Memorial Plans For Slain Santa Cruz Officers

The city of Santa Cruz - and beyond - is preparing for a Thursday memorial service that no one wanted to prepare for.

The two officers were killed last Tuesday when they were investigating sexual assault allegations against Jeremey Goulet, 35, who 20 minutes into the interview with the officers pulled out a .45-caliber handgun and shot t hem to death, according to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff. Their deaths were the first of their kind in the city.

Services actually begin on Wednesday, when well-wishers flocked to Santa Cruz Memorial for a viewing of the caskets of Sgt. Loran "Butch" Baker and Det. Elizabeth Butler. The public viewing lasted from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m.

The public memorial for the two is scheduled for Thursday at the HP Pavilion in San Jose. A funeral procession leaves Santa Cruz at 8:45 a.m. and will travel over Highway 17 in a procession that is expected to be two miles long.

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Baker, a 1979 graduate of Bellarmine Preparatory School in San Jose, leaves behind a wife, Kelly, two daughters, Jillian and Ashley, and a son, Adam, who was a community service officer for the police department.

Baker was "tenacious," and the best investigator in the department, according to Santa Cruz police chief Kevin Vogel.

Butler was a Los Angeles native and graduated from Bishop Montgomery High School in Torrance in 1992. She then attended UC Santa Cruz and earned a degree in community studies and ended up staying in the beach side city, where she lived with her partner, Peter, and two young boys ages 5 and 1.

She wrote her senior thesis on her experiences working with young Latinos, according to UC Santa Cruz's website. She attended the Evergreen Police Academy in San Jose in 2003 before joining the Santa Cruz police.

Vogel said she had developed a niche in the area of sexual assault, and was very experienced investigating those cases. "That's the type of case that she was investigating yesterday when this tragedy happened," he said.

Before that, she had worked as a patrol officer, hostage negotiator, and an agent assigned to the Santa Cruz County drug task force.

For up-to-date memorial service plans, click on the Santa Cruz police website.