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Davis Enterprise, The (CA)
No Headline
Lauren KeeneEnterprise staff writer
Published: February 2, 2007
SACRAMENTO — The Richard Hirschfield
preliminary hearing concluded its second week Thursday as defense
attorneys for the accused murderer elicited testimony suggesting that
someone else killed John Riggins and Sabrina Gonsalves on the night of
Dec. 20, 1980.
As expected, Supervising Assistant Public Defender Linda Parisi
called to the stand Fred Turner, the retired Davis police detective
whose investigation of the case in the late 1980s led to the arrests of
four people with the theory that Riggins and Gonsalves were killed in a
copycat crime.Turner and Yolo County prosecutors alleged that
career criminal David Hunt and three others murdered the UC Davis
freshmen to fool authorities into thinking the crime was committed by
the same person who kidnapped and killed a Cal State Sacramento couple
the month before — and not by Hunt's half-brother, Gerald Gallego, who
was in custody for the earlier murders.The Hunt theory dissolved
in early 1993 when DNA testing excluded the three male members of the
Hunt group, as well as Riggins, as possible donors of semen stains
discovered on a blanket in Riggins' van.For several hours
Thursday, Parisi questioned Turner regarding his contacts with numerous
witnesses in the case who claimed to have seen suspicious people at or
near the crime scenes on the night of the 1980 murders. Several of
those witnesses went on to identify members of the Hunt group during
both photo and live-person lineups.Turner's testimony is scheduled to continue Friday, Feb. 9, when the preliminary hearing resumes in Sacramento Superior Court.The purpose of the hearing is to determine whether there is sufficient evidence for Hirschfield, 58, to stand trial on charges of murder with the special circumstances of kidnapping and rape.Authorities
believe the killer abducted the two 18-year-olds from outside
Gonsalves' condominium on Davis' Alta Loma Street, then transported
them in Riggins' van to a remote area near Hazel Avenue in Sacramento
County. The teens were found two days later in a ravine, their throats
cut. Gonsalves allegedly had been sexually assaulted.
Hirschfield, identified as a suspect through a cold-hit DNA
match in 2002, has pleaded not guilty to the charges. He faces the
death penalty if convicted.In addition to pointing the finger at other possible suspects, Hirschfield's
attorneys have challenged the DNA evidence in the case, saying it is
unreliable due to alleged mishandling of the semen samples over the
years.In other developments Thursday, Judge Trena Burger-Plavan
ruled that Deputy District Attorney Dawn Bladet may introduce during
the preliminary hearing information about Hirschfield's 1975 conviction for a home-invasion robbery and rape in Mountain View.Bladet
said the two incidents demonstrate a pattern of similar criminal
behavior, including an element of "sexual deviancy" that likely
motivated the two crimes.The judge agreed that the incidents showed a "high degree of similarity," although Parisi, Hirschfield's attorney, argued otherwise — most notably that the earlier incident involved neither a kidnapping nor a murder.
Hirschfield's prison sentence for that case ended in July 1980,
about five months before the murders. He was released from prison in
Vacaville.Burger-Plavan also agreed Thursday to the introduction of certain parts of a suicide note reportedly written by Hirschfield's
brother Joseph in November 2002 — a day after being confronted by
Sacramento sheriff's detectives about the 1980 murders and Richard Hirschfield's DNA match.In the note, Joseph Hirschfield
reportedly confirms his brother's role in the killings and indicates he
expects his DNA to be linked to the crime, too. But, citing case law on
the issue, Burger-Plavan ruled that only the statements implicating the
note's writer could be admitted for the preliminary hearing.They include three sentences: "I was there," "My DNA is still there" and "But I have been living with this horror for 20 years."— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 747-8048.
Copyright, 2007, The Davis Enterprise. All Rights Reserved.
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