Before a Morgan Hill man beat Bertha Paulson to death in 2013, she had been the victim of domestic violence multiple times in the three years since she moved to California, according to authorities and her older sister.
Her killer, Michael Sheppard, 64, was convicted of second-degree murder Nov. 2 in Paulson’s death. Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Chuck Gillingham said Sheppard faces a maximum sentence of 15 years to life in prison.
The jury found that Sheppard killed Paulson, 45, the night of June 15, 2013 at his home at Morgan Hill Apartments, a small mobile home park just north of downtown. It was the only murder in Morgan Hill in 2013.
Court files and testimony during last week’s trial—which started Oct. 30 at the South County Courthouse—showed that Paulson died of a broken neck and suffered fractured ribs, collapsed lungs and numerous cuts. Her body was covered in bruises. These injuries resulted from a “brutal” attack by Sheppard, described Margaret Petros of Mothers Against Murder, an advocate for Paulson’s family.
“What is really sad is she did not have any family or close friends in this area,” Petros said from the nonprofit’s Los Altos office.
Petros attended last week’s trial on behalf of Paulson’s relatives, who live in Alaska. The family could not attend due to the uncertainty of the trial date over the last four-plus years, and financial constraints.
Shortly after Paulson’s death, her surviving family—which includes two older sisters and a number of nieces, nephews and cousins—contacted the advocacy group seeking help to transport her body back to her native home of Mountain Village, Alaska, Petros said. Paulson is also survived by her three adult children.
Mothers Against Murder teamed up with two funeral homes—one in San Jose and the other in Anchorage, Alaska—to transport the body. The family then conducted two memorial services: one in Anchorage with extended family; and one in Mountain Village, where Paulson was buried.
“MAM fully covered the cost to make sure the victim was treated with respect and dignity to her final destination,” Petros added.
The victim’s older sister, Margaret Waskey, had even more questions about how Paulson died when she saw her sister’s body.
‘A loving person’
Paulson was the “baby” of nine siblings, Waskey told the Times on the phone from Mountain Village, a small town where she and other family members depend on seasonal fishing income to survive.
“We were all hurt the first moment she was gone,” said Waskey, who adopted two of Paulson’s three children when they were young.
She said Paulson moved out of Alaska about four years before her death, spending some time in Seattle before coming to California. Contact between Paulson and her family dropped off after she left Alaska, Waskey said.
“A few months” before Paulson’s death, Waskey received a phone call from a San Jose hospital notifying her that Paulson had been assaulted by a man she had been seeing before Sheppard, Petros added.
When she arrived in Morgan Hill, Paulson was homeless, living in an encampment behind Morgan Hill Apartments, where Sheppard lived.
“She was a loving person,” Waskey said. “People liked to hang around with her.”
Sheppard’s testimony
According to Morgan Hill police, during the initial investigation into Paulson’s death, witnesses said about a month earlier they had seen Sheppard—with whom she had an “off and on” romantic relationship—assault her.
The Nov. 2 conviction of second-degree murder indicates the jury saw Paulson’s death as “more of a domestic violence type” of homicide, rather than a “calculated, thought-out crime,” Gillingham said. Even though he pushed for first-degree murder, Gillingham found the jury’s verdict “reasonable.”
He also praised Morgan Hill police investigators.
“It says a lot to the men and women in that department that in a case that involved the most marginalized of our society, they were willing to devote so many resources to ensure that I…had the tools to seek justice,” Gillingham said.
During the trial, Sheppard testified that he had been drinking heavily when he and Paulson began verbally arguing. This escalated to a physical altercation that ended with Paulson’s death.
Initially, Sheppard admitted to police that he beat Paulson until she was unconscious. He tried to revive her but, unable to do so, he moved her to the railroad tracks behind his residence. Witnesses found her there, dead, the next morning.
At the trial, Sheppard added that he used a shopping cart to move Paulson’s body. Petros said that the state’s testimony and other evidence indicated he hit her so hard in some places—including her head—that Sheppard may have used a baseball bat or similar weapon.
Furthermore, throughout the court proceedings, Sheppard offered changing explanations for the attack—at one point claiming to be insane, and at others insisting he was so intoxicated he didn’t know what he was doing, Petros said.
Sheppard also testified that when he laid her body near the railroad tracks, he tried to make it look like she had been raped. Police said she was found with her pants down and a jacket over her upper body.
Violence rare at park
Since 2013, police and EMS have responded to Morgan Hill Apartments 190 times for service calls. Only three of these—including Paulson’s murder—were for reports of violent crimes, according to Police Analyst Margarita Balagso. The other two violent incidents were aggravated assaults. Ten of the calls were for domestic disturbances.
Petros’ commitment to Paulson and her family is ongoing, as she and Mothers Against Murder hope to get her to Morgan Hill to attend Sheppard’s sentencing hearing, which is scheduled for Jan. 19. In fact, she hopes to fill the courtroom with supporters of Paulson and victims like her.
“No one deserves to have their life taken away like this,” Petros said. “My agenda is to bring awareness out there, and let the public know how much hurt there is.”
