Out of the shadows: the Wesson family

Wife, children of Marcus Wesson search for stability after '04 Fresno murders.

Posted at 01:44 PM on Friday, Sep. 11, 2009

Marcus Wesson is in San Quentin prison, waiting to die. In 2004 he murdered nine of his children, exposing a Fresno family scarred by incest and violence to a horrified world.

Speaking publicly for the first time since Wesson's trial, surviving members of that family say they remain tormented by memories and by guilt. And they say they still suffer humiliation and rejection by some outsiders who know their past.

"I wish with all my heart some days that I was somebody else. But I have to live with this the rest of my life," said Gypsy, a 25-year-old daughter of Marcus Wesson.

"There are some good days and then there are some really bad days," she said. "People can be so low and so hurtful."

Many who recognize the Wesson name see family members as part of the evil, not as victims struggling to recover, Gypsy said.

"They should say 'These are the people who survived' -- and see that we aren't bad people."

Family kept isolated

Wesson created an isolated world in which he sexually abused his daughters and brutally beat his sons. The few times he allowed family members out, he made the women walk behind him and told them not to make eye contact with anyone. The family, with up to two dozen members, lived in various parts of California housed in tents, a condemned boat and eventually a Fresno home on Hammond Avenue.

It was there on March 12, 2004, jurors later found, that Wesson ordered family members to carry out a murder-suicide pact. An adult daughter and eight of his younger children -- most of whom he had fathered with various daughters -- died. Images of dead babies being carried from the family's small home in central Fresno were seen around the world.

Several weeks later, in a development not made public at the time, several family members turned to an unusual source for help: a local television reporter who was covering their story.

Committing what she acknowledges was a flagrant breach of journalistic ethics, Alysia Sofios, a reporter with Fresno Fox affiliate KMPH (Channel 26.1), invited Wesson's wife, Elizabeth, daughter Kiani and niece Rosa Solorio to share her northeast Fresno apartment -- an arrangement that continues today.

Now Sofios, who continues to work at the station as a freelancer, has joined the Wessons in writing a book about their life before and after the murders.

Sofios said she agreed to write their story because a previous book by former KSEE (Channel 24.1) reporter Monte Francis seemed to leave the Wesson family stuck in the time of the murders.

"I knew personally they had all moved on so much and accomplished so much," Sofios said. But the first book "made it sound like they were still doing everything Marcus said. I could also see that people didn't treat them the way I thought they should be treated."

Marcus Wesson's wife, Elizabeth, explains why she won't change her name.

Elizabeth Wesson describes the healing process.

Elizabeth Wesson, now 50, said she has similar hopes for the book.

"My children are judged by what Marcus has done," she said. "I just want them to understand that it wasn't their fault. I want them to have a chance in life."

"Where Hope Begins," which goes on sale Tuesday, tells the family's story beginning four decades ago in San Jose when Elizabeth, just 8, met Marcus Wesson. Sofios narrates, bouncing from accounts of her life as a TV reporter and supporter of the family to the story of brutal verbal, physical and sexual abuse Marcus used to control and dominate those around him.