Mother responds to letter of son's killer

Mother responds to letter of son's killer
BY SUE HOY-ELLIOTT, Contributing writer | Monday, Jul 16 2007 9:05 PM

Last Updated: Monday, Jul 16 2007 9:09 PM

Editor's note: On Friday we published a letter of apology from Nick Woodall, who was convicted in 1988 of the murder of Michael Hoy.

We failed to contact the victim's family before publishing it. A response from Hoy's mother appears below.

We regret any pain the publication of this piece caused Hoy's family and I apologize for it.

-- Mike Jenner, executive editor

Once again The Californian has demonstrated callous disregard by printing the purported apology letter from the man who bludgeoned to death Michael Hoy, my son, in October 1987.

The editor's note above this abomination refers to "Californian archives." Those archives could not possibly have been thoroughly searched or the letter I wrote to the Probation Department before Michael's murderer's sentencing and quoted in The Californian on April 7, 1988 edition would have been found.

It is clear that The Californian made no attempt to contact us in any way prior to bludgeoning our hearts, while a cold blooded murderer had his ten minutes in the spotlight!

We are relieved that Michael's murderer's attempts to contact us have failed and pray that security net will remain in place if anyone at The Californian still knows the meanings of integrity and confidentiality.

http://www.bakersfield.com/hourly_news/story/190298.html

Note to Mods - I included more than 4 paragraphs as the apology from the paper is separate from the article/letter.