Eric Copple murdered 2 women, but what about the one who survived?

I recently wrote about Eric Copple having been found guilty (after admitting it) and getting life. But on that night he killed two women, there was a woman downstairs that escaped… and still lives with that night on her mind. Below is her story.

Woman who survived night of murders still seeking perspective, peace

Lauren Meanza had always thought of the pop song “I Hope You Dance” as upbeat.

But the other day, humming along with the chorus, the thought struck her — her former housemates Adriane Insogna and Leslie Mazzara, both murdered in their home in the pre-dawn hours of Nov. 1, 2004, would never again get the chance to dance. Suddenly Meanza was sobbing.

Meanza, 29, is the lone survivor of Eric Copple’s post-Halloween killing spree. Two years after her housemates’ deaths, Meanza said grief still blindsides her, often in the least likely moments.

“I’m still not at the point I can be happy yet. I still feel bad,” Meanza said Tuesday after a court hearing where Copple pleaded guilty to the first-degree murders of Insogna and Mazzara.

On the night of the violence, Meanza had been sleeping in the west Napa home the three women shared, when Copple broke in, climbed the stairs and fatally stabbed Insogna and Mazzara. Meanza, who slept downstairs, managed to leave the home and drive away, calling police from her cell phone.

As with Copple’s motive for the murders, no reasons have come to light as to why Copple didn’t attack Meanza.

Since then, Meanza’s journey back to normal has been long and wandering, and is still far from over.

But Meanza said Tuesday marked a big step in her recovery as she witnessed Copple admit to murdering her friends and agree to a life-long prison sentence with no possibility of parole. Copple’s formal sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 11.

After a court hearing interrupted by closed chamber meetings between the judge, prosecutors and defense attorneys, Meanza walked out of the courtroom and expressed both relief and frustration.

On the one hand, she was glad the victims’ family members won’t have to suffer through a lengthy and grueling criminal trial. On the other hand, she was upset Copple wouldn’t have to.

“I’m not at a point of forgiving. He’s slithered through this whole thing (the court process) and he’s not had to face anything,” she said. “It’s hard for me because I thought he should have to see what he did to people.”

Meanza said, as always, her entire body tensed up upon seeing Copple enter the Napa courtroom Tuesday.

“Everything shuts down, its weird. It’s not like anger or loathing,” she said. “But I think how can one person have caused so much pain? I look at his hands, his hands actually did that.”

Meanza said she’s given up trying to decipher what drove Copple to commit the grisly slayings.

“You can’t get into his mind and you don’t want to. And if you did you probably couldn’t understand completely,” she said.

Instead, Meanza said she’s focused her energies on trying to move on from the trauma and incredible loss that occurred that November night.

Last February she moved to Los Angeles. Back then she recalled thinking never again would she have to feel nauseous whenever she drove by her former neighborhood. She would make a new start.

“It was the middle of L.A., but my God, I was almost more comfortable there,” Meanza said. “Bad things happen all the time there. But it’s almost more eerie here because everybody’s so comfortable, so when something does happen it’s a double whammy.”

But for every painful memory she dodged, another seemed to surface. In a recent move, while unpacking belongings, she found some of Insogna’s old things.

“The things that were hers would trigger a memory of us in the kitchen, just small things. And suddenly I’d be crying with no reason to cry,” she said.

Once she asked a detective working the case, “What do people in my position do?”

He responded, “People in your situation don’t usually survive.”

Meanza described being the lone survivor of such a violent, inexplicable crime as “a lonely experience.” In the months after the murder she rarely slept at night.

“At nighttime I prayed for sunshine and I would be so excited right when the sun came up,” she recalled.

Often, before visiting her parents’ Napa home, she would call and ask them to meet her outside to avoid the feeling of entering a house by herself.

“It was just those simple things, everything became very, very difficult.”

Meanza said regaining her stability is a work in progress because in many respects she said she’s “still in survival mode.”

Her aim, she said, is to return to the kind of mental place she was in before the murders.

“I was truly happy at that moment in my life. I had gotten to a place where I liked my job, to a point in my life where I was satisfied,” she said. “This has thrown me again into a spin. I was no longer happy here in Napa. Now I’m trying to find that inner peace again.”

At first she assumed she’d find that peace in a big city like L.A., which could offer her anonymity and plenty of hustle and bustle to distract her. But during this most recent Halloween, the anniversary of the murders, Meanza said for the first time she missed the kind of support she found in Napa: the law enforcement and the prosecution team working the Copple case, the friends of friends she would run into who offered a hug or just a kind word.

“Now I live in L.A. where nobody knows anybody. L.A. has made me realize the benefit of having a tight community and support system,” she said.

[Napa Valley Register Online]

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