Ex-SRJC cop’s wife gets jail in parking meter thefts

The wife of a former Santa Rosa Junior College police officer convicted of being an accessory to her husband’s theft of $286,000 from campus parking machines was sentenced Thursday to nine months in jail.

Karen Holzworth, 51, received the punishment about a year after her husband, Jeffrey Holzworth, a 28-year law enforcement veteran, was sentenced to four years in prison for embezzling the money while overseeing the automated parking system.

Prosecutors urged Judge Gary Medvigy to send Karen Holzworth to jail for a longer 16-month period, but the judge handed down a lighter sentence, citing her lack of a previous record and evidence that her husband played the lead role.

However, Medvigy said it was clear Karen Holzworth knowingly participated in the scheme by depositing large sums of stolen cash in family bank accounts. And he said her trial testimony that she won the money playing bingo was not credible.

“The story’s unbelievable,” Medvigy told a courtroom filled with spectators. “I believe she perjured herself in front of the jury.”

Karen Holzworth, who has remained free on bail, sobbed through most of the hearing and made a brief apology, saying she wanted to “just move forward.” She was ordered to turn herself in to jail officials April 17.

She could be eligible for release in less than five months.

The sentencing capped a more than 2-year-old case that heaped embarrassment on the campus police department and led to changes in the way the school accounts for parking fees.

Jeffrey Holzworth was arrested in 2012 after a fellow officer reported seeing him emptying parking machines on weekends and keeping stacks of small bills and coins in his personal car.

An investigation in which he was tracked with a GPS device revealed he had been stealing the money over a seven-year period, starting in 2005.

Detectives found bundles of money stashed throughout the couple’s Brandee Lane house. Bank records showed cash deposits far exceeding their income, prosecutors said.

The longtime officer quit the force soon after his arrest and admitted his crime in a deal with the judge to limit his prison time to four years.

His wife, who denied any knowledge of her husband’s theft, took her case to trial, where she testified the money she put in various accounts came from old loans, casino winnings and tip money earned in her job as a bingo caller.

Jurors found her story unconvincing, finding her guilty of felony accessory and two misdemeanor counts of receiving stolen property after about a day of deliberation.

“She knew where the money was coming from,” prosecutor Amy Ariyoshi said Thursday.

The school was reimbursed for the theft from its insurance company, but the couple likely will be ordered to pay restitution.

Since the thefts, the campus has adopted new procedures for collecting parking machine cash and has purchased new, more secure machines.

You can reach Staff Writer Paul Payne at 568-5312 or paul.payne@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @ppayne.