Latest / True Crime California / TCC #3 The Sweetheart Murders

Transcript

TCC #3 The Sweetheart Murders · True Crime California

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, welcome to True Crime California. I'm your host, Cindy,
0:05
and I'm glad you're here, and welcome back everybody. This
0:22
is take two for the third episode of True Crime California.
0:27
Now I have already actually released this episode, but then
0:30
I took it down because it wasn't really how I
0:33
wanted it to be. So last week I had the
0:35
stomach flu and it lasted like a whole fucking week,
0:37
which totally sucked. I had also been dealing with someone
0:40
who I thought was like a really good friend, but
0:42
they turned out to be a covert narcissist and there
0:44
was a lot of fallout there. So just personally, I
0:47
had a really tough week. But I told myself I
0:49
was going to release episodes every Thursday, light clockwork, no
0:52
matter what, and I couldn't let myself already get behind
0:56
on the third episode. So I recorded this episode super
0:59
late at night. I didn't have time to edit it.
1:01
I sort of just posted it and it wasn't how
1:03
I wanted it. So I'm redoing this episode. It's going
1:06
to be a lot better this time. This case is
1:09
actually the case that inspired me to start this podcast,
1:11
Like at California based true crime podcast. So I really
1:15
wanted to make sure that I told this story in
1:18
a way that I was really proud of and that
1:20
I felt good about releasing. So if you've already listened,
1:23
please feel free to listen again. I think this time
1:25
it's going to be better telling. And if you haven't listened,
1:29
then good you can hear this the first time in
1:31
the way that I want it to be presented. I
1:33
will still be releasing a new episode. I have another
1:36
case already ready to go for Thursday, but I just
1:39
really wanted to redo this so that it would be
1:41
so something I could be proud of. So I'm going
1:44
to do the case of the UC Davis Sweetheart murders.
1:47
This is the story of Sabrina Gonzalvez and John Riggins
1:50
to eighteen year old young adults just starting college who
1:54
met and fell in love while working together at the
1:56
Parks Department in UC or in Davis, which is where
1:59
the city is now some of you may know, but
2:02
not all of you. I'm sure that Davis is where
2:04
I'm from. I was born in the city next door
2:06
and raised mostly in Davis, and I have a lot
2:09
of sort of you know, parallel moments in my life
2:13
to like what these young people had. In fact, when
2:16
I was in or just getting out of high school,
2:19
my cousin worked for the Parks Department, which is where
2:21
they worked and met. And I actually, when I was eighteen,
2:25
lived in an apartment that was about a block away
2:29
from where Sabrina lived at the time that this case
2:31
takes place. So a lot of the areas that they
2:34
talk about in this case, I can put myself there.
2:37
I can actually picture them. So it was really.
2:39
Speaker 2: Interesting to me.
2:40
Speaker 1: It became very personal for me this case, and I
2:43
think it became personal for a lot of people who
2:45
live in Davis because it's a small town, it's a
2:47
safe town.
2:48
Speaker 2: This was a huge case.
2:50
Speaker 1: So again I'm just going to jump in to the
2:52
case and hopefully give it a better retelling this time.
2:55
So this case happened in nineteen eighty, which this is
2:58
worth three for three now for cases that happened in
3:00
either nineteen eighty or nineteen eighty one. I didn't mean
3:03
to do this, but apparently, you know, I couldn't help it.
3:06
Although all my favorite cases, the cases I wanted to cover,
3:09
were from around this time. I think it also kind
3:11
of shows that this was a big time for a
3:14
lot of murders in California and beyond, obviously, but you know,
3:18
we're starting to see serial killers, there's missing hitchhikers. There's
3:22
just all sorts of like unsolved murders and missing people
3:25
and things sort of happening at this time. But even so,
3:29
this one really rocked the city of Davis and the
3:32
entire area because Davis is just such a safe place.
3:37
In fact, since nineteen seventy there's been far less than
3:41
one murder per year in my hometown, even though it's
3:44
only eleven miles from the capital city of Sacramento. It's
3:48
eleven miles west, so eleven miles towards San Francisco. But
3:52
it's very, very small, safe. Lots of professors live there
3:57
with their families, so it's you know, lots of education,
3:59
lots of money. It's just a very safe place. So
4:02
every time a murder happens, it makes the news. So
4:06
there are some notable murders, some of these I may
4:08
cover later on, but these include the twenty nineteen murder
4:12
of twenty two year old Natalie Corona.
4:14
Speaker 2: She was a police officer and.
4:16
Speaker 1: She was responding to an active shooter in downtown Davis,
4:19
which was crazy because you really think this could never
4:22
happen in my hometown or never happen to me, and
4:24
yet there it was. There was also the double murder
4:27
of Oliver Northrup and Claudium Maalpin in twenty thirteen. I
4:31
covered that on my other podcast, Twisted Listers, but I
4:33
may do it again in more detail here. And then
4:36
more recently in twenty twenty three, there was a series
4:39
of stabbings in which two people were killed, and that
4:41
was very unfortunate. It was a young college student who
4:44
was having like something of a mental health crisis. It
4:48
was a really sad story all around. But these stories,
4:51
like I said, they really are very few and far between,
4:52
as you can tell. You know, there's multiple years between them.
4:56
And even these cases weren't as big at the time
4:59
as the one of Sabrina and John that I'm gonna tell.
5:04
So I'm just gonna jump into it again and hopefully,
5:08
you know, just just tell this horrible story in a
5:10
way that you know, honors the victims and their families.
5:15
And I'm actually going to start in the year two
5:18
thousand and two, twenty two years after the murders, and
5:22
this in twenty two, twenty two. In two thousand and two,
5:26
police visit a forty seven year old man by the
5:29
name of Joe Hirshfield. Now Joe lives with his wife
5:32
Lanna in Beaver Creek, Oregon, which is just outside of Portland.
5:36
They have a really nice, easy life. Joe's aph well
5:40
paid mechanic. He also teaches scuba diving, and he and
5:43
his wife Lana live in a triple wide on two
5:46
and a half acres of land with.
5:48
Speaker 2: A barn, dogs, sheep.
5:51
Speaker 1: And even though it's a triple wide, it's a nice,
5:53
big house and they are just living the life that
5:56
they want. It's idyllic, it's easy. They have lots of friends.
6:00
Joe mostly has friends online. He's really big into the
6:03
online community and he was known in a bunch of
6:06
chatrooms as Joker Joe.
6:08
Speaker 2: So just you know, happy couple, you know, good life.
6:13
Speaker 1: That being said, there was another side to Joe, with
6:16
some neighbors calling him a loner or saying he was weird,
6:20
and a lot of them said he just really kept
6:22
to himself and if he didn't know you, he didn't
6:24
want to know you. One neighbors said they'd live next
6:26
to him for eleven years and had barely spoken more
6:30
than a few words in that entire time. So there's
6:33
kind of two sides to this guy, but most people
6:36
who knew him seem to really like him. So now
6:39
it's November nineteenth, two thousand and two, and police come
6:43
to his house, to Joe's house, while he's at work,
6:46
and they tell his wife Lana they're looking for him.
6:48
She calls him at work, She's like, hey, they want
6:50
to talk to you. He comes home and he talks
6:53
to them. They've got some questions for him, and police
6:55
tell him the questions are in relation to a murder
6:58
that happened back in Sacramento in nineth teen eighty and
7:01
they believe it may have involved his brother, Richard Hirshfield.
7:05
Now he speaks with police on the phone briefly. They
7:08
tell him, you know, there's new DNA technology we're able to,
7:11
you know, link Richard to this crime. And you know,
7:14
it's only a matter of time. We're just going to
7:15
keep testing things and getting more DNA, and you know
7:19
it's tied to this murder of these two eighteen year
7:21
old college students. They explain in big terms how the
7:24
DNA works. I don't think they're trying to like tell
7:26
him too much, but they're like, you know, people can
7:27
leave it at the scene. And his wife Lana later said, Oh, yeah,
7:31
we watched crime shows and he would like kind of
7:33
tune in when they're talking about DNA, So they have
7:35
like a vague idea of how it works, but not
7:38
really a lot, and he's just kind of like whatever.
7:40
He talks to the police. The police leave. The following morning,
7:44
Joe kisses his wife goodbye on his way to work,
7:48
gets in his car, and she doesn't that's it. She
7:51
goes about her day. A few hours later, Lana goes
7:54
into the to the barn and she finds Joe's car
7:57
in the barn. It had not he not driven to work.
8:01
She walks up to the car and she finds Joe inside,
8:05
having suffocated himself with the engine fumes. Joe had committed suicide,
8:10
and he also left behind a suicide note. Part of
8:14
it read quote it's only a matter of time before
8:17
they find my DNA too. So he had the most
8:25
beautiful hair. That is what the Living Insolves women say
8:29
when they talk about John Riggins. John Riggins, along with
8:33
his amazing bright red hair, was born in northern or
8:36
sorry in North Carolina in nineteen sixty two, and moved
8:40
with his parents and two younger siblings to Davis in
8:42
nineteen sixty nine when he was seven years old.
8:46
Speaker 2: Just a side note.
8:47
Speaker 1: About me, I also moved back to Davis from southern
8:50
California when I was seven. So John was a popular
8:54
kid from a good family. He fit right in with
8:56
the Davis community. Davis is, like I said, it's a
8:59
bu call. It's surrounded by farmland, but very well educated, small, safe, insular.
9:05
John's father was a doctor. John was a talented athlete
9:08
and he excelled specifically in baseball, which also my cousin
9:12
did and my son. So I'm just linking myself. I
9:15
promise I'll stop. As noted, John's hair was one thing
9:19
that made him stand out among his peers, but beyond that,
9:21
he was just a really great guy, well liked by
9:24
everyone who knew him, and honestly a very talented athlete.
9:27
And that's why people really knew him. He was a
9:30
very very talented athlete. As he grew up, John got
9:33
into rock and roll, but he kept it pretty chill
9:36
like most kids who grew up in Davis. He was
9:37
a really good kid, well raised, had a good head
9:39
on his shoulders. He would drink occasionally, but never did drugs,
9:43
despite many of his friends doing them around him. But
9:45
even his friends weren't doing anything more than like smoking weed,
9:49
you know, So he was just he was keeping it
9:51
even more chill.
9:53
Speaker 2: But the one thing that he was not very chill
9:55
about was girls.
9:57
Speaker 1: He was super into girls, and girls were super into him.
10:02
But he never really had a girlfriend, and wrote from
10:04
what we know he was a virgin until his death.
10:07
Now he never really had a girlfriend, not because a
10:09
girl didn't like him, like I said, but he wasn't
10:11
really good at closing the deal, as they say. He
10:14
would flirt, the girls would flurt back, but when it
10:16
came time to pull the trigger, he'd usually take too
10:19
long and miss his chance. And part of me wonders
10:21
if it's because he was never actually interested and just
10:24
liked the thrill of the chase. So he remained single
10:27
all through high school, at least for the most part,
10:30
and in the summers. Like I had mentioned, he had
10:32
a job in the parks department while he waited to
10:34
attend UC Davis. Once he graduated high school, he decided
10:38
to stay home, close to home, and probably wanted to
10:41
capitalize on living with his parents, which is a really
10:43
good idea. It is here at the Parks Department that
10:46
he met Sabrina Gonsalvez. Sabrina was unbelievably.
10:51
Speaker 2: Beautiful, kind, patient, innocent.
10:56
Speaker 1: She was the kind of girl you'd want to babysit
10:58
your kids, and despite being the youngest of three kids
11:01
in her own family, she was by all accounts the
11:03
most motherly, always making sure everyone was taken care of
11:07
before she took care of herself. Like John, Sabrina was
11:10
born in nineteen sixty two, and she was born in Oakland, California,
11:14
but moved around quite a bit because her father was
11:16
in the service.
11:18
Speaker 2: In high school, she.
11:19
Speaker 1: Actually moved to Germany and convinced her parents to let
11:21
her attend a German speaking high school because she wanted
11:25
to fully immerse herself in the culture, and she wasn't
11:28
afraid of the hard work it took to catch up
11:30
with her peers who were native German speakers, and she
11:34
actually did a good job and graduated and learned how
11:36
to speak German, just forcing herself to learn it while
11:39
in school. And that's the type of person she was,
11:41
and she never complained. She wanted the challenge and she
11:45
met it, and she excelled. The summers between you know,
11:48
high school, Sabrina would go to Davis and stay with
11:51
her sister Andrea and work at the parks Department. Now,
11:55
Andrea had originally wanted to attend Berkeley for college, and
11:58
she could have, except that her font, who had lived
12:01
in Oakland, was afraid of the crime in the area,
12:04
which we will see is sadly very ironic because it
12:08
makes sense to go to Davis if you're worried about crime.
12:11
But then again, here we are. So Andrea went to
12:15
Davis and Sabrina followed. She officially moved out the summer
12:18
prior to college starting and went back to work at
12:21
the parks department for probably like the second or third year,
12:24
which as we know, is where she met John Riggins.
12:26
And as soon as she officially lived in Davis for good,
12:29
they became a couple. So I think they'd been you know,
12:31
circling each other the last couple of summers. This summer
12:34
they made it official. They were completely taken with each other.
12:39
They spent as much time together as possible, and they
12:41
were like, honestly inseparable and just so happy. John's friend said,
12:46
you know, once he got together with Sabrina, we didn't
12:48
see much of him, but they didn't mind because they
12:50
knew how happy he was. Sabrina was very religious, very innocent.
12:55
John was, as we know, a very slow mover and
12:57
an all around good guy. So they were just like
12:59
a perfect couple. They went on a bunch of trips together,
13:03
they spent every weekend together. They were very much in love,
13:06
and her family loved him as well, and not just
13:09
his red hair. Sabrina's mother, Kim, said he had the
13:12
best manners and was just such a wonderful young man.
13:17
Now this time, the couple had already discussed marriage and
13:20
had even planned the names of the six children they
13:23
were going to have. Very unfortunately, though, this was not
13:28
meant to be. Before we get there, though, I'm going
13:31
to talk about another murder, another double murder that happened,
13:35
And this happens in Sacramento on November two, nineteen eighty
13:40
so just a few weeks before John and Sabrina's murder.
13:46
So November second, nineteen eighty two, young sweethearts Mary Beth
13:50
Sowers and Craig Miller, who were college students at Sacramento
13:53
State University left a party in Sacramento around one am.
13:58
Their friend followed behind them out of the party about
14:01
a minute later and saw them sitting in the back
14:04
of an unfamiliar car. Now he was either drunk or
14:07
not thinking about it, but he jumped in the front
14:09
of the car to surprise them, like boo, you know,
14:12
like to scare them. And when he got in the front,
14:14
he realized there was a man inside who he also
14:17
did not recognize. The man told him in a very
14:20
angry tone to get the fuck out of here, and
14:23
a woman who was with him, who was somewhere around
14:25
seven months pregnant, slapped this friend in the face and
14:28
asked him, why the fuck are you in my car.
14:31
The friend taken aback, just got out and stood there
14:35
and watched as the car drove away with his friends inside,
14:39
and he was luckily had to shit together enough that
14:42
he remembered the license plate because he knew something was wrong.
14:46
The two people in the car with the college sweethearts
14:49
Mary Beth and Craig were Gerald Gallego and his pregnant wife, Charlene.
14:56
Gerald had decided that he wanted a sex slave and
15:00
Marybeth Sours was the perfect target as she was stunning
15:04
and young. She was like beauty pageant beautiful, like blonde,
15:08
just unbelievably gorgeous, and so he just probably stalked her
15:12
and waited for her to come out of this party
15:15
and took her and her boyfriend. So he first drove
15:18
the couple out to the middle of nowhere, robbed Craig
15:21
of twenty dollars, then marched him about, you know, fifty
15:24
feet in front of the car and shot him three
15:26
times in the head, right in front of Mary Beth.
15:30
She must have been absolutely fucking terrified. He then took
15:34
her back to his shared home with Charlene, and while
15:37
Charlene watched TV and slept on the couch, he repeatedly
15:41
raped Marybeth in the bedroom. After doing this for hours,
15:46
he then took Marybeth back out to a different area
15:49
in the middle of nowhere and shot her exactly as
15:52
he had shot Craig. Marybeth's body was not found for
15:57
twenty days. The friend who saw them being abducted notified
16:02
police immediately, but the police likely didn't do shit until
16:05
it was too late, you know, because the police don't
16:07
give a shit. Generally. That being said, Quig's body was
16:10
found hours after he was killed, and once that happened,
16:13
police took things seriously. They immediately went to Gerald Gallego
16:18
and Charlene's apartment because they ran the plates realized it
16:22
was his car, because these two are nothing if not stupid.
16:25
But Gerald and Charlene were not at the apartment and
16:28
they saw the cops there and they went on the run.
16:31
It took until November seventeenth for the couple to be
16:33
caught in Omaha, Nebraska, after Charlene's mother notified the FBI
16:37
that she had called and asked to have money to
16:39
be wired there. Now, Gerald Gallego had a half brother
16:43
named David Hunt, who loved and admired Gerald entirely, which
16:49
is interesting because David is the older brother, the older
16:51
half brother. But anyway, this man, David was also a
16:54
complete scumbag piece of shit who had a laundry list
16:57
of crimes under his belt and who had spent a
16:59
lot of time in prison, and he also broke out
17:01
of prison more than once. And it also recently helped
17:04
his friend Richard Thompson escape about two weeks after Gerald
17:08
killed that couple. Now, Gerald was in prison at this
17:11
point after getting caught for the murders of Marybeth and Craig,
17:14
and police began linking him to ten other murders, which
17:19
would later be dubbed the sex slave murders. So that
17:22
means that Gerald here is a fucking serial killer, which
17:25
could be its own case. And so again another case
17:28
that maybe I'll cover someday, but I think some of
17:30
it's going to kind of get covered here and you'll
17:32
see how that unfolds. Now, this is another piece to
17:35
the story that's important, mostly because of the similarity to
17:38
the case of Sabrina and John in that it's a couple,
17:42
they're young college sweethearts, it's a double murder, and it's
17:45
in the same area. So we'll come back to this,
17:47
but just remember these people. So now it's the night
17:50
of December twentieth, nineteen eighty, about six weeks later, and
17:54
John and Sabrina were working at the Children's Nutcracker, which
17:57
this year is in its forty seventh year, so a
18:00
long standing tradition that actually started not long before they
18:03
started working there. It's held at the Memorial Center, like
18:06
Veterans Memorial Center, I think in Davis and it's hosted
18:09
by the city, and because John and Sabrina worked for
18:12
the city, they were picked to work this event. After
18:16
the Nutcracker was over, they were scheduled to go to
18:18
a surprise birthday party for Sabrina's sister, who was turning
18:22
twenty two on the twenty second, So this is two
18:26
nights before and in fact, another really shitty thing to
18:30
note is that December twentieth, this night was John's parents'
18:34
wedding anniversary, So the twentieth is their wedding anniversary. The
18:37
twenty second is Andrea's birthday. So they were meant to
18:41
go to this surprise party and they were throwing Andrea
18:46
off the trail. They told her, oh, we're gonna go
18:48
see a John Lennon movie because he'd been killed just
18:51
a couple weeks earlier, on December eighth, nineteen eighty, which
18:54
is actually today. Crazy enough, rip John Lennon. So instead,
18:59
once they were done working, the couple pretty much vanished
19:02
into thin air. As I noted, Sabrina lived with her
19:05
sister Andrea, so when she didn't show up to the
19:07
party and wasn't home when Andrea got home, she was
19:10
pretty annoyed.
19:11
Speaker 2: She was like, I can't.
19:11
Speaker 1: Believe my sister missed my party and she's still out
19:14
with John. It felt really thoughtless and very out of
19:17
character for them, and I think Andrea maybe would have
19:20
thought more of it, but she was still getting over
19:22
the flu which she had just had, so she just
19:25
went to bed.
19:25
Speaker 2: When she got home, she.
19:27
Speaker 1: Was annoyed, but she didn't really think too deeply about it,
19:30
I think because she was a little bit out of it,
19:31
and she also thought maybe they just ended up working
19:34
late and they decided to actually go to that movie. Unfortunately,
19:39
as she found out in the morning, this was not
19:41
the case. The following morning, when she woke up, she
19:44
immediately knew that Sabrina hadn't come home. And the way
19:47
she knew this is because Sabrina was such a reliable
19:50
person that every night when she came home, she'd turn
19:53
off the fan that was like in their living room
19:55
before going to bed. So Andrea got up and saw
19:57
the fan was still on, and she immediately knew. She
20:00
walked into Sabrina's room found that her bed had not
20:03
been slept in, and her wallet and other personal items
20:06
were still there. She panicked and called her older sister,
20:10
teres I think it's Terisa or Teresa, I don't know,
20:14
and then her parents, now Teresa or Teresa also lived
20:17
in Davis and that's where the party was being held,
20:19
so they all lived nearby. So she then she calls
20:22
her sister, and then she calls her parents. She also,
20:25
I believe, at that point, called John's parents, who found
20:28
that his room was also undisturbed. He was not in there,
20:31
and their family van, which he had borrowed the night before,
20:34
was still not back at the house, so it's missing.
20:38
They called police, and at first they weren't very worried,
20:41
they weren't very interested, but the family pushed. They were like, listen,
20:44
these two did not run off to Vegas and get married.
20:46
They didn't stay out all night. They're really good, innocent kids,
20:49
they're virgins, they're religious, like kind of laying it all out.
20:52
And the police agreed to start looking for the couple,
20:54
which would only happen I think in a small town
20:57
like this most places, and the next case I'm actually
21:00
will like kind of exemplify this. They're not going to
21:02
do that for you. But because we're in Davis, because
21:05
the families probably knew some of the police, they decided okay,
21:08
we're going to help you, even though it hasn't been
21:10
twenty four hours, and by the end of the day
21:12
the police were very worried as well. Unfortunately, it wasn't
21:17
until two days later, on December twenty second, Andrea's birthday,
21:21
around eight thirty am, that the van belonging to the
21:24
Riggins family was finally found on fulsome road in Sacramento.
21:28
It's not a well traveled road. Many of them are
21:30
out there like aren't even now, and especially back then.
21:33
It was a lot of farm land, but the van
21:36
was in plain sight, so it's interesting that it took
21:38
this long to find it. The van was quickly identified
21:42
and towed for processing, but John and Sabrina were still
21:45
nowhere to be found again. Unfortunately, this changed two hours
21:49
later when police were walking down a small dirt road
21:52
about a quarter mile from where the van was found
21:54
and found two wet, rigid bodies laying in a ditch.
21:58
The body identified as John was lying face up, while
22:01
the body belonging to Sabrina was face down as if
22:04
she had been on all fours before falling forward. Both
22:08
bodies were covered in duct tape, as were their heads
22:11
and faces, and only Sabrina's legs were uncovered, which is
22:16
horrifying to think about and also feels obvious as to
22:20
what probably happened, which will be of importance later. The
22:24
bodies were taken to the medical examiner for autopsies and
22:27
their causes of death were determined. John had been beaten
22:31
on the head five times with something very heavy, probably
22:35
because he was attempting to defend himself and Sabrina. He
22:38
had also had his throat cut, but no major arteries
22:41
were cut, so it likely took him hours to die.
22:45
On top of this horrifying detail, he was likely conscious
22:49
for a good part of it, but was not able
22:53
to save himself because he could not move because of
22:55
all of the tape. Sabrina had two deep cuts to
23:01
her throat to the point where she had nearly been decapitated. Luckily,
23:06
this meant that she had died nearly instantly. Even though
23:09
it sounds horrifying, the small favor is that she didn't
23:14
lay there for hours like John likely did. Their hands
23:18
were bound in another type of tape as well, so
23:20
the killer or killers really took some time with this,
23:23
and again, as noted, Sabrina's legs were not taped and
23:27
one of her boots was partially off. Her panties were
23:31
also found to have been inside out and partially twisted,
23:34
but the medical examiner found no signs of sexual assault,
23:38
which is crazy to me, but that is the official Like,
23:42
that's what.
23:42
Speaker 2: They said officially.
23:44
Speaker 1: At this time in nineteen eighty, they had also found
23:47
a bruise on Sabrina's vagina, but they explained that it
23:51
was probably due to her being kicked into the ditch,
23:54
which is like just as awful. In the van, authorities
23:58
found a ton of ffavidence, some of which they completely ignored,
24:02
as we'll see, but some of which they processed.
24:05
Speaker 2: This included a.
24:06
Speaker 1: Tire iron, which was removed from its place in the
24:08
back of the van and was likely the weapon used
24:11
to beat John on the head, which is terrible. Hopefully
24:16
he was unconscious, but I just don't know. It also
24:19
included a paper bag with three half gallons of fully
24:22
melted ice cream inside, ice cream that was intended for
24:25
the surprise party. It also included presents that had been
24:28
torn apart, presumably by the attacker or attackers, including a
24:32
quilted blanket the couple had bought Andrea to help keep
24:35
her warm. During these cold, foggy winter nights. And I
24:39
do want to point out that the night that John
24:41
and Sabrina were abducted was particularly foggy and Davis like
24:45
the country roads and even in the city, the fog
24:48
gets so thick you can't see five feet in front
24:49
of you, like it's super dangerous. I used to drive
24:52
to this little town called Winters, it's like ten miles
24:55
away from Davis, because I had like a boyfriend there
24:58
and it was insane in the winter. It was so
25:02
eerie and scary and just like straight up dangerous because
25:04
the fog was so bad, And on the night that
25:06
they were taken, the fog was like that. So it
25:09
just adds like another element to this fucking crazy ass story.
25:13
Now we have to remember that there wasn't really DNA
25:16
in nineteen eighty, but even so, the blanket was kept
25:19
as evidence but was not really processed, so they didn't
25:23
like look for evidence on it, which is crazy. Also,
25:27
the Riggans family was never asked to identify the items
25:30
in the van, so police never knew what did and
25:32
did not belong to them, which I feel like would
25:34
have been super helpful to know if like the killer
25:36
left something behind. So it was a really shoddy police
25:40
work and very disappointing.
25:44
Speaker 2: That being said, some of the things that.
25:45
Speaker 1: They paid attention to did sort of help them create
25:48
a timeline and a place of abduction. This includes the
25:52
ice cream because they kind of knew, you know, some
25:56
information about the ice cream that helps, you know, build
25:59
a timeline. I'll talk about that, but first I just
26:02
want to mention this was really terrible. The funerals were
26:05
held within a couple of weeks of the murders. They
26:08
were held from them separately, but the people mourned the
26:10
couple together and there were literally like five hundred people
26:14
at each at each funeral, just you know, the mourners.
26:17
So many people were affected by this, and so many
26:19
people cared about this case when it happened. This is
26:23
really fucking sad. So police continued their investigation and realized
26:27
that they had two theories for when and how the
26:29
couple were abducted. As I had mentioned, the presence of
26:32
the ice cream kind of helped because it meant that
26:34
Sabrina had gone home to pick it up after leaving work,
26:38
as her sister, Teres had bought two of the half
26:41
gallons during the week and left them at her house,
26:44
which I found weird because the ice cream is for
26:46
Andrea's surprise party, but it's in her freezer, so I
26:48
don't really know how they.
26:49
Speaker 2: Like pulled that off. Who knows.
26:51
Speaker 1: In any case, they knew that if she had the
26:54
ice cream, that means she went home. However, Teres had
26:58
only bought two half gallons and herself had bought the third,
27:02
and so there's contention about when she did that and
27:04
what that means for the abduction because nobody can say
27:07
for sure when she bought the ice cream because there
27:09
was no receipt, so she could.
27:10
Speaker 2: Have bought it that night.
27:12
Speaker 1: So if she had bought it before that night, also
27:14
like during the week, and distored it in the freezer,
27:16
then it's more than likely they were abducted outside of
27:19
her apartment as they came to pick all of the
27:21
ice cream up. If Sabrina bought the ice cream that night,
27:25
then they could have been abducted from the grocery store
27:27
parking lot where she bought the ice cream. And this
27:31
grocery store parking lot, it's the same grocery store that
27:33
I used to go to when they were going there.
27:35
It was a Luckies and when I was going there.
27:37
It's an Albertson's, but it's still like weird that I
27:41
know exactly where it is. And again, like I mentioned,
27:43
I used to live really close to where this happened.
27:45
I personally think they were probably abducted from the apartments
27:48
because those apartments are so quiet and so dark at night,
27:52
and with the added fog, it's like would be really
27:55
easy to take somebody and nobody see it. So anyway,
27:58
like I said, it's very possible they were taken from
28:00
her apartment because John also always liked to park in
28:03
a dark corner up against a bush, So he's just
28:06
adding like another layer where this guy can hide and
28:09
pop out and grab them, throw them in the van
28:11
and drive away. Again, this is what I believe, but
28:14
the other theory has some weight as well. Mostly what
28:18
the weight is that they were abducted at the Luckies
28:21
parking lot. It's supported by eyewitness accounts, but most of
28:25
them sound kind of weak. There are like two or
28:28
three people who thought that they saw them in the
28:30
shopping mall that night.
28:32
Speaker 2: That being said, they still could have.
28:34
Speaker 1: Gone bought the ice cream at Lucky's and then gone
28:37
to her house and picked up the rest. So I
28:38
really don't know, but I personally really believe that they
28:41
were abducted outside of her house, if I had to
28:44
choose a theory. But either way, it's within, you know,
28:47
a half mile of each other. There are other theories
28:49
as well, like it's possible that they were taken outside
28:53
of Teresa's house when they got to the party, Like,
28:55
there's nothing to say they weren't abducted then. But all
28:58
we know is that they did definitely go to Sabrina's house,
29:02
they got the ice cream, and then they were taken.
29:05
Beyond this, there were other sidings of the couple after
29:09
the abduction that are more for certain because people saw
29:13
the van. So around eight thirty pm, a motorists saw
29:16
the van barreling down Covell Boulevard, which is a main
29:19
street that you would definitely use to drive to and
29:21
from Sabrina's apartment from most.
29:23
Speaker 2: Areas of Davis.
29:24
Speaker 1: This witness said there were three people inside. They couldn't
29:27
make out any details because there was a blanket up
29:30
against one of the windows, which means you know that
29:34
the blanket was already unwrapped.
29:36
Speaker 2: At this point.
29:37
Speaker 1: Another driver saw the van swerving all over the Interstate
29:40
on eighty we just call it eighty up there, which
29:43
could have meant that John was fighting the abductor at
29:45
this point, or maybe Sabrina was being assaulted, or maybe
29:48
John was driving and you know, the abductor was like
29:52
fucking with him, like who knows. But somebody else saw
29:54
it driving erratically on the freeway. Another man actually saw
29:58
the van backing into the dirt where it was eventually found,
30:02
but didn't call police even though he had a quote
30:04
weird feeling about it, which is really unfortunate that he
30:08
didn't call because if they had found John and Sabrina,
30:11
John maybe could have survived. Now Sabrina wouldn't have, which
30:14
is terrible, but John could have. Or maybe he was
30:18
seeing it before they were murdered. You know, who knows
30:21
what would have happened. Now. Later, the van was seen
30:24
by somebody at a bar called Rudy's Hideaway that was
30:27
really close to the murder side. It was kind of
30:30
like one of the only things around. And I can
30:32
tell you from experience, there are bars like that that
30:34
are just like out in the middle of nowhere, like
30:36
a biker stop. Like you're driving down the country road
30:38
and you just pull over and get a beer. So
30:40
the person who saw this was a woman, and she
30:43
said that the van was blocking the road and when
30:45
she kind of went to look inside, like what's going on?
30:47
Why is this blocking the road, she saw a baseball
30:49
hat on the front seat, wrapping paper thrown everywhere, and
30:53
saw a single man get inside of the van. So
30:56
this is likely after the murders, like he killed them
30:58
and then went to this bar. Yet another sighting was
31:02
from a couple who said they saw two suspicious men
31:06
coming out of the trees, suspicious looking, sorry, men coming
31:09
out of the trees later that night, very close to
31:12
where the bodies were found. They actually called out to
31:15
the men, who entirely ignored them, and these witnesses, a
31:20
few of them, gave a description of the single man
31:22
that they saw as having a beard and long hair
31:26
parted down the middle. And then there was another sighting
31:31
that morning where a witness saw a man matching the
31:34
same description in a yellow, bloodstained shirt come out of
31:38
the trees and get into a brown pickup truck which
31:40
then drove away and he got in as the passenger.
31:44
So some of these things are all going to kind
31:46
of connect later. But I just want to give you
31:47
the eyewitness accounts. Police had nothing more than that. At
31:52
least they didn't think they did, because they didn't fucking
31:54
check any of the evidence they found in the van, basically,
31:57
so they started looking at anything that could be a lead.
32:00
Speaker 2: They looked at old.
32:00
Speaker 1: Boyfriends of Andrea's. They looked at like a family John
32:03
delivered papers too, because I guess one of the people
32:06
in that family died and they thought like maybe his
32:08
brother decided to kill somebody to avenge his death. I
32:11
don't know. It was a weird lead. I didn't really
32:12
look into it. They even looked into Henry Lee Lucas,
32:16
but there was nothing to tie any of these suspects
32:18
to the murders. Now, around this time, a jail informant
32:23
brought up the name of one David Hunt, who I've
32:26
already sort of mentioned, who was potentially in the area,
32:29
had a record a mile long, and had just helped
32:32
another criminal escape prison. He was also the half brother
32:36
of now suspected serial killer Gerald Gallego. Police reached out
32:41
to David Hunt after he was caught in March nineteen
32:44
eighty one for like the breaking his friend out of prison,
32:47
and he declined to speak to them saying I'm on parole,
32:50
but I didn't do it and I would never hurt
32:52
a young girl. He was not interviewed again until nineteen
32:58
eighty seven, let him go for six years. He just
33:02
said I didn't do it, and they said, thanks for
33:04
letting us know, sir, have a nice day now. The
33:07
case sat cold, but in nineteen eighty three a new
33:11
detective took over the case and took it to an
33:13
FBI profiler, who said the crime was likely one of opportunity,
33:17
that Sabrina may have even died from suffocation due to
33:20
the duct tape on her face, that the killer was
33:23
smart and methodical, and that he acted alone in the abduction.
33:27
Using the tape and the beating of John is proof
33:29
that the killer was alone because two men wouldn't have
33:32
needed to do all of that to subdue the victims.
33:35
He also said this was the killer's first murder because
33:38
there were hesitation marks on John's neck, but the marks
33:41
on Sabrina's neck were much deeper, indicating that he got
33:44
used to what he was doing after the first time.
33:47
Speaker 2: He said that.
33:48
Speaker 1: Despite the pathologist's findings that the motive was likely sexual
33:51
assault of Sabrina and that the murderer was a loner
33:55
and that while this loaner probably dated, he still had
34:00
you know, sexual issues and probably felt no remorse after
34:04
the killings, only a fear of being caught. Now again,
34:08
this was great to have this profile, but it ultimately
34:12
kind of led to nothing, and again the case went cold.
34:15
Then in nineteen eighty six, another detective from Davis, Fred Turner,
34:19
took it over and took a second look at David Hunt,
34:22
who at the time was in prison for kidnapping, wherein
34:27
the couple he kidnapped were bound with duct tape.
34:30
Speaker 2: He was then the detective.
34:32
Speaker 1: Able to prove that David Hunt could have been in
34:34
Davis at the time of the murders, as he had
34:36
been wed earlier that day in Carson City, Nevada, which
34:39
is only a three hour drive from Davis. Lastly, from motive,
34:44
he pointed to the fact that Gerald Galago was looking,
34:48
you know, to get out of prison, and so this
34:50
would have been a perfect copycat crime to take place
34:53
while he was incarcerated, and to prove that he was
34:55
not the killer police were looking for, which is obviously
34:58
stupid because they had a time of evid against him.
35:00
But you know, people do dumber shit than that. Police
35:03
went to David Hunt's accomplice the when he broke out
35:06
of prison, Richard Thompson, who was at that time out
35:09
of prison, and they tried to get information out of him.
35:13
It would make sense if he had been the one
35:15
to pick up David Hunt. You know, the pickup truck
35:18
they saw a man getting into. It would make sense
35:20
for Richard Thomas to be the one driving that pickup truck.
35:23
So they went to the Cecil Hotel, which, if anybody
35:25
knows true crime knows, that's a very significant place in
35:27
Los Angeles, and rather than trying to talk to him
35:30
as police, they sent in a snitch. Now, this guy
35:33
was friends with David Hunt and Richard Thompson, so he
35:36
already had like a relationship with him, and he's a snitch.
35:40
So they think like, oh, it's gonna go great, but
35:41
he fucking blows it. Basically, he can't get much of
35:44
anything on the recording that he he's wearing a wire
35:47
and the only thing he got Richard Thompson to say
35:50
was if I was gonna tie someone up, maybe I'd
35:52
use duct tape. During this conversation, Richard Thompson also said
35:56
he'd use fishing wire, handcuffs, a ton of other eyes.
36:00
But the police still thought, oh, this is a damning
36:03
confession because they're grasping at straws. The snitch also said
36:06
that off tape, of course he got a full confession,
36:09
but I mean that doesn't really count for anything. What
36:12
they got definitely wasn't enough. So they decided. But they
36:16
were convinced, you know, at this point that David did it,
36:18
and they're like, we just need more evidence. So they
36:20
go and they talk to suell And Hunt, David's then
36:23
wife and the one that he married the day before
36:26
or the day of Sabrina and John's murders in Carson City.
36:31
So at this time that they go talk to suell
36:34
and David, Hunt is in prison and Suellen is just
36:36
waiting dutifully for him to get out of prison so
36:39
they could go on in wedded bliss. Unfortunately, during this
36:44
time with Suellen learned from the police like, hey, we
36:49
know you're married and you think you don't have to
36:50
like testify against him, but one you're still married to
36:54
someone else, so your big miss marriage is not legal,
36:58
so you can be compelled to testify him against him.
37:01
And second, if you got married after he did these crimes,
37:06
you can still be forced to testify him against any
37:08
crimes you knew about before you were married. So these guys,
37:12
the whole thing is stupid. But anyway, so they go
37:14
and they talked to Sue Allen. They find her dodgy
37:17
and difficult to deal with, and they got some information
37:20
from her. They didn't really help them so much as
37:23
convinced them further that she was lying. They found that
37:26
she had rented a van for a few days around
37:28
this time, and she wouldn't She gave them like the
37:32
wrong van company, so she said it was like hurts
37:35
when it was budget something like that. So they found
37:37
her being deceptive and that was really problematic.
37:40
Speaker 2: She also told them.
37:41
Speaker 1: That they got married in Vegas, which is eleven hours
37:45
from Davis, which would have made committing the murders impossible.
37:48
Police found it really interesting that she couldn't remember where
37:51
she'd been married just a few months earlier. They were
37:55
also really upset about the van about lying about that
37:58
because it took him a year to figure out where
38:00
the van came from. They'd been wanting to check the
38:02
mileage on the rental van to show that they did
38:05
or could have driven to Davis that day, but by
38:07
the time they found the information on the van, they
38:10
couldn't prove the mileage, so she was really like throwing
38:14
the cops off, and the fact she was doing this
38:17
made them want to launch an official investigation into these people,
38:22
and police went really hard on this. That being said,
38:27
despite their best efforts, cops didn't really have anything concrete
38:32
against David Hunt, Richard Thompson, or anybody else that they
38:36
thought was involved, and in fact, the only piece of
38:39
hard evidence they had, which were fingerprints found inside the van,
38:43
did not match David Hunt or Richard Thompson. Additionally, David
38:48
and Sell and Hunt both passed lie detector tests. Richard
38:52
Thompson failed the same test, but they're notoriously unreliable, so
38:56
you couldn't really use it anyway. What police did have
38:59
was a lot of circumstantial evidence, including another witness who
39:02
was with the group on the day of the murders,
39:04
who said that he was left alone in a casino
39:08
in Carson City that evening, while Hunt and Thompson said
39:11
they had quote family business to attend to, which sounds
39:14
a lot like they could have been attempting to help
39:17
Gerald Galago by way of copycat killing. Also, Gallego's mother
39:21
said David Hunt had called her and offered to do
39:23
quote anything to help. Now, going back to the witness,
39:29
the witness gave a timeline that made it entirely, entirely
39:32
possible for Hunt and Thompson to have committed the killings
39:35
before coming back to their shared motel rooms and driving
39:38
from Carson City back to Arizona, where they were staying.
39:41
Speaker 2: At the time.
39:43
Speaker 1: So they take this kind of timeline circumstantial information, they
39:46
go to the DA's office, and.
39:47
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty nine, nine.
39:50
Speaker 1: Years after the murders, police finally arrest David Hunt, Richard Thompson,
39:56
and Suellen Hunt for the murders. They also, I think
40:00
arrested this witness for some part in the murders. But
40:03
most of this was an attempt to get these people
40:06
to turn There was no physical evidence, a lot of
40:10
witness testimony, and a lot of circumstantial evidence and a
40:13
very solid motive. That being said, many in the Sacramento
40:17
Police Department did not agree with the arrests. Some of
40:20
them didn't even really think they did it, and they
40:23
said that the police in charge had blinders on, but
40:26
the prosecution decided to take the case and essentially they
40:29
said this David Hunt busted his friend Richard Thompson out
40:33
of jail. The two of them, along with suell and Hunt,
40:36
then decided to pull off a double murder to help
40:38
his half brother Richard Galago get out of trouble. They
40:42
had a man named Doug Lanier help them out. That
40:45
was the witness I forgot to give his name prior
40:47
sorry for which Suellen later wrote him a one thousand
40:50
dollars check for helping run interference during the murders. They
40:54
then had Doug reserver room at a Sacramento Mitel six,
40:57
where Suellen waited while David and Richard went to Davis
41:00
to find victims to kill. There is no record of
41:04
any Motel six motel rental because their records didn't go
41:08
back that far, so this is again just conjecture by
41:11
the prosecution. That being said, the rental van was seen
41:15
several times in Sacramento on December twentieth, so there's some
41:18
sort of eyewitness quote unquote proof they were in the
41:20
area on the day just before the murders. The murders
41:24
were then committed according to prosecution, and though Gallegos had
41:28
used a gun to kill his latest victims, it was
41:31
believed that Hunt and Thompson used knives because they were
41:33
seen by people and they didn't want to draw too
41:35
much attention, so they didn't want to use guns because
41:38
it would have been allowed, the bar was nearby, et cetera.
41:41
The bodies were left uncovered when they were dumped, just
41:44
as Gerald Gallego's victims had been, and the group all
41:48
then went back to Carson City. Doug Lanneer, this witness,
41:53
also said that he witnessed a blood ritual take place
41:57
between David Hunt and Richard Thompson, which was super fucking
42:01
weird and also made it seem like they were getting
42:04
ready to do something big, like a murder. Also helping
42:08
the case against Hunt and Thompson was the fact that
42:10
Gerald Gallego did in fact opened a discovery case just
42:13
days after Sabrina and John's murder, saying that it showed
42:17
he may have not been the killer of the other victims,
42:20
as another murder took place just after the one he
42:22
was accused of while he was in prison, so it
42:25
all circumstantially lines up. During this time, police offered every
42:31
single person involved in the case except for David Hunt,
42:34
a deal if they would turn on him or each other.
42:38
None of them took the deal, with Lanier, who was
42:41
also on trial, as I mentioned, saying he would gladly
42:43
take it, but he didn't have anything to prove they
42:46
did the murders, and he had no idea if they
42:49
actually did so. Basically, the discovery phase of the pre
42:53
trial went on for a long time. All of these
42:55
suspects were in prison for three years waiting for trial.
43:00
But in the end, all police could prove was that
43:02
the men had the time and opportunity and the motive
43:05
to commit the murders. They didn't have fingerprints, they didn't
43:08
have confirmed sightings of the men in Davis or with
43:12
the victims. They had the rental van, but it's a
43:13
rental van. It could have been any rental van. And
43:16
of course they didn't have DNA. Now this was due
43:19
in large part the fact that DNA wasn't really a
43:21
thing too much back then, but it is going to
43:23
come into play. So they didn't have anybody close to
43:27
the men to say they were involved, and the only
43:29
person who said they admitted it to the killings. Was
43:31
that jail house snitch, who it turned out was a
43:33
former brother in law of David Hunt, So could have
43:36
had a motive for trying to get him in trouble
43:38
because it's a former brother in law, so they're no
43:41
longer part of the family. And again, all of his
43:45
admissions that he caught were not caught on tape while
43:48
he was wearing a wire, So how would that even happen. So,
43:51
like I said, the group was arrested in nineteen eighty
43:53
nine or maybe early nineteen ninety, and it took until
43:56
nineteen ninety two for some of them to even go
43:59
to trial or to start to go to trial. And
44:01
just prior to the trial, the defense said, hey, can
44:05
we review all the evidence in the case, including the
44:07
blue quilted blanket. And here's the crazy part. As I
44:11
had mentioned, the blanket had never been tested for seminal
44:15
fluid meaning semen or any other bodily fluids. At the
44:20
start of the investigation. The request had been made, but
44:23
whoever was processing the blanket either ignored the request or
44:27
just forgot about it, and the police never followed up.
44:30
They never followed up. When police took the case up
44:33
again in nineteen eighty seven. They did ask for a
44:36
review of the blanket, but apparently they used the wrong jargon,
44:40
so instead of saying we specifically want you to check
44:42
for body fluids, they just said, oh, test the blanket again,
44:45
which is such a scientist thing for them to be, like,
44:47
I'm going to give you exactly what you ask for
44:49
and double check to make sure it's actually what you want.
44:52
So again, no bodily fluids were tested for Now, the
44:57
defense finally went because the blanket was still an evidence,
45:01
thank god, So they took it and they went to
45:04
get it tested for DNA. Now we're in nineteen ninety two.
45:07
DNA testing is still very basic, but they were able
45:10
to get enough evidence to have it tested. Now the
45:12
prosecution we're like, hey, hey, we want to do this too.
45:15
We're not going to trust the DNA if it comes
45:18
from you, which nowadays I don't really think is as
45:20
much of a thing, but this is still a very
45:22
new science.
45:22
Speaker 2: So they're like, we want to test our own.
45:25
Speaker 1: So both sides did their own independent testing and both
45:28
came back with the exact same results. None of the
45:32
men being charged, nor John Riggins could be tied to
45:36
the seminole fluid found on the blanket. This also proves
45:41
that there was a sexual assault, despite what the medical
45:45
examiner found during the autopsy the first time, which is like,
45:49
how could you miss that? How could you miss that?
45:53
There is semen on a blanket? And it gets worse,
45:55
We'll get there. It was clear someone ejaculated on the
45:59
blank but it wasn't any of those men. The prosecution
46:03
dropped the case the week the jury was being chosen,
46:07
stating they simply did not have enough evidence to prosecute
46:10
the Hunt gang. They were dismissed, but like, they could
46:13
be charged again. I never remember if it's with prejudice
46:15
or without prejudice. That means you can be charged again.
46:17
So I'm just gonna say they can be charged again.
46:21
Although they were set free, because they were still able
46:23
to be charged again in the future, even ten years later,
46:26
most people thought they were still the killers, including Sabrina's family.
46:30
Let me say that again, even ten years later, meaning
46:32
nineteen years on from the murder, we still didn't have
46:35
a conclusion. So basically, in everybody's mind, it was an
46:39
unsolved case that everybody quote unquote knew was solved. Now
46:44
I want to kind of switch gears a little bit here.
46:46
The book that I read about this case is one
46:48
of those things kind of like your own backyard podcast.
46:52
The writer Joel Davis kind of became a part of
46:55
the story while investigating it. Now, Joel Davis grew up
46:58
in Davis and was peripheral friends with John Riggins, so
47:02
this case always interested him because he found out that
47:04
John was missing on his birthday, so his birthday is
47:07
also right around this time. In his adult life, he
47:10
became a journalist and around the year two thousand he
47:12
began investigating this double murder because it obviously affected him,
47:16
as it did so many in the Davis community. After
47:18
some research, Joel came to believe that the Hunt group
47:21
in fact did not do the murders and found a
47:24
Sacramento prosecutor, Anne Marie Schubert, who used DNA recently to
47:28
solve the cold case, and decided to bring this cold
47:30
case to her attention, and she jumped right in. She
47:35
looked at the DNA and had it tested again. Now
47:38
we're in two thousand and two, DNA testing and become
47:41
a lot better science, like a much more accurate science,
47:44
and they now had databases of sexual criminals to match against.
47:48
On August twenty seventh, two thousand and two, after waiting
47:51
months for the results, the DNA produced a hit, and
47:56
it was so random it shocked everyone. The hit was
48:01
for a career criminal and repeated sex offender who had
48:04
never been mentioned before, who was also a rapist, a
48:08
man named Richard Hirshfield. Now you might recognize that name
48:12
from the start of this story in November two thousand
48:15
and two, when we go and talk to Richard's brother
48:17
when the police went and saw him in Oregon. At
48:20
the time of the match, Richard was fifty three and
48:22
in jail for at least another eight years. He'd done
48:25
two years of a ten year sentence because he had
48:28
been convicted of child molestation. Now the prosecutor, Schubert and
48:34
the police started looking into Richard and found he absolutely
48:38
was the right guy.
48:40
Speaker 2: He was released from.
48:41
Speaker 1: Prison near Davis the summer before the murders. He worked
48:44
in Davis as an air conditioning repairman or air conditioner repairman,
48:48
and likely worked at Sabrina's building, so he could have
48:51
seen her previously, known where she lived, and waited for
48:54
her to come home in the dark to attack her.
48:56
He also had a long history prior to this of
48:59
a attacking women and couples, even in their own homes,
49:04
so he was brazen enough to do this foreshore. He
49:08
also fit the descriptions given by eyewitnesses.
49:10
Speaker 2: He was six ' to.
49:11
Speaker 1: One, were an army jack that had been described by
49:14
at least one witness, and he had that long hair
49:17
parted down the middle and a beard. Now this brings
49:21
us back to the beginning of the story and joker
49:23
Joe Hirshfield and his two page long but ultimately very
49:28
vague suicide note. In it, he said I was there
49:32
for the murders, but Richard killed them. So he straight
49:38
up says I witnessed my brother murder these young people,
49:44
which means the theory about how the couple were killed
49:47
changed and got a whole lot worse. Now, while it
49:50
was initially thought they'd been abducted and killed in a
49:53
short amount of time, basically taken out to the country,
49:56
beaten and killed, it now seemed much more likely that
49:59
there to were had lasted hours. As it turns out,
50:03
Joe Hirshfield lived about seven miles from where the bodies
50:07
were found at the time they were murdered, and with
50:09
his semi confession, police believed the couple were abducted, made
50:13
to drive to Joe's house. Beaten, Sabrina was raped potentially
50:18
by both men while John had to watch, and then
50:21
were taken by either one or both men out to
50:23
the country road where Richard killed them. Part of what
50:27
made them think about this was that Joe was so
50:30
convinced his DNA was going to be found at the
50:32
crime scene. Although later they kind of walk this back
50:37
a little bit, but at the time they're thinking, well,
50:39
maybe Joe killed one and Richard killed the other, hence
50:42
the differing knife marks. But either way, they're thinking that
50:45
the way these kids were killed was way worse than
50:49
they originally thought. It. Also, at this time came out
50:54
that there was semen found in Sabrina's throat, which is
50:58
beyond fucking horrifying. The first time I read that is
51:00
when I stopped researching this case. Something about it, something
51:03
about her just being like a virgin and this being
51:06
the last night of her life. It just really fucked
51:08
with me. But beyond that, it also matches another rape
51:13
that Richard committed in nineteen seventy five, where he forced
51:16
the woman to give him oral sex, and for which
51:19
he was of course paroled only five years later, which
51:22
was only five months before committing these murders. In any case,
51:26
at the time as DNA which matched to the crime.
51:28
Like I said, he was already in jail for child
51:30
molestation and wasn't getting out until twenty ten at the earliest.
51:35
So this gave police and officers all the time in
51:37
the world to get their case together before charging him,
51:39
and boy did they take their time. So they got
51:41
the DNA in two thousand and two, it took them
51:43
two more years to announce they had a suspect, which
51:46
meant two more years for the families to sit and
51:48
wait for justice for their murdered loved ones. You know,
51:52
we're twenty two years on. So Joel Davis, the writer
51:54
of the book that I was talking about that I
51:56
read for this case, later wrote an op ed after
51:58
the trial where he said, you know, the name of
52:00
his book was far too accurate and that it was
52:02
frustrating for him to see them take so much time.
52:05
Speaker 2: To do this.
52:06
Speaker 1: He said he regretted not coming out with the information
52:08
about the DNA match in two thousand and two when
52:10
he'd heard about it because he did get the name
52:12
from a source, but out of respect for the case,
52:14
he didn't mention it for two years until two thousand
52:17
and four when police came forward.
52:19
Speaker 2: And he now.
52:19
Speaker 1: Regrets that because he thinks it would have moved the
52:21
case along for him to report that they had DNA,
52:23
it would have sort of forced their hand. But police were,
52:27
you know, their excuse was like, oh, we don't have
52:28
the funding, like these things take time. He's already in prison,
52:31
who cares. Essentially all that said, Richard Hirschfield was finally
52:35
charged for the double murders in two thousand and four,
52:38
and this crafty motherfucker and his lawyers put in every
52:41
continuance and delay possible. He didn't actually go to trial
52:44
for these murders until September of twenty twelve. So he
52:48
was charged in two thousand and four, and he did
52:51
not go to tril till twenty twelve, ten years after
52:54
his DNA was definitively linked to her. It was like
52:58
one in two hundred and fifty billion chance that it
53:00
was you know, somebody else, which is actually just not
53:03
even like mathematically possible. There's not even that many people
53:06
in the world, so fucking ridiculous it took this long,
53:09
So the trial, which lasted only about two months, was
53:11
pretty much a slam dug from the beginning. The defense
53:14
did attempt to say that Joe was the killer and
53:16
that Richard only masturbated in the van, but that didn't
53:19
go over well, obviously for a number of reasons, even
53:23
though to this day Richard Hirschfield maintains his innocence. In fact,
53:26
they never found any of Joe's DNA at the crime scene,
53:30
and what they ended up thinking happened was that Richard
53:32
pretty much did probably act alone, basically driving to the
53:37
bar after he killed the couple and then asking his
53:41
brother to meet him, and or after he like abducted
53:45
the couple, who knows, and asking his brother to meet him.
53:48
So it's possible that he, you know, could have left
53:51
the bodies in the ditch, went or left them in
53:54
the ditch unable to move, went and called his brother,
53:56
and then Joe saw him kill them. Like I don't
53:59
really know, but what police essentially say is that Joe
54:03
was only kind of peripherally involved, but obviously was witnessed
54:08
to the killings and helped his brother after the killings.
54:12
So I mean, I don't know how peripheral that is,
54:15
but for the purposes of the prosecution, they basically said
54:18
it was Richard Hirschfield, and as far as the DNA goes,
54:21
it all just kind of points to him. So again,
54:23
even if Joe was there, he probably wasn't very actively involved.
54:29
I mean, and who knows. He killed himself, so it's
54:31
kind of like, what are you gonna do anyway, But
54:34
so I will never really know, but we know that
54:36
Richard Hirschfield did this. So of course, you know, he
54:41
was found guilty sentenced to death because he's in California,
54:45
he's just gonna die on death row. But even as
54:47
a symbolic sentencing, like that's something for the families, you know,
54:50
to know that, like the you know, the judge and
54:52
the jury took this very seriously.
54:55
Speaker 2: And speaking of the.
54:55
Speaker 1: Families, you know, everyone's still living their lives, doing their
54:58
best to honor the memories of John and Sabrina. John's
55:01
parents moved to the coast and they're just kind of
55:03
enjoying their retirement. They're quite a bit older now. As
55:06
far as I know, they are still both alive, and
55:08
I really hope that they are able to enjoy you
55:10
know grandchildren he had siblings. I really hope that they're
55:14
able to enjoy good life. Sabrina's family is definitely continuing
55:18
on and keeping her memory alive. Her sister Andrea got
55:22
married and had a daughter who she named Sabrina. And
55:25
Andrea's daughter, Sabrina wrote a poem for her aunt Sabrina,
55:29
which I won't you know, read here, but you can
55:31
actually find it in the back of Joel Davis's book.
55:34
It's a beautiful tribute to Sabrina. It shows just how
55:37
loving and amazing her entire family was and still is
55:40
despite this, you know, very tragic loss. And I really
55:43
love that he ended his book with that. The book
55:45
is called Justice Waits the UC David Sweetheart Murders. Justice
55:50
Waits the u CE Dave Sweetheart Murders. But if you
55:51
just look up Justice Waits, you'll find it. So I
55:54
wanted to sort of follow in his footsteps here and
55:56
just say, you know, it's really wonderful to see people
55:59
being able to have love in their lives and find
56:02
joy even when someone so evil as this man hurts them.
56:07
And I just find that really inspiring, and so I
56:09
wanted to call that out. So that's it that's the case,
56:13
I feel like this round went much better. I'm going
56:15
to be really happy to post this, really proud to
56:18
post this, and I hope if the families ever hear it,
56:21
that they feel that I did the story justice and
56:23
that I painted their family members in the light that
56:26
they deserve because they seem like truly wonderful people and
56:29
this is just such a fucking horrifying case. So thanks
56:32
everybody for listening. I'll be back in just a few
56:36
days with a new episode. Please like, rate reviews, share
56:39
with your friends. Some people told me they're having trouble
56:41
finding the show on Spotify. It's because I'm a new show.
56:47
The more downloads you get, the easier it is to fined.
56:49
But if you can't find me there, you can go
56:51
to Instagram. It's true true Crime. It's just at True
56:55
Crime California, and I have a link tree that will
56:57
link you to Spotify there. If that's where you prefer to.
57:00
Speaker 2: Listen Apple Podcasts, you can find me pretty easy. Everywhere
57:03
else hopefully.
57:03
Speaker 1: You can find me pretty easy, but worst case scenario,
57:06
you can use my tree. So thanks everybody. I will
57:09
be back soon, and until then, stay you know, stay
57:13
safe out there bye bye,