed a law reflecting similar research that stopped district attorneys from charging underage school shooters in adult court, even though adolescents can still be charged with first-degree murder in juvenile court. Another California law in 2018 forbade 14- and 15-year-olds from being tried in adult courts; 16- and 17-year-olds can be transferred to the adult venue.

Eventually, California law stated that offenders under 26 when they committed a crime were declared eligible for “youth parole consideration” after serving 25 years.

Those civil remedies and other factors, among them Williams's maturity in prison, brought about, last September, Williams's first parole hearing.

Representing Williams is Laura Sheppard, among the state’s most renowned attorneys who counsel lifers seeking parole. At 44, Sheppard is working on her PhD in forensic psychology at Alliant University and, after 15 years as a parole lawyer, still taking new cases. The dark-maned woman, who dresses in the requisite skirt and blazer for court and a black leather jacket to coffeehouse with me, though she refuses to partake, knows as intimately as any outsider can her clients’ prison hell and remains inspired by their endurance and maturity.

As their hearings approach, Sheppard helps men (and a few women) manage fears, modify expectations, and shoulder their successful rehab with the victims’ core demand: abject remorse for his crime and continued punishment for their loss. It’s taken a toll, she says. “But I still believe the best about people, especially those who shouldn’t be defined by the worst mistake of their lives.” This includes Rene “The Boxer” Enriquez, an ex-Mexican Mafia kingpin and prison gang member who’d been behind bars since 1993 for two second-degree murders, multiple assaults, and drug trafficking in lockup—until Sheppard, and Enriquez’s cooperation with the FBI, secured his parole.

Believing the best has been her life’s mission. Born and bred in Berkeley, her parents modeled service: her father pursued a vaccine for AIDS while her mother taught middle school. Jesus and Star Trek also mattered. Star Trek? Yes. “The Vulcan motto,” she notes, “is infinite diversity in infinite combination. Which we should embrace. When you meet somebody who’s literally an alien”—men doing life in the overcrowded underworld of Donovan State Prison—“you should welcome them with open arms.”

When Sheppard was six, her parents responded to a program for lifers who had few to no visitors at San Quentin. They supported Terry Farley whose crime was second-degree murder—he killed a Vietnamese gas station attendant during a robbery and got 7-to-life. (Sheppard says at the time, 1977, this meant “until you are rehabilitated.” Then, the average time served for a “life sentence” was 12 years.) After graduating law school in 2009, Sheppard’s first client was Farley. She represented him but they lost—the 17th time he had failed before the Board of Parole. Undeterred, she learned her craft with dozens of other lifers, so by 2013 she and Farley returned, his 18th time, and he won. To date, in her 15-year career, she tallies having aided 170 of 500 men and women earn parole—that is, get out, not off.

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Sheppard and Williams began their association began in 2019; Jo Pastore, Williams’s defense attorney during his original trial, asked her to get involved. They interviewed him at Sacramento State Prison, believing he “demonstrated rehabilitation.” Pastore tells me that Sheppard, whom she still mentors, is a “born defense attorney, driven” not by ego but by her “dedication to inmates who’ve fully turned their lives around.” She adds, Sheppard possesses the defender’s Triple Crown: “crazy smart, compassionate, and self-motivated.”
The two parole commissioners begin the hearing with long position statements then ask Sheppard to speak. She describes how justice and forgiveness comprise a two-sided coin. Williams can be locked up forever, but that does no one any good. The goal is redemption for both “the community and the person himself.” In his defense, she cites an array of “causative factors.” Williams had been bullied much of his life, especially at Santana, had little contact with his mother after his parents’ divorce when he was three, and was a serious drug user from 12 to 15. Worse, he’d been sexually abused by a 40-year-old man who said if he didn’t shoot the teacher who shamed him in front of a class, he, the man, in Williams’s words, “would kill me.” That was Friday. Monday he came loaded, intending to shoot the teacher and then himself. Something worse happened.

Sheppard reminds the board that Williams has written “personalized apologies to everyone,” holds two associates’ degrees, is trained as a journeyman mason, and is now a state-licensed drug and alcohol counselor, a skilled mentor, looked up to by staff and inmates, aiding many men who’ll earn parole before he does. In addition, he’s practiced sobriety for years, completed “victim impact and victim awareness” programs as well as group sessions on “denial management,” and detailed his relapse prevention plan, addressing his “dangerousness.” What does he do when free if he’s overcome by a desire to commit violence? He’s learned self-control, Sheppard says, and will minimize the concern with job offers in Northern California, far from Santee.

At one point, Williams reads a letter, which reads in part: “I am so very sorry for the inexcusable and senseless murder of Randy. You had an amazing family unit and I had no right to break into your lives and steal such a promising young man away from you. My callous actions took your boy from you and with the deepest remorse, I am sorry.”

Sheppard has the last word. “No amount of time can pay for the harm he caused. But we as a State have laws that allow for redemption and restoration instead of eye-for-an-eye punishment. We as a State believe that especially for those who commit crimes as children, rehabilitation is possible and offenders should be returned to their community,” that is, society, not necessarily the scene of the crime.

As for social justice, Sheppard faults Santana High before and after the shooting—their feckless response to Andy’s complaints went unheeded, and even after Santana lost a lawsuit that stipulated an anti-bullying program, no such program exists. The community isn’t doing its part, Sheppard says. Nor are the victims. A quarter-century on, they packed the hearing, “spewing hatred and anger at him. It was like he kept being punched over and over in the heart.”

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Only one pool reporter is allowed to attend a hearing, and no video is made. Reading the transcript is a bit like watching a movie with the sound off, but the emotions, nonetheless, are scathingly embodied. There’s an adversarial nature of “parole consideration,” perhaps unintended, which seems to prioritize victims’ testimony—wrenching, vindictive, stingily honest—and to a significant degree may sway the commissioners. The inmate is at the mercy of a hearing that does it best to be merciless.

Deputy district attorney John Cross describes Williams having bragged of “pulling a Columbine. He wanted to be remembered.” He names the 13 victims, and cites on their bodies where each was shot. He names the two dead boys, Bryan, shot in the back and Randy, shot in the back of the head. He lists Williams’s consumption of drugs and alcohol, from age 12 to 15, and for a time in prison. A rule-breaker, during a visit with his wife (a recent prison marriage), Williams was demonstrably sexual with her. His boundaries are porous. His sorrow feels scripted.

Pre-hearing, three student survivors garnered 1600 signatures opposing his release. Of the 21 who testify against him, one shows up despite having cancer. Others who were physically and psychologically wounded itemize their trauma: hypervigilance in crowds, panic over fireworks, expensive therapy and medications, nightmares. One insists no one is releasing her from her bondage. Another says that Williams got 50-to-life, that is, two 25-to-life consecutive sentences; parole would mean he does no time for one of the deceased. Melissa McNulty, a mother, says she can still hear the “sound of bullets hitting lockers.” She bemoans lying to her child that she’ll be safe in an American school. McNulty ends by predicting that if he’s let out, “23 years of healing will be undone in an instant.”

One of the two teens killed was Bryan Zuckor, 14. The other was Randy Gordon, 17. Gordon’s mother, Mari Gordon-Rayborn, Zooms from her car. Prior to her testimony, a local reporter tracked her down; she’s lived in her Nissan for 12 years and panhandles the streets of El Cajon. With a severe spinal curve, she’s broken: PTSD and depression, unable to work, permanently disabled, she’s been assaulted, raped, hungry, and lonely. She says, “I do not believe he fully comprehends the devastation his actions have caused the families of the victims, the students at Santana High School, and the community. He doesn’t seem to understand the premeditation of [his] violent act.” Her daughter, Alyssa, says that “Andy buried my mom the day he buried Randy.”

Close of day, Commissioner Kevin Chappell announces the board’s decision: Despite the “diminished culpability of youth,” his deficient mental development, his childhood’s “abusive and neglectful environment, we find that you have not adequately addressed your risk factors or internalized programs related to criminal thinking, your history of negative peer association, and your understanding of the causative factors that led to your actions in the crime. We find your programming”—an odd reference to his rehab in prison—“has no impact on your current risk level or is a neutral factor.”

The commissioners state that Williams still doesn’t understand the reason for the berserk nature of his frenzy, especially as he reloaded the gun twice when he could have stopped and demonstrated a conscience, one element of control the releasable must parlay as their second chance.

Parole denied. To be revisited in three years.

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San Diego public defender, Caley Anderson, a student at Santana in 2001 at whom Willimas shot and missed, graduated with Sheppard from University of San Diego law school in 2009. During the recession, they partnered for a couple years to build their resumes. She went into “post-conviction work,” he says, while he preferred representing defendants, “pre-conviction.” Of Sheppard he notes, “Laura’s a true believer. Not every lawyer you’re going to get [gives] anywhere near the effort you get with her.” Both agree on the principle of restorative justice, which he defines as “what we as a society need to do with the person to prevent harm in the future, to make victims whole to the extent we can, and to make the society a better place.” 

Anderson who spoke in support of Williams's parole tells me that after meeting him and reviewing his progress, he sees substantive change, worthy of release. “With Mr. Williams, I don’t see that we achieve much by keeping him in prison indefinitely.”

After digesting the transcript, I wonder whether such helter-skelter violence can ever be forgiven. It seems impossible when his present-day accusers insist pain buries grace. He disagrees. “Victims want what they call justice and I call vengeance.” In a sense, their retaliation allies with the cruelty of his act and for which the commiserate cruelty of prison may assuage their agony. The fact that Williams sobbed throughout attests to a kind of group intent, a ganging up.

Anderson has told Williams, now 39, that he’s forgiven him for shooting at him that day. In fact, he suffers no lasting grief from the violence. Williams’s “egregious sentences” deny Anderson his closure, his healing. “It bothers me that he’s sitting in a cage every day, having to sleep behind bars every night, partially, in my name.”

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When Sheppard drove to San Francisco and the next day at dawn to the California Health Care Facility in Stockton to be with Williams, she tells me her presence helped him endure a brutal day of victims’ rebuke. She believed he’d be granted parole. And when, after 7 hours of "the weight of secondary trauma" on her, he wasn't granted parole, she drove back angry and crying at the unfairness, the waste. In the City, she met her father and new husband for a Giants baseball game. (She and her French spouse met while they were volunteer umpires—a side profession—during a Little League tournament in Italy. Last August they were married at home plate on a ballfield in City Heights, joined, among others, by three friends: paroled lifers.)

That day of defeat with Williams her tears, she says, were “not just for Andy. It was what those kids went through, what the community went through that was so painful and harrowing. I sat there and listened to 21 people speak, right? And I sat beside Andy as he listened. I watched the snot and the tears just roll. I remember there was one victim who said another student committed suicide. When that statement was made—I wish I could show you the kind of physical reaction he had, shocked and utterly heartbroken. I have a very slight bit of objectivity because I didn’t go through what they went through, and I’m not experiencing the guilt Andy has. But I’m still a human and I have a ton of empathy. So, I’m watching these people hurt, and it doesn’t for one second make me think Andy belongs in prison because being in prison doesn’t fix anything. It doesn’t make it better.”

She goes on: “When we just keep telling [the story of the murder] over and over again, all we’re doing is hurting them.” By them, though it may seem repugnant to equate, she means victims and perpetrator. They are bonded in an after-crime morass of suffering, reminded of what cannot be undone.

Sheppard says a parole hearing for lifers centers, on the one hand, with victims being “re-traumatized every frickin time they hear about the [Williams] case,” and, on the other, with her, the state, the prison system, and psychologists, all convinced that parole is “possible and desirable,” which enlarges the social responsibility for juvenile crimes that surpasses the victims’ purview. There’s no other way forgiveness for such murderous mayhem can exist—necessary, in her opinion, to victims, Santana High’s memory, the community stain on Santee, and the social sphere in which Williams may one day “go free” and must be trusted—unless this “child killer,” sooner than later, is redeemed by his release. The claim is idealistic, to be sure, but it foundations a near-sacred duty by which Sheppard wrestles with inmates’ and victims’ pain in her heart.