Hundreds huddled in the rain Thursday at the Garden of Peace to commemorate their loved ones lost to murder in Massachusetts.
The ceremony, held near the State House, was the sixth annual event of its kind, and featured the addition of 36 stones engraved with the victims' names to the garden that now holds 650 such stones.
Julissa Brisman, who was allegedly shot and beaten at the Marriott Copley Hotel in 2009 by former Boston University School of Medicine student Philip Markoff, the "Craigslist Killer," was one of the names added to the list this year.
Charges against Markoff, who committed suicide in his cell in August, were officially dropped on Thursday prior to the ceremony.
Carmen Guzman, Brisman's mother, spoke out on her daughter's death publicly for the first time at the ceremony.
Guzman, in a statement translated from Spanish, expressed her anger and grief and said that Markoff was a "coward" for committing suicide before the case went to trial.
"My heart, my life and my soul had gone with my daughter. I felt such terrible pain that no words on Earth exist to describe the sensation," Guzman said, in a statement read by Brisman's longtime friend Marisol Gonzalez on Guzman's behalf.
Mourners then entered the garden and electric candles were handed out and placed on stones.
Anthony Wheeler of Dorchester was there to decorate the stone of his daughter Danielle Grady, who was murdered in 2007.
"It's just a name that I see there," Wheeler said. "But her face and thoughts and everything are still in my heart."
Attorney General Martha Coakley led the ceremony, which included speeches by Teresa Harvey-Jackson, principal of Marshall Elementary School in Dorchester, and Alvin Notice and Christine Colwell, both parents of murdered children.
Coakley announced that the state had updated victim compensation for families to include $6,500, up from $4,000, for burial costs. She also announced that there would be additional funding for headstones.
"It seems like small matters but when you can't afford it this will make a very big difference," Coakley said.
Harvey-Jackson recalled a long list of violent crimes that have impacted the students at her elementary school.
"It is difficult to watch our students deal with these events over and over again," she said. "Our current state of violence is a state of emergency."
Harvey-Jackson also spoke out against the myth that inner-city parents don't care about their children or the level of violence in their community.
"They do care, but their challenges are much more difficult," she said.
After a shooting in their school gym, the school community gathered together to make a garden to commemorate those lost to violence, she said.
The garden is dedicated to Louis D. Brown, a former student who was killed in 1993 on his way to a meeting of "Teens Against Gang Violence."
Alvin Notice spoke about dealing with the death of his daughter, Tiana, who police say was stabbed to death by an ex-boyfriend turned stalker on Valentine's Day 2009.
"How can I be effective and not be mad?" asked Notice, who works at the Department of Corrections. Notice said that he now speaks publicly on issues of domestic violence.
The act of finding hope among sorrow was, for some, the theme of the evening.
"I have learned that evil does exist," said Christine Cowell, whose son was murdered. "But I have tried to focus on the angel all around me."
Lee Fickenworth of Lawrence attended the ceremony wearing a T-shirt with a photo of her son Gabriel, who was shot in 2009 walking to a convenience store. She said that she finds some solace because she donated her son's organs.
"The man who has my son's heart, I already met him," Fickenworth said. She said she still meets with this man and his family regularly.
But Fickenworth, who is a member of the Merrimack chapter of Parents of Murdered Children, said that detectives have yet to make any progress on the case.
"Everyone is waiting in Lawrence for that phone call or that knock on the door that they will apprehend the murderers," said Finkenworth.
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