02.08.18 Sam Strange's Third Parole Hearing...

February 17, 2018

Parole Hearing Statement:

My name is Shani Campbell & Crissy was my sister. Sam was accused, tried & sentenced for the murder of Crissy & Dawn almost 25 years ago. I feel the pain & devastation this has caused everyone involved has been explained at great length. And I don’t want to minimize that suffering just because so much time has passed. Because that misery was very real then & is still very real now, for all of us. Suffering such a tragedy, specifically for me, at such a young & compromising age, altered my entire life. And I do feel like expressing that raw reality is still very valid. That my mother’s heart will forever be broken. That my father has spent months investigating his own daughters murder. And that my sister Wendy struggles with a deep feeling of injustice. So I can only speak for myself.

I am grateful for my life. Even the traumatic parts I experienced, for it has made me the woman I am today. I forgive Sam for his involvement in my sisters murder. The last two times we were here, the parole board stated that Sam needed to show remorse for what he has done. And I believe, for the Parole Board, that involves Sam confessing to the actual killing of Crissy & Dawn, which he has never admitted to. I wanted to express to you all today, how I feel Sam has shown me remorse, personally, without outwardly admitting his guilt. Which, by the way, I do not need. I don’t seek his confession to anything in regards to my sisters death, as my forgiveness & compassion for the man who sits before you right now, is not contingent on any of those things. He could admit that he brutally beat my sister to death & I would still forgive him. I would still have compassion for him. And I would still believe in second chances.

Sam has expressed his remorse to me through allowing me into his life. Which he didn’t have to do. Through written letters for the past several years I have gotten to know Sam as a person. Which was extremely important for my own recovery. To see him no longer as a monster but as a human being. Through our correspondence I have learned more about what Sam has done to better himself while incarcerated. He has expressed his hopes & plans for the future. He has never asked anything from me nor have we ever discussed these parole hearings. I have simply shared my life, interests & thoughts with him as he did with me.

I think Sam has come very far from where he started & through some intense & less than ideal circumstances, he has improved his life vastly. I feel he has accepted his role in this crime & accepted the punishment. He has used his time in prison to the best of his ability & I believe, will come out a better man. I know Sam has a family & now a wife, who surely love & miss him. I think about Sam’s younger brother & how he also lost his sibling. How he has a chance to get his sibling back. Something I don’t have. I know how painful losing a sibling is & knowing that they could have a second chance with their relationship, makes me happy.

I respect the board & the medical professionals who can better analyze & judge someone’s ability to be successful in the real world after spending so much time in prison. But I ask, that if Sam admitting he did this crime is the one thing holding him back from his freedom, for you all to rethink that request. Because nothing will bring Crissy & Dawn back. I do believe in consequences, not necessarily the current prison system, but Sam has certainly suffered some pretty immense consequences for his actions. Years he can never recover. And believe me, I realize the irony in all of this, as my 16 year old sister Crissy & Dawn as well, lost their life so brutally & tragically- losing out on so many precious experiences. But again, nothing can change that. Their suffering is over & it’s up to us as individuals to determine how we allow this tragedy to further effect us. No matter how you play this out, it’s just not fair.

So I try to determine, how can we somehow make this terrible situation a more positive one. And for me, locking someone away for the rest of their life, isn’t a positive outcome for anyone. Perhaps it is completely foreign for anyone to understand why I would be asking the parole board to give Sam a second chance. Turning something so inherently negative, into something positive, is what I have always strived for. My suffering was lessened because I chose to make my life better, not because Sam was spending his days behind bars. I leave this decision up to the parole board but please, do not use my suffering as a reason to keep Sam here. So I ask, if you believe Sam is ready, give him a chance to make something positive of his life & perhaps be able to help others that are on the wrong path. He in turn, could quite possibly, save the lives of many people.

Thank you.

04.13.17 The last day I saw my sister alive...

April 12, 2017

When I heard Crissy’s loud rap music muffled through her closed door, I knew she was venturing out that day. Like most summer days, I had been up already for hours, laying in the sun, playing volleyball, watching TV and eating cereal that was entirely made of sugar. I was almost 14 years old and about to enter high school while Crissy had just finished her sophomore year. My mom was at work for the day and my dad was working in San Jose during the week, which was a seven hour drive round trip. I remember this day like it was two years ago. I cant say, “I can remember it like it was yesterday” because I cant even remember what I did yesterday, or the day before or even last week for that matter. Its curious how days pass so quickly and without meaning, until something catastrophic happens that makes that particular day, special. Special is probably a terrible way to describe the last day you saw your sister alive, but I do look back on that day fondly. It was the last day I would ever see my sister Crissy and the last few days of my innocence. I cherish that moment of not knowing what murder really meant to a family. I cherish that moment of seeing my sister as a whole human being rather than a person I once knew over 20 years ago. I cherish the stillness of the thick summer air, the quietness of my mind which would soon tumble into a dark downward spiral and I cherish the carefree feel that which summers were made of. Where I was once just Shannon Campbell, a silly privileged white girl with little concern for anything beyond my simple life and that, which surrounded it. To Shannon Campbell, sister of murdered teen Cristina Campbell, victim of violence and terror.

I looked out from my entirely too hot bedroom, which was made even more unpleasant because of the vaulted ceilings, huge bay window and broken air conditioner. Grass Valley summers were very hot and dry, with prickly weeds blanketing the desolate landscape of the boonies where we lived. I hardly went anywhere, especially during the summer months, with most of my friends living too far away. Where we lived, an unplanned trip to the grocery store, which took 30 minutes one way, was as exciting as it got, even for most summer days. I was half jealous and half happy that Crissy was going to “town”; that’s what you call civilization when you live in the middle of nowhere, “town”. Even though I was stuck at home with no future plans of adventures, I knew Crissy had been held up in her room the past week or so after her boyfriend broke up with her, so jealously turned to gratefulness that she was getting out. We fought relentlessly, like most siblings who were just two years apart would, but she was also my best friend, my anchor and the person who would go to the bathroom with me in public places because I was, for some reason, too scared to go alone. She would yell at me for using her make up or stepping foot into her room, unless I was performing some ridiculous dance or doing my Jim Carry “Fire Marshall Bill” impression. Her room had stayed pretty silent for that week of hibernation and I remember bringing her dinner a few times because she didn’t want to come down.

The last few weeks of her life and even the few weeks after her body was found are a blur, but that day, the day I last saw her alive is very clear. I was familiar with Dawn, one of her on again off again friends, as she had stayed at our house a few times. Yet I had never heard of Sam before and didn’t know anything about him except that he was going to pick Crissy up that day with Dawn. At this point in my life I would have been labeled a goodie two shoes, someone who didn’t break rules, thought sex was gross and certainly wouldn’t be drinking or smoking. Every time Crissy talked about sex I would gag and squeal yet also be amazed at how grown up she was compared to me, even though only two years separated us. She had started smoking cigarettes a few months prior and I just thought it was the worst thing she could do. Even though I was a brat and annoying as hell, I never once told on her and she would freely smoke around me and tell me when she was going to do something she wasn’t supposed to do. As we stood in my bedroom she proudly gloated how a boy was picking her up and how she was going to smoke weed for the first time. She grabbed a tiny bottle of alcohol my aunt had given me, purely for decoration as drinking in my opinion was just wrong, and started sipping it like the badass older sister she always lived up to be. We only stood there for several minutes before a little truck pulled up beside our property. I look back at those moments now and want to scream at her to not go, to not get into that truck. I can picture myself galloping down the staircase and out the front door, tripping on our long gravel driveway and grabbing her tightly, never letting go. It never crossed my mind that she would be dead and gone within 48 hours of that moment and that our lives would be forever altered. If only I had known. Instead of the movie worthy scene of me saving her life, she quietly yet excitingly turned away from me, grabbed her backpack and stepped out the door. I watched from my window as her tiny 4 foot 9 inch frame, dressed as always in her big long baggy “gangster” white pants and black t-shirt, walked towards a little yellow beat up truck. That same truck would eventually hold her and Dawns badly beaten dead bodies to be dumped like trash and the man driving, Sam Strange, would forever be a part of our narrative. The last thing I remember seeing was Crissy’s long brown hair, flowing in the mild summer wind, walking away from our safe home and into the presence of the man who would soon witness her violent murder and not save her life. I cannot tell you what I did the rest of that day or even what I was doing the night she was murdered. My next vivid memory was being on my knees in our dark living room 12 days later, praying as my mom spoke to police on the phone, regarding two girls’ decomposed bodies that had been found on a mountain side.

03.03.17 gravesites

March 3, 2017

The first time death affected me personally was when my sister was killed. I was 13 going on 14 and had never really experienced death beyond losing a family dog that I wasn’t very close to. Even then, my sister Crissy was cremated and we still have her ashes. I had never experienced visiting a gravesite, where you stand there knowing your loved one’s body was under the earth you were mourning over. I had visited the site where Crissy and her friend’s bodies were dumped, which now had two huge crosses constructed and felt that sick feeling of imagining her decomposed body lying on the earth I now sobbed over. I never thought about how I would feel standing over her actual body dead and deep in the ground.

As I hiked up that steep hill my heart was pounding and stinging, which I could not determine was because I was out of shape or I was about to visit where we buried Sinister’s body. I felt anxious about going but also felt this need to visit and see it again. It has been almost three weeks since we put his body into that hole and I wondered what I would find. Had an animal dug him up and used his body for food? Would the flowers we left be alive and blooming? Would I feel him near me? As I walked around the path I could see the hilltop in the distance and it was so beautiful yet I cried and felt so sad. I was listening to the Howard Stern show the whole way up, avoiding the feelings and trying to trudge along. As I got to the bottom of the hill Sinister was buried on top of I turned off what I was listening to and made my way up. The closer I got the more anxious I felt and I stopped several times to just cry and clench my aching heart. I finally got to a point where I could see the fresh dirt and did not see much of a disturbance and kept walking.

The earth had settled on top of him as his body is decomposing and the flowers we left were dead and dried. All I could muster was “oh sinders…” I had this plan to sit and write or meditate next to his “area” but there were swarms of little bugs attaching themselves to my arms and back. I walked around and around and shooed them feeling defeated- “well I can’t stay here, there are just too many bugs”. And I knew right away that I was doing what I always do- avoiding the pain. I just keep moving. I keep moving through life because if I stop the pain will overcome me. And as I was pacing around Sinister’s gravesite I became eerily aware of how much these little bugs were showing me. They symbolized all the pain I have experienced and every time I stopped they attached themselves to me, clinging on for dear life and would only let go and disperse once I started moving again. So I stopped moving. I sat down on some rocks, very aware that I kept a certain amount of distance from where Sinister’s body was.

I sat and I cried. I wrote, I cried, I thought of things, I laughed, I blew my nose and I just felt it. The sadness. The pain. With every part of my body; I felt the hard rock under my butt, I felt the pen in my hands, I felt the hat on my head, I felt the sun and warmth on my skin and I felt the pain in my heart. And I no longer felt any bugs landing on my skin. They eventually went away and I sat with that peace for a bit. I stood up, brushed myself off and walked over one last time to that spot of land. I felt grateful that we could offer Sinister’s body to nourish the earth below as he nourished our lives for so many years. I put my hands on my heart and then onto the ground, touching the fresh flowers I had laid there. As I walked down the steep hill carefully, I no longer felt anxious or worried but the sadness remained deep in my heart.

And that’s okay.