Grieving families ambushed by GOP ads about loved ones' murders: 'I had a panic attack'

The Republican Party’s most powerful Senate super PAC has spent millions on attack ads describing real killings in graphic terms, and some of the victims’ families say no one warned them first.

Robin Buonodono’s 5-year-old daughter, Nicole VanNoty, was raped and murdered in 1994, but she was blindsided recently by a TV advertisement about the crime, and she told CNN she felt as thought she couldn't breathe.

“I had a panic attack,” said Buonodono, who left Michigan after the killing. “Why are you using someone’s child’s death for political gain?”

The Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), which is affiliated with Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), spent at least $3.7 million on ads recounting Nicole’s murder by Jason Symonds in a campaign targeting Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, Abdul El-Sayed.

Buonodono said SLF never contacted her. A CNN review of AdImpact data found SLF spent at least $17 million on ads in Michigan and North Carolina that name victims or perpetrators. In at least three cases, relatives said they had no warning.

SLF also spent about $2 million on Michigan ads about the 1999 rape and murder of Jessica Ledford. Her fiancé, Robert Homrich, said that for a while he saw the ads several times a day on YouTube.

“It’s haunting me every day,” Homrich said. “They’re using my own personal tragedy to spin an election.”

The Michigan ads attack El-Sayed’s 2018 proposal to commute life sentences for “low risk” people convicted as juveniles. El-Sayed’s campaign called them “absurd lies.”

In North Carolina, SLF spent at least $4 million on ads blaming Democrat Roy Cooper for the release of Jimmie Speight Jr., who killed Edmond Moore Jr. But Speight was already out of prison before Cooper’s administration reached the pandemic-era settlement the ads cite. Moore’s mother, Pamela Moore, said SLF never reached out.

“It’s heartbreaking, really. It’s heartbreaking and numb," Moore said. "How could you use a mother and a father’s son’s death to give yourself some credibility?”

SLF didn’t answer CNN’s questions about its practices. Spokesman Chris Gustafson said in a statement that “every life lost to violent crime is an intolerable tragedy, made even worse when it is entirely preventable and the direct consequence of failed liberal policies.”

Daniel Kreiss, a political communications professor at the University of North Carolina, said notifying families is a matter of basic decency.

“You owe it to those people, that family, to give them a heads up,” Kreiss said.

Travis Ridout of the Wesleyan Media Project said crime attacks give Republicans something to talk about while they deal with persistent inflation, high energy costs and an unpopular president. Trump himself invoked the infamous 1988 Willie Horton ad while campaigning in North Carolina last month.

The family of Iryna Zarutska, who was stabbed to death on a Charlotte train in 2025, has also objected to Republican Michael Whatley’s campaign using footage of her killing.

“No one asked us,” said the family’s attorney, Lauren Newton.