“Each of Cook’s attempts to reduce her sentence — applications for parole, house arrest, work release, now ... one for modification — traumatizes my sister and her family anew,” Palermo’s sister-in-law, Alisa Rock, said of Palermo’s widow, Rachel, and the couple’s children in November. “This trauma will affect them all for the rest of their lives, and it’s only appropriate that Heather Cook serve out her original sentence not only for the act of killing Tom, but for leaving him there. Especially for leaving him there, for abdicating responsibility for what she did.”