 |
| Frank Struthers Jr. and father cielodrive.com |
Recently the blog was able to confirm that Frank Struthers,
son of Rosemary LaBianca, has died.
Frank along with his half-sister Suzan and her boyfriend Joe Dorgan
found his mother and step-father dead, victims of a brutal murder. Frank was 16 years-old at the time.
Mary Neiswender reporting for the Long Beach Independent
August 27, 1970 on Frank’s testimony at the trial.
Wednesday, Mrs. LaBianca’s 16-year-old son, Frank Lynn Struthers, a 10th
grader at Marshall High School in Los Angeles, took the witness stand to
describe how he discovered the body of his stepfather.
What a heavy load for a young boy to carry.
Back in 1969 there were no such things as grief counselors or support groups
to help someone navigate through the loss of a loved one. There was certainly no one to speak to about
losing a loved one to a brutal murder and having had discovered that murder. A person was expected to suck it up, bury
the emotion and get on with life. It was
doubly so for males. Females were given some leeway to at least cry about their
loss but boys were taught not to cry back in those days, it was a sign of
weakness. There really was little in the
way of an emotional outlet for grieving.
Not much is known about Frank’s life after his mother was murdered but
considering his cause of death and the few things I was able to find about the
last years of his life, Frank never recovered from his mother’s death and its
aftermath.
Murders never consider the effect their act will have on their victim’s
survivors. They ruin more lives than the
one they took. Survivors are haunted by
the images of the death, they have nightmares, they feel they should have been
able to protect the victim, they feel helpless and powerless over their surroundings,
they become preoccupied about their own safety and distrustful of
strangers. But perhaps the biggest
emotion that they have to deal with is guilt.
I imagine Frank played over in his mind thousands of times a scenario where
he came home with his mother and Leno instead of staying at the lake for
another day of water skiing and hanging out with his friends. Maybe he could have prevented the murders or
at least gotten help right away. Maybe
they wouldn’t have died if he had been there.
Or conversely, maybe he would have been killed, too, and he wouldn’t
have had to deal with the emotions he was feeling.
For Frank, his mother’s murder was never ending. He was reminded of it over and over again. Not a year has gone by since the murders that
there hasn’t been a movie or a book or a television program or a news report or
a new website about it.
Frank’s death certificate, which I’m not going to post, states that he died
at 63 years of age on June 16 2017. He
was never married and he had worked in the restaurant business for 20 years. He lived in Placentia CA for the last 10
years.
Frank died at Placentia Linda Hospital.
The cause of death was 1. Acute respiratory failure (days) 2. Sepsis
(days) 3. Alcohol related liver cirrhosis
(years)
He was cremated and his ashes were scattered off the coast of Orange County.
The informant for personal information on the death certificate was given
by a cousin who lives back east. A
family tree at Ancestry gave his date of death but it got the year wrong. It also shows that Frank had another
half-sister besides Suzan. The other,
much older, half-sister had the same father as Frank. She passed in 2013.
Rest in peace, Frank.
