The Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office honored the families in two murder cases Wednesday as part of Victims' Rights Week.
"It's nice to see everybody again," said Khira Molley, who lost her 23-year-old son, DeVonte Molley, to violence in 2015. "It's nice to know you're not forgotten ... that the person you lost wasn't forgotten. That's important."
Shirley and Richard Hazard were 65 and 71 when they were brutally murdered Jan. 18, 2001.
Shirley Hazard had just come home from her retirement job at the Boscov's jewelry counter when she was ambushed inside, beaten, stabbed and thrown down the basement stairs. Richard Hazard, a longtime U.S. Navy electrician, met the same fate after spending the day working in his garden.
Their bodies and home were then set on fire.
Acting Atlantic County Prosecutor Cary Shill said in his 30 years with the office, he has "never seen anything as depraved as what happened to the Hazard family."
Their Pleasantville home had been a gathering place for every holiday and every barbecue, their son, Michael Hazard said.
During a trip to Williamsburg, Virginia, he even met a stranger who recalled the time every Memorial Day barbecue had been rained out, but his parents still had their barbecue with the help of their daughter, Sharon Hazard Johnson, and her husband, Dewey Johnson. About 400 people attended their festivities under a tent.
The couple left behind three children, including Helen Hazard Cooper, along with six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Since their deaths, their legacy has grown to eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.
"I wish they were here to see that now," Michael Hazard said. "Their whole lives they taught us we're here for the next generation. We're here to pass on values to the next generation."
His father always told them: "If I could help someone along the way, then my living shall not be in vain."
The Hazard and Molley families also got help during their darkest time, they said of the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office.
"I didn't need this," Khira Molley said of Wednesday's event. "They took care of me during the time."
Every time she had to go to court, victim witness advocate Maria Sosa was there.
"It was nice to know if I wasn't feeling well that day, if the case was just a lot for me that day, that (Maria) was here to hold my hand," Molley said.
Molley's son was just 23 when he was shot inside the Madison Hotel on Dec. 21, 2015. Three men were convicted in connection with the crime four years later.
The Hazards' killer was sentenced to death, but is now serving life without parole due to the state abolishing capital punishment.
But there was no mention of the murderers at Wednesday's event. Their names were not important.
This gathering was about the victims and those left behind.
"We're not here to talk about the defendants today," said Shill, the acting prosecutor. "We're here to talk about the survivors. We're here to talk about the victims."
Shill was an assistant prosecutor back in 2004, when he tried the case against the Hazards' killer.
He remembered Sharon Hazard Johnson asking that he not use the defendant's name.
"It gives him too much dignity," she told him.
Shill still never mentions the killer's name when he speaks to Hazard Johnson.
"I was so concerned about disappointing the family," he recalled.
It was a death penalty case, putting him up against two experts in mitigation, the factors presented by the defense to argue against the death penalty.
"They had to teach us things along the way because we'd never been in the system before," Hazard Johnson said. "We had to learn about the mitigating factors and the aggravating factors. We learned how long it takes for crime to go through the court system."
It was three years before the case went to trial.
"They were there throughout the entire process," Michael Hazard said. "They made it possible for us to hold it all together."
Victim-witness advocates Kristie Baker Gardener and Tricia Hayek always answered, no matter when the family called, he said.
"They were skeptical at first," Shill said of the family's view on getting justice. "By the end of the trial, we were close friends.
"Seeing each other today, it was a wonderful reunion," he added.
"It's been too long," Hazard Johnson replied.
"I came out a different person than I was before," she later said of the tragedy her family went through. "But I'm getting better. You have a little bit of a setback, and then you move forward."
