24-Year Old Sebastopol Woman Held Incompetent for Trial in Matricide

Bay City News Service

Two doctors have concluded that a Sebastopol woman is mentally incompetent to stand trial for killing her mother at their Sebastopol area home in February.

A hearing will be held May 15 on 24-year-old Julia Franzen's willingness to take medications, Deputy District Attorney Brian Staebell said.

A separate hearing then will be held to determine where she will be housed until she is restored to competency, Staebell said.

Franzen never entered a plea to killing her mother, Nancy Franzen, 59, in their Tocchini Street home on Feb. 4. Criminal proceedings were suspended pending the doctors' reports on her mental competence.

Nancy Franzen's body was found on the floor of a bedroom after Franzen showed up at a neighbor's house with a knife and blood on her hands, the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office said.

Franzen told her neighbor she had just killed someone then ran back to her house, sheriff's Lt. Steve Brown said.

Court records show six cases since March 2011 involving domestic violence, battery, false imprisonment, vandalism and violations of probation by Julia Franzen.

During that time she was found both mentally competent and incompetent, ordered to participate in an anger management program and allowed to have peaceful contact with her mother.

Nancy Franzen worked as a nurse at Palm Drive Hospital and at the Sutter VNA & Hospice, now known as Sutter Care at Home.

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