When Wendy Williams was just 12 years old, Richard Farley gunned down her half-brother – shooting him in the head with a Benelli riot configuration shotgun. Although that was more than 37 years ago, the trauma sent shockwaves through her life, some of which still linger today.
“I had a lot of anger issues growing up. I listened to a lot of heavy metal music. I acted out. I couldn’t process,” Williams said. “I will not go to sleep without an alarm system set. I am terrified to go to sleep in a house without an alarm system.”
Farley’s frenzy was the culmination of a lengthy stalking campaign, fixated on his 23-year-old former co-worker, Laura Black. That behavior made Williams hyper-aware of her surroundings.
She got a concealed handgun license. To this day, any time someone drives past her slowly, a wave of paranoia washes over her — an artifact of the psychic wound she suffered as a child.
A recent push by the Santa Clara County District Attorney has torn open those old wounds, some of which never fully healed.
A Dangerous Obsession
In February 1988, Farley — armed with a small arsenal and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition — entered the headquarters of his former employer, the Sunnyvale Electromagnetic Systems Laboratory, Inc. (ESL).
He was enraged — enraged that he had been fired, enraged that Black had spurned his increasingly ominous advances.
Over the next six hours, Farley, 39 at the time, went on a murderous rampage, killing seven people — including Williams’ half-brother, Wayne “Buddy” Williams Jr. — and wounding four others, including Black.
In October 1991, a jury found Farley guilty of the murders, finding in favor of the death penalty. Although he is still on death row — per a 2009 California Supreme Court decision to keep him there — because of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s execution moratorium, Farley is imprisoned at California Health Care Facility, a prison for the criminally insane in Stockton.
However, as part of his campaign to resentence death row inmates, Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen pushed to have Farley, 76, taken off death row, commuting his sentence to life imprisonment.
Farley shot Buddy Williams in the face as he sat at his desk near ESL’s lobby. In a letter to Williams’ widow — now named Libby Allen — Rosen wrote that he understood the attempt to resentence Farley may be “very disappointing” and “upsetting.”
While he acknowledges the resentencing “effectively changes nothing,” he added that he has “lost faith in the death penalty as a deterrent or appropriate punishment.”
“The effort has nothing to do with feeling sorry for the perpetrator. I do not,” Rosen wrote. “Nor does it have anything to do with the value of your loved one that was murdered, which is inestimable. I have been entrusted to watch over this community’s safety and fairness. I feel that justice will be best served by deciding where these criminals will die — in prison. God will decide when.”
Ripple Effect
But Rosen’s words are cold comfort to victims like Allen and Williams.
When Allen got Rosen’s letter, she assumed it was to inform her the state was finally going to execute Farley. Instead, what she read deeply disturbed her. Allen said it was “clever” of Rosen to “weaponize God” against her.
“I found so much insult in that. It literally made me go to a place quietly in my head until other victims, other survivors, started reaching out to me,” she said.
Allen pulled no punches in characterizing Rosen, calling him an “evil king,” an “anarchist of justice” and a “terrorist” who has “bamboozled the public” into thinking he cares about justice.
“He is guilty of doing every single thing Richard Farley put us through,” she said. “He is supposed to be on our side, standing up for us … I have waited my entire life for closure on this.”
And Allen wasn’t alone in her criticism of Rosen.
Wade Williams, Buddy’s brother, called Rosen’s resentencing attempt “narcissistic,” going so far as to say Rosen has a “God complex.” He said Rosen’s “lack of self-awareness” is “despicable.”
Given that, by Rosen’s own admission, resentencing Farley changes nothing, sources for this story saw little need to rehash the case. Many called it a “slap in the face” to the victims.
“It dramatically affected my family … It has resurfaced a lot of things that did not really need to resurface. It serves no real purpose,” Wade Williams said. “If this had never come around … I never really wanted to look into the details of the crime.”
Both of Buddy’s siblings said hearing the gruesome details of his death dredged up something they thought was settled long ago, something they’ve worked hard to bury psychologically.
“It is mentally draining to go through it again and again,” Wendy Williams said. “To hear the details of how they found him … I have never had to visualize it. It has brought back a lot of anxiety.”
Max Mancini has never spoken publicly about what happened that day. He has never detailed the horrific sight of seeing two female co-workers — Helen Lamparter and Glenda Moritz — cut down with shotgun fire just a few feet from him.
“A woman stepped right in front of me and was killed,” Mancini said. “The biggest thing is the guilt you feel when you are a survivor.”
Knowing first-hand the grisly terminus of workplace harassment, Mancini said the shooting has made him hyper-sensitive to such behavior.
Despite the pain, Farley’s resentencing spurred Mancini to speak out.
“It is a question of control. As a victim, you have no control,” he said. “It has gotten me fired up.”
Sources interviewed for this story all characterized the resentencing as posturing by Rosen. Mancini called the move “political under the guise of justice reform.”
Due Diligence
Former Santa Clara County District Attorney Dolores Carr has been working with McManis Faulkner Lawfirm, acting as a victims’ advocate.
Carr served as the Santa Clara County DA from 2006 to 2010.
Rosen’s push to resentence death row inmates, she said, is an overreach, saying it smacks of “personal opinion or ambition.” Accusing Rosen of a “lack of transparency,” Carr said he is “blowing [victims] off in disrespect.”
“He cares more about perpetrators than victims, apparently,” Carr said.
But Rosen has consistently appealed to loftier ideals when discussing the matter.
When he announced the effort to resentence the 15 men on death row in April 2024, Rosen wrote in a press release that the death penalty does an “indignity” to the county’s residents. He called it an “antiquated, racially biased, error-prone system that deters nothing and costs us millions of public dollars and our integrity as a community that cherishes justice.”
Still, Carr maintains Rosen is not on firm legal ground.
“One of our crucial positions is that the statute talks about reducing a term of imprisonment. Legally, a death sentence is not a term of imprisonment. It is our contention that this statute does not even apply,” she said. “If he chooses not to do that for the murders that happen under his watch, I am fine with that, but he went back 40 years where there have been jury trials.”
Sources for this story said the DA’s office failed to notify them of Farley’s resentencing, something they said is made more egregious by them being easy to find.
Although Allen was one of the few ESL victims notified, she said the courtroom was empty during the first hearing she attended last year. Further, she added, the DA’s office repeatedly told her she does not need to attend, which she said seemed like a tactic to deter her from showing up.
“There should have been hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people there,” Allen said. “Everyone deserves to be heard. We were all impacted. Shame on Rosen. He deserves to be in prison.”
The DA’s office has failed to do its “due diligence” to allow victims to be heard, Carr said. For instance, Williams’ mother lives in the same house she did in 1988, but she never received a letter notifying her of Farley’s resentencing.
Because victims were outraged that they were not being given a voice, the judge overseeing the case called for another hearing to allow the court to hear victims’ testimony.
That hearing was March 20. During hours of testimony, 36 victims shared their stories. Against the odds, Judge Benjamin Williams denied Rosen’s request to resentence Farley. All the sources interviewed for this story said they felt the judge was likely to follow Rosen’s lead.
After the verdict, Carr said the sheer number of victim testimony and having a lawyer represent them — something absent from the previous hearings — likely helped the victims get a win. She said she was “elated” the judge ruled in favor of the victims.
Because Farley was the last to be resentenced, the most recent hearing concludes Rosen’s campaign with Farley as the only loss on his record.
Maybe knowing Farley will remain on death row will allow victims — like Williams’ siblings, like Allen, like Mancini — to finally heal. But the ghosts of the past, those that have left Wendy Williams gripped with terror at the sight of slowly driving cars, are likely to remain.
Contact David Alexander at d.todd.alexander@gmail.com
Related Post:
Op-Ed: Rosen’s Lawless War Against the Death Penalty, Part II
“He [Rosen] called it an antiquated, racially biased, error-prone system that deters nothing and costs us millions of public dollars and our integrity as a community that cherishes justice.”
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If Rosen wanted to update and contribute to improving the State criminal justice system from an antiquated, racially biased, error-prone system to one that is modern, unbiased, and mitigates error he would push for the following…
1. Return criteria for expert witness to pre-1993 levels, Frye vs. the United States. In 1993, Daubert vs. Merrill Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., judges were given wide and lenient authority to self-determine who qualifies as an expert witness. Some criminal court Judges and Prosecutors used this liberal privilege to slant law enforcement testimony to a jury. https://www.expertinstitute.com/resources/insights/how-to-become-an-expert-witness/
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2. Commit resources and authority to the Public Defenders Office or an independent County Review Board to allow for Quality Control and Performance Testing of police reports and investigations. Just about every law enforcement entity in Santa Clara County has a higher use of force-frequency against people of color.
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3. Start charging police officers with perjury for intentionally withholding evidence or providing false testimony that serves as the foundation of the prosecutor’s case against an individual.
• https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/06/18/san-jose-to-pay-12-million-to-settle-wrongful-conviction-suit-from-exonerated-man/
• https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/06/26/man-gets-60k-for-wrongful-arrest-after-cops-testimony-thrown-out/