Yuba City boy’s killer haunted family for decades. Justice has now been reaffirmed
The question was the same for everyone who crowded outside Sacramento Superior Court’s Department 24.
“Are you here for Michael?”
They were, fighting for Michael Lyons one more time, all of them hoping that the resentencing hearing would be the last time they would have to see Michael’s killer ever again.
On Friday, it was. A Sacramento judge reaffirmed the 1996 charges of first-degree murder, torture and rape of the 8-year-old Yuba City boy that condemned Robert Boyd Rhoades to California’s death row and Michael’s family and community to decades of unresolved pain.
Only Rhoades’ prior one-year sentencing enhancement was removed. Nothing else, the judge told Michael’s family.
“I see how you still come to court to fight for Michael, but you shouldn’t have to. You deserve finality. There has to be an end to this at some point,” Sacramento Superior Court Supervising Judge Kenneth Brody told a courtroom crowded with Michael’s family from the bench, before reissuing the life terms that will ensure Rhoades never leaves prison.
“I wish I could take the torture away,” Brody said. “Everybody in Sutter and Yuba counties knows the name Michael Lyons.”
Michael’s mother, Sandy Friend, was overjoyed with the decision. For years, Robert Boyd Rhoades filed appeals from death row to overturn his sentence for Michael’s murder. The appeals failed in the state’s highest courts but unearthed more pain for a family forced to relive the horror of Michael’s murder yet again.
When Rhoades later took advantage of a 2022 law, Senate Bill 483, that allowed California inmates to petition for resentencing hearings to remove their prior prison term enhancements, Lyons’ family girded themselves one more time. Michael’s mother channeled her grief into activism, rallying support against the law.
“Families and communities are being forced to relive these nightmares while justice is stripped away,” Friend said as part of an appeal before Rhoades’ first scheduled resentencing hearing in October. “This is not justice, it’s a betrayal to the innocent victims, their families, and the state of California.”
Their fear — and resolve – rose after a Rhoades attorney in November briefly argued to reopen the entirety of the murder case. State courts recently ruled that only non-capital portions of death sentences could be removed, reducing sentences but not removing the death penalty.
Finally, on Friday, Michael’s family had the justice they had sought for so long.
“To have the judge see Michael as a child and finally close the chapter on this — there are no words,” Sandy Friend said outside the Gordon D. Schaber Courthouse following the Friday hearing. “I can breathe.”
Michael’s body was found in dense overgrowth and brush along the banks of the Feather River nearly a day after his disappearance May 16, 1996, while walking home from Bridge Street School in Yuba City.
He had been stabbed more than 70 times. Bloody footprints smeared the windows inside his killer’s abandoned truck. Former Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, now an advocate for Lyons’ survivors, spoke at the Friday hearing, calling the Sutter County case “the worst I’ve ever seen.”
“Michael had the biggest blue eyes and a life full of possibilities. He was fearless,” Friend said through tears during her victim impact statement. Today, “Michael is the missing piece. We’re reminded of what was stolen.”
Rhoades was 46, and a convicted child molester, when he snatched 8-year-old Michael off the street on that May afternoon 29 years ago.
Rhoades had previous convictions for the 1993 sexual molestation of his 4-year-old step-granddaughter and a 1985 kidnap, robbery and sexual assault.
Rhoades was captured by Sutter County sheriff’s deputies along the riverbank in the hours after Lyons’ discovery and ferried to the Feather River boat dock where Lyons’ family, law enforcement and news reporters waited. His trial was moved to Sacramento because of publicity over the murder in Sutter County. Rhoades was convicted in September 1999. For nearly 30 years after the savagery, he has sat in prison, most recently at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego.
His murder of the boy who loved bikes, baseball and rope swings and dreamed of one day joining the army, horrified Yuba City and the Yuba-Sutter area then as it does today. The shockwaves continue to reverberate decades later.
“This impacted my whole life, our community’s life. It brought up that fear and reminded us of the horrors of what happened to Michael,” said Friend, who lives now in North Dakota, far away from the nightmare that became her Yuba-Sutter home. She flew back to Northern California for Friday’s court date as she had in October.
“It touched a lot of people — kids who are grown up now,” Friend said. “They say, ‘I raised my kids different.’ We’re 30 years down the line. How Michael impacted our community — Michael will never be forgotten.”
Rhoades appearing in court via Zoom from a holding room, was barely distinguishable in prison blues seated against a far wall. The Sacramento courtroom was filled with Michael’s survivors, some who weren’t yet born when he was brutally murdered.
For Michael’s surviving family and the Yuba-Sutter community, their nightmare is generational, grief passed on like heirlooms, fear imprinted onto those 1990s kids, now with children of their own.
“No mother, sister or family member should have to bear this weight. He took her only son,” wrote Ashley Mossi, Michael’s cousin, of Rhoades, in a victim impact statement read at the hearing. “Robert Rhoades is a reminder of what monsters really are to our family and community. A monster is a person capable of anything.”
Tina Lyons, sister of Sandy and Michael Lyons’ aunt, was raised in Yuba City. She and her sister were on the Feather River boat ramp on the gloomy May morning sheriff’s deputies brought Rhoades in from the riverbottoms.
Tina Lyons lives in Amador County now, moving just last year, putting a measure of distance between herself and a town filled with memories of the places that made Michael and the day when he was taken away.
“I didn’t understand the toll it took until I left Yuba City,” Tina Lyons said after the November hearing. “I love Sutter County. They were there when we needed them — kind, thoughtful, supportive. You see someone and they say, ‘I was on the search team.’ When I left I didn’t realize how difficult it was to come back. It was a toll and it’s not getting easier. It’s a lot and it will be a lot.”
Syntara Fuller was not yet born when her brother was brutally murdered nearly 30 years ago, but she lives with the horror and his absence every day.
“It’s a heartbreak you can’t explain,” Fuller, 20, following a hearing for Rhoades in early November that preceded Friday’s session. “It’s something that someone shouldn’t have to relive over and over again.”
“One word symbolizes everything and that’s torture. It’s perhaps the worst case I’ve ever seen. The footprints on the inside of Rhoades’ truck. That memory will never leave me,” Schubert said in court. “It’s been 10,809 days since Michael was taken away from his family. It’s time to end the torture and give the family the peace they deserve.”
Brody agreed.
“It is my belief that even at Rhoades’ advanced age, he presents a significant danger. Any day less than is absolutely necessary presents a danger to the community, wherever he is,” Brody said, before reissuing the life terms that will ensure Rhoades dies in prison. “It is my desire that this matter not come back here for this purpose again.”
Outside the courthouse, Friend embraced family members and supporters as rain began to fall, then let out a loud whoop.
Finally, it was over.
This story was originally published December 20, 2025 at 3:32 PM.
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