Lewis County Sirens.com

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS –  Leslie George grew up in Mossyrock and graduated from high school in 1975.

That was about the time he came to know the three Riffe brothers, he said.

In the early 1980s, George was divorced and hung out with Rick and Greg Riffe.

The two brothers were very close, they did a lot of things together, he said.

Under questioning, he said Rick was kind of a leader, the younger brother more of a follower. Both had green Army jackets, Greg wore his a lot. Both wore dark stocking caps.

George spent hours on the witness stand on Friday in Lewis County Superior Court, answering questions about the two suspects in the December 1985 kidnapping, robbery and murder of Ethel residents, Ed and Minnie Maurin.

Ricky Riffe, 55, is charged in the case. George called him Rick. John Gregory Riffe died last year before prosecutors could charge him. George called him Greg.

George, who went by the name Swabbie, didn’t recall that he attended the wedding of Rick and Robin Riffe, but thought she came into the picture about 1982.

In 1985, Rick lived with his wife and her three children in Silver Creek, he said. George lived in Salkum, but drove a truck, a job that would take him away for a month at a time. During the three or four days between trips when he was home, he stayed with his mother and step-father.

“Were you guys using drugs back then?” he was asked.

Yes, a lot of pot, some meth and Rick’s drug of choice was cocaine, George said.

Lewis County Senior Deputy Prosecutor Will Halstead went through a list of names asking who used and who sold drugs.

He didn’t know anything about Rick and Robin dealing drugs, he testified.

Robin was a waitress and tended bar. Rick had a logging job, but was injured a few months into it and had his back worked on, according to George.

On the witness stand, George recounted a handful of separate events, the first in the autumn of 1984 when he and Ricky Riffe went to Sunbirds to buy a shotgun and the last, when he got a message on his answering machine from Riffe in 1991 telling him to join him in Alaska where he had a job for him.

George testified he wanted a gun to keep in his truck for protection while he was on the road, so on Oct. 4, 1984, he and Riffe picked one out at at Sunbirds Shopping Center in Chehalis.

It was a 12-gauge single shot, single barrel gun, and Riffe offered to shorten it for him, according to George. A day or two later, the pair purchased some ammunition, double-aught buckshot, he testified. That was Riffe’s recommendation, he said.

George said Riffe later told him he tore a page out of the sales book that George has signed, so the firearm wouldn’t be traceable.

George testified he fired the gun only a couple of times before giving it his friend soon after.

Another event more than a year later was discussed in court on Friday.

He was asked to talk about a time he was traveling from Salkum westbound on U.S. Highway 12 with Greg and Rick as passengers.

They were in George’s Datsun pickup, heading to Chehalis to get the tires changed, he testified.

And what was the conversation? he was asked.

Greg Riffe was saying how broke they were, George testified.

“Greg said they was broke, they’d do just about anything for money,” he said.

About that time, they were in Ethel and George saw old family friends Ed and Minnie Maurin outside their house, he said.

“I said, you know, they’re probably worth a lot of money, they’re Denny Hadaller’s mom and dad,” George said.

Was there any response? he was asked.

“No.”

The conversation took place maybe two weeks, or a week and a half, before the elderly couple went missing, according to George.

As has occurred several times during the trial, spectators in the courtroom heard more than the jurors did, while the attorneys and the judge argued outside jurors presence statements that may or may not be exempt from hearsay rules.

George spoke about being out of town and on the road on Dec. 19, 1985, when he got a emergency phone message telling him to call Robin Riffe.

When he called her, she said something to the effect, “You’re not going to believe what Rick has done; he’s gone crazy, nuts,” Halstead relayed to the judge.

George told jurors Robin Riffe was “kind of hysterical, I guess” but their conversation ended when Rick Riffe took the phone from her and asked why George was calling.

“I told him I called for no reason, then he hung up on me,” George said.

He then called his mother and learned the elderly couple was missing, he testified.

George was asked by prosecutors about another day at some point after he returned to town, when he and Greg were leaving in his pickup truck and Rick and Robin brought out a small paper bag from their home.

“He said they were old clothes they wanted to get rid of, they didn’t want ’em stinking up the house,” George said.

George demonstrated with his hands a bag somewhat smaller than a basketball.

They drove down the old road, down by the bridge on the west end of Lake Mayfield, where Greg got out and tossed it into the woods about 10 feet from them, according to George.

It was early 1986 when George got his gun back from Rick, he testified.

It had been fired but not cleaned and was cut down shorter for him like he’d wanted, except it still need the finish applied, George testified.

“He made me put the Speedy finish on it before I took it home,” George said. “He didn’t want his finger prints on it.”

According to George, he put the shotgun in a closet at his parents house. He testified he realized it was too short to be legal and didn’t think it was worth the risk to carry.

He said he planned to get rid of it, and that he didn’t have it anymore. He said he was afraid.

At some point, law enforcement searched Lake Mayfield for the gun.

“I told them where I thought it might be, in the lake,” George testified. “My step-dad told me not to worry about it, it was gone; he put it there.”

In the late 1980s, the Riffe brothers had moved to White Salmon, Alaska. George said he didn’t keep in touch with either of them. They didn’t have any falling out, according to George.

It was 1991, when Rick Riffe called him to go up there for a job.

George testified he just left the message on his answering machine and didn’t return the call; that he was scared of what might happen if he moved to Alaska.

Why? he was asked.

“I thought I might be murdered up there,” he answered.

Under questioning from Halstead, George mentioned he was first in contact with police a long time ago, but not right away.

“Why didn’t you?” he was asked.

“I couldn’t believe he would have something to do with it, be involved in this,” George said. “I didn’t want to believe he would be involved in this.”

Halstead pressed the witness about his fears, his suspicions.

“Did you believe your shotgun had been involved in a crime?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Ed and Minnie Maurin. It was just a feeling I had.”

George appeared anguished at times on the witness stand, in particular when defense attorney John Crowley grilled him about why he would have commented when passing the Maurin’s house the elderly couple had plenty of money.

“It was you that said that about the Maurins,” Crowley said. “Why would you say such a terrible thing?”

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” George said.

Post script: George also testified he wasn’t aware Greg Riffe owned any guns, and that he drove a white El Camino.

He also said he’d never heard the last name Muzzleman, or heard the brothers referred to by that name.

Updated

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS –  So far, no one who knew defendant Ricky Riffe has offered testimony placing him at the Maurin’s house, at the bank, at the Yard Birds or the logging road where the elderly couple’s bodies were found on Dec. 24, 1985.

Riffe, 55, is on trial in Lewis County Superior Court for the kidnapping, robbery and murder of Ed and Minnie Maurin. His younger brother John Gregory Riffe was about to be charged similarly last year, but he died of ill health at age 50.

Prosecutors contend the former Mossyrock area brothers are responsible for forcing the couple to drive from their Ethel home to withdraw thousands of dollars from Sterling Savings in Chehalis before cutting them down with a shotgun and leaving them dead in the woods outside Adna. The Maurin’s green sedan was found abandoned the next morning in a far corner of the parking lot at a Chehalis shopping center.

Numerous witnesses have told the jury of seeing a man in a green jacket and dark cap walking away from Yard Birds in Chehalis carrying a a rifle or shotgun.

As the trial ended its third week, three more individuals took the stand to discuss who they noticed when they drove through the shopping center almost 28 years ago.

One woman seemed very certain she saw Ricky Riffe there on Dec. 19, 1985. Another was positive she saw John Gregory Riffe there. Each said the man they observed was alone.

A third witness however, came forward last September to tell of seeing two men he identified as the brothers at the eastern edge of the parking lot, wiping down the Maurins’ 1969 Chrysler.

Sheri Amell Potter lives in Olympia but in December 1985 was a passenger in a vehicle heading toward the northeast exit from Yard Birds. Amell Potter told of a man stepping out of the fog and crossing behind them, and into the marshy area north of the property.

“As he passed, I said, ‘Oh my God Mary, that guy had a gun’,” she testified.

It was in his left hand, something white was wrapped around where the trigger would be, she said.

He was white with really dark hair, very dark eyes, a mustache and like two to three days worth of whiskers, dressed in something like an Army jacket, she described.

Amell Potter said she thought he was in his late 20s, as she was in her early 20s and she knew he was older than her.

She estimated the man was about six feet away from her. She swiveled in her seat to watch him walk up a berm-path toward the Lewis County Mall.

Amell Potter said she was employed at a bank at the time and was told at work some old people had gone into a bank and were missing. It was two days later when she thought again about the man with the gun and called her friend Mary to ask which day the couple disappeared, she testified.

She called the police.

Amell Potter and her friend were taken to a forensic artist in Portland where their descriptions helped create a drawing of the person. Later they went to Seattle where her friend assisted with a second composite.

In the courtroom, she was shown a number of images on the big screen. She felt like the face of the man in the first drawing was a bit too wide, she said. The second drawing was better, but she didn’t get the correct sense of the chin, she said.

“He had a really distinctive chin,” he said. “He didn’t have much of a chin.”

In February 2012, she met with Lewis County Sheriff’s Office detective Bruce Kimsey, who showed her actual photos of people. She chose one which showed both a full face and a side profile. It was Ricky Riffe.

“I felt very confident that was the person,” Amell Potter said of her selection.

Under questioning by Lewis County Senior Deputy Prosecutor Will Halstead, she was asked if she’d had an opportunity to look at the defendant in the courtroom.

“Yes, his side profile is very familiar to the picture I picked then,” Amell Potter said.

Brenda King has lived in Lewis County since 1969.

Back in 1985, she was a single mother with three children who worked two jobs, one of them as a bartender at the Wilson Tavern in Centralia.

On Dec. 19, 1985, she and the man who later became her husband were driving past the north end of the Yard Birds Shopping Center building, she testified.

“I noticed a 1969 Chrysler Newport, it was green,” King told the jury.

“I see John Gregory Riffe getting out of the car with a shotgun,” she said.

It startled her.

“I’m the driver of a 1972 Montego, my husband is a passenger,” she said. “To the best of my recollection, the person I seen was going by a different name.”

He used an alias, she said.

“At the time, I recognized him as John G. Muzzleman.”

He looked at her, she looked at him, and then he looked down, according to King. He was squeezing his way out of the vehicle, she testified.

“He had the door so close to his body, he obviously didn’t want us to see what was inside,” she said.

King said she was the one wearing a watch, so she knew it was between 8 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. She said she was 100 percent positive the shotgun was sawed off and it had a brown butt.

It was a few days after the arrest hit the news in July of 2012 that King first contacted police. She saw photos of Ricky Riffe and his brother in the newspaper story, she said.

King said she knew both the brothers, who used the last name Muzzleman, as she’d served them at the bar.

“They’d come in periodically, to the point where I got to know them quite good,” she said. “They were usually together.”

Her husband Steven King testified as well yesterday, that he recalled the day. He saw the man getting out the car, with dark hair and a stocking cap, but didn’t see a gun, he said.

“The reason I looked at him is cause Brenda told me she knew the guy,” he said.

The couple both testified they saw him again later, walking up Kresky Avenue, on the east side of the road.

They’d been out to shop for materials for a remodeling project, and stopped to get coffee while they waited for Yard Birds to open, they said.

Steven King, under questioning by defense attorney John Crowley, said he’d heard of the Maurins murders, but he was busy and didn’t get involved.

After his wife told him last year about the newspaper article, they figured they should speak up, he testified.

Witness Gordon Campbell lived in Chehalis between 1970 and 1999; he worked at the Centralia Steam Plant, he testified.

Campbell first spoke to the sheriff’s office in 1988, to tell them that about two years earlier, he had seen a man walking north of Kresky Avenue with either a long rifle of a shotgun, covered up with something, he testified.

Lewis County Prosecutor Jonathan Meyer asked him what prompted him to talk with police.

“Well, the case had been going on a long time, I thought I could help a little bit, so I thought I’d come in and tell ’em what I seen,” Campbell said.

The cap was dark blue, the finger-tip length jacket was olive drab and he was walking toward Lewis County Mall with it in his right hand, he testified.

“I could see just the shape of a gun,” Campbell said.

Campbell said at the time, he was working the graveyard shift, so he was out driving around that morning, killing time to get his sleep patterns back on track.

He testified he spoke next with the sheriff’s office in June 2012, and then he contacted them once again that September, after word of Riffe’s arrest had been in the news.

He saw photos of the Riffe brothers on television, he said, and it reminded him of something else he remembered.

Campbell testified about driving through the Yard Birds parking lot and to the northeast corner where he spotted two men wiping down a car. It was the same vehicle Meyer showed on the overhead screen in the courtroom, the Maurin’s 1969 Chrysler, according to Campbell.

He suggested they take it through a carwash, he said.

Meyer showed Campbell pictures of the Riffe brothers.

John Gregory Riffe was on one side and Ricky Riffe, on the driver’s side closest to Campbell, doing the same thing, wiping the open car door, according to Campbell.

“Did you get a good look at both of them?” Meyer asked.

“Yes,” Campbell said.

Campbell testified he didn’t remember what their response to him was, but John Gregory Riffe told his brother to close the door. And he did, he said.

Meyer asked the witness about why the detectives didn’t hear about the car wiping when Campbell first was interviewed.

“Well to begin with, I thought I was talking about one person,” he said. “Then I find we’re talking about two.”

The first the lawyers on both sides learned from Campbell he had the brief conversation with the men was this past Tuesday.

The one he saw carrying what looked to be a covered up gun was Ricky Riffe, according to Campbell.

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