‘Hurt Will Never Go Away,’ Victim’s Mother Says

After crisscrossing the continent three times since their 18-year-old son was brutally murdered on the Hollywood High School campus last May, the parents of Robert Campo Jr. made one final trip to Los Angeles--for a 13-minute hearing Thursday in Superior Court.

“The hurt will never go away, but maybe we can at least begin to heal some,” Mary Campo said after the hearing to sentence the man convicted of killing her son, who had left his Upstate New York home two months earlier to find fame as a musician in Hollywood.

Flanked by her husband and two other children, she watched somberly as Judge J. D. Smith sentenced Melvin Hemphill, a 22-year-old drifter, to 15 years to life in prison for killing Campo and eight years in prison for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy less than a week later at the high school.

Hemphill, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder under a plea bargain, will be eligible for parole in 7 1/2 years, prosecutors said.

“I wouldn’t call it justice,” Mary Campo said. “But at least we know we’ve done all we can.”

While their pain was not unlike that of other families of murder victims, prosecutors said the Campos’ ordeal was unusual in several respects.

“You’re talking about a family 3,000 miles away,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Stephen David Sitkoff said. “It was rough on them. But they insisted on coming here three--and in the father’s case four--times. They insisted on being kept abreast of every development in the case. Anything that might help sort out the tragedy for them.”

Robbie Campo, as his family called him, left home in March with a friend after spurning a college scholarship to study art, according to his parents.

It was his dream of becoming a rock guitarist that propelled him from the quiet village of Putnam Valley, N.Y., to a noisy, one-bedroom apartment he shared with the friend a block from Hollywood Boulevard. On the day before his body was found stuffed in a ventilation shaft, he had called home to assure his parents that they had not made a mistake.

“He said all his bills were paid, he was being careful where he went, and that they had just named him ‘employee of the week’ where he worked,” at a company that conducts telephone surveys, Robert Campo Sr. said.

“We had sort of talked him out of going to New York (City) at one point because of the crime there,” he said. “You can’t handcuff your kids and keep them at home. There comes a point when, as bad as you hate to see it, you have to let them spread their wings and fly.”

A janitor found Campo’s body early on the morning of May 2. Authorities said he had been accosted after going for a late-night stroll and was sexually assaulted, beaten and strangled.

Police arrested Hemphill six nights later near the spot where Campo’s body was found as he was sexually molesting the 14-year-old. Hemphill apparently coaxed the boy away with a promise of money in exchange for help in moving some personal items, authorities said.

Court records show that it was not the first time Hemphill had preyed on people near the school. He had pleaded no contest to a nighttime robbery on the campus in November, 1986, and was sentenced to 60 days in jail and two years of probation.

Records showed Hemphill also was convicted of sexual assault and robbery in Cleveland last January, crimes for which he could have been sentenced to between three and 15 years in prison. But the Ohio judge placed him on probation for two years, with the condition that the probation be transferred to California.

“I call that really incredible,” Sitkoff said. “It appears the judge in Cleveland in effect said, ‘OK, we’ll cut you loose as long as you get out of Ohio.’ ”

The probation report noted that he was scheduled to appear before a probation officer in Los Angeles on July 19, but was “unable to keep the appointment” because he was in jail charged with Campo’s murder and the other assault.

During most of the hearing Thursday, Hemphill sat without expression, his left hand resting on his chin, as Mary Campo delivered a statement on behalf of the family.

As other members of her family choked back tears, she pointed sternly at Hemphill and accused him of “betraying our son Robert in the most vile, most contemptible way.”

After the hearing, as she was embraced by her 17-year-old daughter, Jeniffer, and the couple’s eldest son, Christopher, Mary Campo attempted to put the ordeal in perspective.

“I feel like more than one person murdered my son,” she said. “I think the whole criminal justice system let us down. What else is there to think under the circumstances?”