Mary Lauterbach, of Vandalia, remains a powerful voice for her daughter, Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach, nearly four years after the 20-year-old was murdered by fellow Marine Cesar Laurean.

On Nov. 16, Mary Lauterbach and her attorney, Merle Wilberding, attended the North Carolina Court of Appeals hearing in Raleigh, N.C., and listened as Laurean’s attorneys argued that his first-degree murder conviction should be overturned because the judge did not allow jurors to consider a lesser charge of second-degree murder.

“We wanted to make our presence visible, and to remind them that Maria was a real person,” Lauterbach said.

Laurean’s state-appointed attorney, Ann Peterson, acknowledged that her client killed Lauterbach, but argued that the crime might not have been premeditated. Attorneys for the state countered that the fact that Laurean burned the body and buried Lauterbach in his backyard was proof of premeditation.

Lauterbach, 20, was eight months’ pregnant at the time of her murder. Laurean is currently serving a life sentence without parole at the Pasquotank Correctional Institution, a high-security adult male prison in Elizabeth City, N.C.

“The trial court got it right,” Wilberding said.

It was the second time in less than a month that Lauterbach, who now leads training sessions for the military, had been called upon to bear witness for her daughter.

On Oct. 28, three Department of Defense staffers flew to Dayton to brief Lauterbach on the Inspector General’s report on the investigation of her daughter’s sexual assault case. The scathing 46-page report concluded that the Naval Criminal Investigative Service criminal investigation was both “substantively and procedurally deficient,” and that NCIS agents did not conduct the investigation “diligently, timely or completely, and logical investigative steps were not completed.”

The report also noted that Camp Lejeune’s Sexual Assault and Prevention Response Program officials violated policy in its response to Lauterbach’s rape complaint.

Lauterbach said the report is an important step toward accountability. The yearlong investigation revealed much she hadn’t previously known about her daughter’s sexual assault case. On May 11, 2007, maria Lauterbach reported she was raped by then-Cpl. Laurean, one of her supervisors. Laurean claimed he had consensual sex with her.

“The details of the investigation were even worse than we knew,” Mary Lauterbach said.

Typically, a hearing on complaints such as this are heard within 60 to 90 days, but in this case it was not scheduled until Jan. 14, 2008. Wilberding said that the uncharacteristic delay may have contributed to Maria Lauterbach’s death.

Mary Lauterbach said she hopes investigations into her daughter’s murder will have a lasting impact. “The moment that Maria reported the sexual assault, they concluded she was a liar,” she said.

Lauterbach is trying her best to change the culture. Last year, she and Wilberding went to Washington and lobbied more than a dozen House members in hopes of changing the way the U.S. military handles sexual assault cases.

Since then, she has become a sought-after speaker at military training sessions about dealing with sexual assault.

“Mary is making a difference,” Wilberding said. “I’m sure she has saved a lot of lives.”