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Davis Enterprise, The (CA)
Suspect ID'd in '80 murders
Lauren Keene/Enterprise staff writer
Published: June 7, 2004
A final chapter may be near in one of Davis' most notorious homicide
cases.
Through DNA technology, Sacramento County homicide investigators have
identified a suspect in the 1980 murders of UC Davis sweethearts John
Riggins and Sabrina Gonsalves, who were abducted in Davis as they were
headed to a surprise birthday party for Gonsalves' sister.
Richard Joseph Hirschfield, 55, was identified in September 2002 through a "cold hit" DNA match using a semen stain found on a blanket in Riggins' van. Hirschfield
is serving a 16-year sentence for child molestation and child rape at
the McNeil Island Corrections Center in Washington state and has a
projected release date in May 2010.
Homicide investigators recently completed a warrant for Hirschfield's arrest, which will be reviewed by the Sacramento County district attorney's office and a judge before Hirschfield is arrested. The timeline for that arrest remains uncertain.
"He's
not going anywhere," said Sgt. Craig Hill of the Sacramento County
Sheriff's Department homicide unit, which, along with the Sacramento
County district attorney's office, has been investigating the case on a
priority basis for the past two years. "We would like to get nothing
less than the best, most solid case there is. The last thing we want is
for this guy to walk again."
Hill said Hirschfield
knows he is a suspect in the murders but has refused to talk to
homicide investigators. Other than his release from a Vacaville prison
in July 1980 after serving time for forcible rape, Hirschfield's link to the Davis area and the popular couple remains a mystery.
However, investigators have a few theories in mind.
Known to his family and friends as being extremely bright, Hirschfield "couldn't afford to go to college but he would sit in on college classes to educate himself without paying," Hill said.
Investigators
recently obtained copies of college records for Sabrina and Andrea
Gonsalves - both of whom attended UCD - and are trying to determine
whether Hirschfield sat in on one of the sisters' classes.
"We're hoping there may be somebody out there that knows something," Hill said.
Long-awaited closure
For
members of the Riggins and Gonsalves families, the impending arrest may
finally bring the closure that's eluded them for nearly a
quarter-century.
"We're
thrilled that they may have somebody - the case looks good, and maybe
now we'll have some justice," George Gonsalves Jr., Sabrina's father,
said in a phone interview last week from his family's part-time home in
Port Hueneme. He and his wife, Kim, also live in Hawaii.
"It
won't bring Sabrina and John back, but it sends a message: You commit a
violent crime, there's a price to pay, and we're never going to let up
until we get you," Gonsalves said.
The
Gonsalveses have remained close to the Rigginses, and the two families
are in contact at least three to four times a year. Thoughts of their
children are never far from their minds.
"I
don't think I dwell as much on how they died, because a lot of it we
truly do not know, but the fact that they did die and how horrible that
would be, those thoughts are always with us," said Kate Riggins, John's
mother, who today lives in Shell Beach with her husband, Dick.
"Even
if we find out from this individual what really happened, you don't
know if it's really true," Riggins added. "We just pray that he didn't
do this to others."
Both
18 years old, Riggins and Gonsalves were abducted on the fog-shrouded
night of Dec. 20, 1980, after wrapping up a production of "The Davis
Children's Nutcracker." At the time, investigators believed they were
taken from what was then the Lucky Shopping Center at Covell Boulevard
and Anderson Road, although it's also possible they were abducted
outside Gonsalves' condominium on Alta Loma Street in North Davis.
Their
bodies were found two days later in a creek bed near Folsom, near the
site of what is now the Folsom Automall. Their throats were slashed,
and their heads were wrapped in duct tape. Riggins' van was discovered
about a mile away.
Charges filed in 1989
After
years of investigations, Yolo County prosecutors filed charges in late
1989 and sought the death penalty against four people - David Hunt,
Richard Thompson, Douglas Lainer and Suellen Hunt, David Hunt's
common-law wife.
Hunt
is the half-brother of convicted mass murderer Gerald Gallego, who at
the time of the Riggins-Gonsalves killings was in jail on suspicion of
abducting and killing a Cal State Sacramento couple. Gallego died of
cancer in a prison hospital in 2002.
Sacramento
County authorities also suspected the foursome but believed there was
not enough evidence to file charges. Yolo County prosecutors felt
differently, however, and took over the case, theorizing that Gallego
ordered the copycat killings to make authorities believe that a serial
killer who preyed on college students was still on the loose.
Three
years and $2.5 million later, Yolo County District Attorney David
Henderson dropped charges against the foursome in early 1993 - on the
eve of their trial - after DNA tests on the semen-stained blanket from
Riggins' van did not match Hunt, Thompson, Lainer or Riggins.
At
the time, Henderson said the dismissals were a tactical move, intended
to buy more time to build a stronger case against the four suspects,
though charges were never refiled.
Henderson
did not return phone calls last week seeking comment about the case.
However, he reportedly has said he still believes the
Hunt-Thompson-Lainer group was somehow involved in the killings.
Today,
David Hunt is serving the last year of a 20-year federal prison
sentence for a 1985 kidnapping, while both Suellen Hunt and Lainer are
living in the Bay Area. Thompson died of emphysema in 1998 in Corcoran
State Prison, where he was serving time for passing bad checks.
Davis
attorney Rod Beede, who represented Lainer, said his client has lived a
model life since his release from Yolo County, working for a paper
delivery company and raising a daughter with his wife in Hayward.
"In
the 25 years I've been in the law, it was the greatest miscarriage of
justice I ever saw," Beede said. "They never had the right people, and
this proves it. For someone to live with this for that long is
unconscionable."
Beede
recalled going to visit Lainer at the Yolo County Jail following court
appearances, where the attorney said the four defendants "took a lot of
abuse" by victims' rights advocates.
"I
used to say to him, 'There's nothing worse than being the parent in
this situation.' He said, 'Yes there is - it's to be falsely accused of
being the person that caused it.' "
'Cold hit' program
Hirschfield's
impending arrest marks the latest in a series of decades-old homicide
cases that Sacramento authorities have been able to solve with the use
of DNA. The matches have been made under the county's "cold hit"
program, in which DNA from unsolved cases is matched against samples
from DNA databanks in California and nationwide.
The databanks include DNA samples from state prisoners, who are required to provide samples upon incarceration. Hirschfield has been in the Washington prison since 1997.
Sacramento
County's homicide unit and Sacramento County district attorney's
office, which took back control of the Riggins-Gonsalves case from Yolo
County in 2000, assigned a total of three investigators to the case
about a month prior to the DNA hit. Since then, Dan Cabral, Ed Newton
and Dave Duckett have been going over old reports, talking to witnesses
about Hirschfield and trying to find that connection between him and the slain couple.
"We haven't found any other suspects, but we're not ruling anybody else out," Hill said.
Meanwhile, Hill estimates it will be anywhere from two to four years before Hirschfield
goes to trial. When that time comes, the families of John Riggins and
Sabrina Gonsalves will be ready to face their children's alleged killer
in court.
"We
realize it's going to be a long time. We got an idea of that when the
Hunt group was arrested," Kate Riggins said. "Our goal is that this
individual never is out of some type of incarceration."
- Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net
June 6, 2004
Copyright, 2004, The Davis Enterprise. All Rights Reserved.
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