On November 30, 1983, Marcella Leach's daughter, Marsalee Ann Nicholas, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend, Kerry Michael Conley. Marsy, then 21, was a senior at UC Santa Barbara and had come home to Pt. Dume, Ca., for Thanksgiving when Conley, with whom she had broken up, shot her to death. Conley was subsequently convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 17 yearsto life in prison, where he died in 2007. In the nearly 2-year interim between the murder and the trial, Conley remained free on bail, a fact that was particularly painful to his victim's family, as he was frequently seen around the neighborhood where Marcella Leach and her husband, Bob Leach, still lived. In one particularly wrenching incident, Marcella Leach recalled being shocked when she encountered Conley in a neighborhood grocery store shortly after the murder. Among those who comforted the Leach family was Ellen Griffin Dunne, the mother of actress Dominique Dunne, who had been strangled to death by a spurned ex-boyfriend the year before Marsy's death. When Dunne decided in late 1983 to create a local support organization for the survivors of homicide victims, the Leaches were among the founding members, along with Marcella Leach's son Henry Nicholas. The California Center for Family Survivors of Homicide was formed as a nonprofit, with a subgroup, Justice for Homicide Victims, as its public face. The Leaches assumed leadership of Justice for Homicide Victims in 1990, after Dunne, who suffered from multiple sclerosis, moved to Arizona, where she died in 1997. Bob Leach served for many years as the president of Justice for Homicide Victims, and Marcella Leach was its longtime executive director. During the 1990s, the organization continued to push for improved law enforcement and longer penalties for convicted felons, including California's Three Strikes Law. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, with Leach as executive director, the group claimed some 10,000 members. The organization grew and was refocused as an educational non-profit. In 2008, Marcella Leach was a signatory on the Marsy's Law ballot initiative, which was led and sponsored by her son. The constitutional amendment was enacted by voters in November 2008 and became law. In addition to various awards by three governors, the Los Angeles District Attorney's office and the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, the Leaches were honored by the National office of Victims of Crime and two Presidents. In 2005, Marcella Leach was awarded the National Crime VictimService Award from the U.S. Department of Justice. She died on March 16, 2015.
Earlier life
Leach's first marriage was to an attorney with the IRS named Henry Nicholas Jr. They had two children and lived in Glendale, Ohio. She was a teacher and later an administrator and theater instructor. They were divorced around 1963 and she moved with her children to Los Angeles and married Bob Leach, who was an American journalist and Hollywood screenwriter.
