Lewis County Sirens.com

Larry Vessey, brother-in-law to defendant Ricky Riffe, tells of gift of cocaine for Christmas.

Updated at 6:51 p.m.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS –  While defendant Ricky Riffe’s wife has died and won’t be able to be questioned in his murder trial, her family and others who knew him in the mid-1980s gave testimony yesterday for the prosecution.

Riffe, 55, is on trial for the December 1985 abduction and shooting deaths of Ed and Minnie Maurin, an elderly couple who lived on U.S. Highway 12 in Ethel. Prosecutors contend Riffe and his now-deceased younger brother from the Mossyrock area are responsible for getting the Maurins to withdraw $8,500 from their bank, killing them with a sawed-off shotgun and then dumping their bodies near Adna. The brothers later moved out of state to Alaska.

Robin Riffe allegedly gave some information to Lewis County detectives in 1991, but by November 1994 when they attempted to contact her again, she had died.

Two of Robin Riffe’s siblings took the witness stand yesterday to talk about Christmas Day in 1985, during a family gathering in Grays Harbor County.

Larry Vessey said he, his brother and Riffe went duck hunting before dinner, and Riffe wore an olive green Army coat.

Under questioning from Lewis County Prosecutor Jonathan Meyer, Vessey said Riffe asked him an unusual question.

“Is there a way you can trace shotgun pellets?” Vessey said his brother-in-law asked him.

It also struck him as out of the ordinary that Riffe, his sister and her three children all wore brand new clothes that day, he testified.

“They were really poor, they never really had a lot of nothing,” he said. “The kids wore hand-me-down clothes. They just had nothing.”

The couple bought presents for everyone that year, he said. Riffe scooped a gift of cocaine from a bag that contained more than his brother-in-law had ever purchased himself, and he had a job, Riffe didn’t, he said.

“He gave me $300 worth of cocaine and said, ‘Merry Christmas’,” Vessey testified.

Tammi Graham thought her sister worked as a waitress, but not steady, she said. She indicated on the witness stand she suspected they may have sold drugs.

On Christmas day, her  sister wore makeup, something she ordinarily didn’t do.

“There was almost a puffiness to her face, like she’d been crying,” Graham said.

Two of Robin Riffe’s now-grown children were asked to offer facts and recollections from the three to four years the couple was together.

M. Shelly Lev, now 37, pointed out on a map where they lived in a three bedroom single wide trailer off U.S. Highway 12 in Silver Creek.

She said the family had three vehicles: a blue Blazer, a “mail Jeep” and creamy gray colored car.

Lev recalled a road trip trip to Disneyland that spring break, in which they had picnics during their travels and slept in their car but stayed in a hotel while there. Her mother and Riffe were still together, but he didn’t go along, she said.

David Giddings, who said he thought he was about 13 years old at the time, remembered Riffe showing him a “sawed off” shotgun in their living room, he said he was making for a truck driver friend

“I almost want to say he was filing on the barrel,” Giddings said. “That’s why he said he was making it.”

In the courtroom, from the witness stand, looking in Riffe’s direction, Giddings said he didn’t see Riffe anywhere. But then he did.

“Oh, now I recognize his crooked nose,” he said.

Vessey had already testified watching Riffe use a hacksaw to cut the barrel off a 12-gauge single shot shotgun at his dad’s place in Forks in September or October.

Graham was asked when she came to learn about the Maurin’s deaths.

It was mid-January when she and her family stopped at Spiffy’s restaurant on the way home from White Pass, she testified.

Two sketches at the cash register stopped her in her tracks, and she exclaimed to her husband, she said, ‘Oh my God Arvid, that looks like Ricky Riffe’.”

Under questioning, Graham said she  believed they were drawings of Ricky Riffe and his brother John Gregory Riffe.

Jurors learned that by the following June, Ricky Riffe and his wife separated; she’d gone to Arizona.

Derrick McMillion of Cinebar is the person whose testimony prosecutors hope will help them show the jury that after the Maurin’s murders, the Riffe brothers moved away to a remote fishing village in Alaska never to return to the area, except for the rare important occasion.

When the sheriff’s office made their arrest last year, they said the Riffe brothers moved to Alaska in 1987, however, jurors have been told John Gregory Riffe began living there in May of 1988 and Ricky Riffe’s residency commenced in July of the following year.

McMillion was asked in court yesterday to point out his cousins in some photos.

One was taken at an anniversary party for Riffe’s parents held in downtown Centralia, around 2006 or 2007, he said.

Under questioning by Lewis County Senior Deputy Prosecutor Will Halstead, McMillion spoke about what happened when they heard police activity and sirens outside.

One of the Riffe brothers walked over to the window to take a look and then other, three or four times, he testified.

“It was kind of strange,” he said. “They seemed kind of concerned with what was going on out there.”

McMillion recalled another time at a relative’s funeral in Olympia when one of them showed up, sat in the front and then left.

“I couldn’t tell which one of the boys it was,” he said.

John Gregory Riffe passed away on June 12 of last year, after charging documents had already been drawn up for him, with the identical allegations as his brother.

The trial in Lewis County Superior Court is in its third week.

More and more time has been spent with the jury sent out of the courtroom while the lawyers and Judge Richard Brosey argue rules of evidence.

Seattle-based defense attorney John Crowley has increasingly complained the prosecution is “dancing down thin-iced roads” by getting witnesses to make comments that ultimately aren’t allowed, but the jury still hears them. He calls it the trickle effect, contending the state’s strategy is to drop enough extra hints the jury will be swayed his client is guilty

One such debate was conducted over the death in Alaska in 1992 of John Gregory Riffe’s wife. While prosecutors wanted a witness to mention it, Judge Brosey barred the comment they sought.

Crowley said it was an accidental death or suicide, although the gossip was she was murdered.

Updated at 7:49 p.m.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS –  Patricia Hull handled some banking matters for the Maurins the same day the elderly couple went missing nearly 28 years ago.

At his request, she gave Ed Maurin an envelope of $100 bills.

The following morning, after hearing the Maurins were missing, her manager at Sterling Savings and Loan in Chehalis called the sheriff’s office to report what they knew.

Hull was among many individuals who took the witness stand this week in Lewis County Superior Court and talked about the Ethel residents whose bodies were subsequently located off a logging road near Adna.

Ed and Minnie Maurin

Hull was the savings supervisor at the bank at the intersection of Market and Park streets. She retired in 1991 after 24 years with the institution.

She recalled the Maurins as congenial customers who came in every month or two.

Eighty-one-year-old Ed Maurin phoned her the morning of Dec. 19, 1985 and asked if they had any money, Hull testified.

She recognized his voice.

“I, joking with him said we had a nickel or two,” she said. “He said he needed a little more than that, he wanted $8,500.”

He wanted it in cash, and she suggested she get him a check instead, according to Hull.

“No, no, he wanted currency,” she said. “They were going to buy a car, and that’s the conversation we had.”

Under questioning by attorneys, Hull explained the bank didn’t have that much cash available, and had to get it from a commercial bank.

When Ed Maurin showed up about 10:30 a.m., the money wasn’t yet there, so she asked him to take a seat to wait, she said.

She suggested he ask his wife Minnie Maurin to come in from the car to have coffee or cookies, Hull said.

“He said no, she wasn’t feeling well,” she said.

Hull said she got the impression he was saying he wanted cash because he was dealing with someone up north who didn’t know him.

“He seemed calm, we joked with him and told him he’d have to come through the drive through to show us the car, and he said he would,” she said.

He said, “You betcha,” she testified.

Ed Maurin said he’d go out and ask his wife to come in while they waited. Subsequently when Hull was ready for him, she stepped out the door to motion he should come in, she said.

She saw their car parked, the door opening, he waved back and then he came inside, she said. The windows were fogged up, she recalled.

After signing the documents, he left.

The trial is in its third week. Former Lewis County resident Ricky A. Riffe, 55, is charged with burglary, kidnapping, robbery and murder in the case. His younger brother John Gregory Riffe was about to be charged as well when he died last year.

Hull was questioned by Lewis County Senior Deputy Prosecutor Will Halstead and defense attorney John Crowley. She, and the jury, were shown documents on the overhead screen in the courtroom.

The bloody bank receipt found in the pocket of Ed Maurin’s trousers showed a balance of $36,035.12.

The bank’s copy of the withdrawal ticket she was given to look at showed a balance of zero.

The zero balance made her think he’d closed out the account, she said. But the paper showing the large balance suggested to her Ed Maurin has asked about a balance on another account, she testified.

Hull told of getting a phone call around 4 p.m. the day before Ed Maurin came in, from a customer asking about making a large withdrawal. The bank was closing, and she wasn’t sure who it was, she testified.

Jurors have already heard how the Maurin’s green 1969 Chrysler was found abandoned the following morning in the parking lot of the Yard Birds shopping center, the keys in the ignition, the front seat covered in blood and how law enforcement searched for the couple for days.

Yesterday, Mike Haunreiter took the stand to describe what he stumbled upon days later on Stearns Hill road outside Adna.

Haunreiter said he worked at the coal mine, they’d gotten off early, had a parking lot party and then he went for a drive on logging roads, to look for deer. It was the morning of Christmas Eve.

Something by the roadside caught his eye, but it wasn’t until his way back down he looked closer, Haunreiter said.

At first he thought it looked like a “Susie doll”, like they’d practiced CPR with in a recent session, he said.

“But a Susie doll doesn’t have a housecoat on,” Haunreiter said.

When he realized he was looking at a dead body he got back in his truck, speeding away in fear, according to Haunreiter. But then he stopped at a house to say he needed to call 911.

Dr. William J. Brady was the pathologist who conducted autopsies late that afternoon and evening at a mortuary in Centralia.

On Ed Maurin he found wounds on the top of his head, like two blows from a heavy object. One shotgun blast in the middle of his upper back below his neck killed him immediately, he described.

His stomach was empty, but Minnie Maurin had eaten fairly recently, he said. The doctor recalled removing three rings from her fingers.

Brady indicated Ed Maurin had a pacemaker, a bit of hypertension and a somewhat enlarged heart, but otherwise was in good health. The same could be said for 83-year-old Minnie Maurin, who suffered from arthritis, but had an excellent heart, according to the doctor.

The blast that killed her entered through her left shoulder and toward her cheek and neck, he said. She too would have died instantly, he said.

Testimony resumes this morning.