LOS ANGELES – Beth Webb has a big tattoo. It’s a darkly shaded portrait that stretches from the top of her right shoulder to nearly her elbow. It’s of her youngest sister, Laura, on her wedding day, four months before her death.
Laura was killed in 2011 in the Salon Meritage mass shooting in Seal Beach, California, along with seven others. Her mother, Harriet, was the only survivor. Sitting in her home decorated with an ornate red lamp strung with crystals, a large fronded plant, and her two dogs barking in the background, Webb talks about her journey after her sister’s murder.
“I cannot tell you how mad I was,” said Webb, her voice shaking as she recalled the all-encompassing anger. “If I could have got my hands on him, I would have killed him myself.”
For someone who had always been against the death penalty, that darkness was difficult to reconcile. “You have to exorcise your soul,” Webb said. “I want to be a better person than the man that killed my sister.”
“We have a saying in our family that love is louder,” Webb said. “We kept saying it until it deafened the hate.”
Since Laura’s murder, Webb has been outspoken against the death penalty. On the board of directors for Death Penalty Focus, one of the largest advocacy groups in the U.S., she fights to abolish the death penalty in California and nationwide. She represents a less visible group: families of murder victims opposed to the death penalty. In that role, Webb supports the group’s advocacy by sharing her experience. She travels around California, speaking out against the death penalty. She is also occasionally a panelist for Amnesty International.
In the state with the largest death row population in the country, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, November’s election represents a crucial crossroads.
California’s two gubernatorial candidates have different stances on Governor Gavin Newsom’s execution moratorium. Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, said he will continue it in a post on X. Steve Hilton, a Republican, said he would rescind it in an interview with the LA Times.
In 2017, Becerra’s attorney general’s office announced that it had taken over the case of Laura’s killer after the Orange County District Attorney’s Office was removed for prosecutorial misconduct. The attorney general’s office continued to seek the death penalty despite requests from the victims’ families not to. Laura’s killer was sentenced to life in prison.
The case took six years of Webb’s life. Living through an effort to secure a death sentence reinforced her belief that execution would not alleviate her pain.
“If you lose somebody to an accident or a disease, people will start immediately trying to help you heal,” Webb said. “It is only when it happens on purpose that people want you to stay in your broken state, in your anger state.” Even now, people ask Webb whether her sister’s killer has been executed.
Part of Webb’s work is helping people understand how pursuing an execution can prolong families’ pain rather than ease it.
“So many people think they’re doing it for us,” Webb said. “I’ve never heard [someone] say that ‘the day they executed him, I felt better.’”
Webb cannot fill the hole that is the loss of her sister, but she can channel that pain into action. Her goal is to create a world where others don’t have to experience what she did.
Webb says that using her voice is her superpower. In the coming weeks and months, she will be traveling on behalf of Death Penalty Focus, personalizing the effects of the death penalty on victims by telling her story. Webb wants to make sure when people hear her story, they remember Laura’s name, too.
Laura was loved. She loved Guns N ’ Roses, and Webb thinks of her whenever their songs come on. She was friends with everybody, and hosted an annual Christmas party for friends and family.
“Laura smoked a bit of weed,” said Webb with a laugh. “And I say that because she was super easy. She was funny.”
“We’re huge Raiders fans. John Madden said if he had a dime, he would have called Al Davis. That stuck with me,” Webb said. “Laura was my dime.”
Since the killer’s sentencing, Webb has been able to put him out of her mind. She never says his name nor thinks about him.
She thinks about Laura every day. “He can’t live in the same place she does.”
Even if it takes the rest of her life, Webb will continue to fight for the death penalty’s abolition, a punishment that she says has no place in a civilized world.
“I don’t want to fight forever and not win,” said Webb, and then, with a smile, “I’m competitive.”
Webb thinks often about what Laura would think of her advocacy. While Laura hated conflict, Webb believes she would be proud of Webb for standing up for her beliefs and encouraging others to choose mercy over vengeance.
“Laura paid her life for me to learn a lesson and for me to share that lesson,” Webb said.
Cover photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
