John Dennis Hadaller, who goes by Dennis or Denny, answers questions from Lewis County Senior Deputy Prosecutor Will Halstead.
Updated at 9:31 p.m.
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – Retired Lewis County logging business owner Denny Hadaller spoke yesterday of the promise he made himself before leaving his slain parents funeral at the St. Francis Catholic Church in Toledo more than a quarter of a century ago.
“I layed my hand on my mother’s casket and I said, ‘Mom, I’ll find out who done this, and I will till the day I die,” he said.
Hadaller was testifying in the murder trial of Ricky A. Riffe, the longtime suspect in the December 1985 abduction and shooting deaths of Ethel residents, Ed and Wilhelmina Maurin. They were in their early 80s when their bodies were found dumped off a logging road.
Hadaller, now 85 years old, took the witness stand yesterday in Lewis County Superior Court. He spoke before a jury which is now four men and eight women, as one took ill.
Lewis County Senior Deputy Prosecutor Will Halstead took Hadaller back in time through questioning, asking about the day his mother and step-father disappeared, and the years which followed in which the businessman hired a pair of private investigators to solve the case.
Hadaller said he was involved with the sheriff’s office investigation into the late 1980s and then somewhere around 2001 sought outside help.
“I did get very frustrated, because we weren’t getting anywhere with this” Hadaller testified.
Under questioning, he spoke of seeking out photographs of suspects Ricky and John Gregory Riffe from a cousin of theirs, wanting to know what they looked like out of fear for his own and his family’s safety.
“I slept with a gun under my pillow every night, I had one at my easy chair, because I didn’t know …” Hadaller said.
Yesterday was the second day of testimony for a trial that is expected to last at least through the month. Judge Richard Brosey is presiding over the case in Lewis County Superior Court.
A witness who took up the remainder of the day, told of seeing a pair of headlights in the fog across the street from her home at the Maurin’s driveway on Dec. 19, 1985, a few hours before the couple were discovered missing.
It was somewhere around 9 a.m. and the headlights were pointing kind of west, Nona Pierce said.
Pierce said she was standing at the end of her driveway and heard both a woman and a man’s voice, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. When the vehicle moved down the Maurin’s driveway, she thought she saw the outline of a second car before she went back into her house, she said.
Most of Pierce’s time on the witness stand was spent with lawyers wrangling over her picking out a photo of Ricky Riffe last year that she believes to be the same man who she saw acting strangely in the neighborhood.
Pierce described a pickup truck which stopped along U.S. Highway 12 and a man who got out and looked at three surrounding houses, including the Maurins and hers, before walking to her doorstep and saying he needed gasoline.
But when she told him no, he got back in his truck and drove away, she testified.
Under questioning from Deputy Prosecutor Halstead, Pierce said it occurred the day before and she was absolutely certain that the photo she selected from a montage when she met with detective Bruce Kimsey in June 2012 was the man on her porch 27 years ago. The one she picked was Ricky Riffe.
However, under questioning by defense attorney Crowley it became apparent the event may have taken place as much as two weeks prior and that during the identification process at the sheriff’s office, Pierce was far less certain when she chose Riffe’s picture.
Three times out of the presence of the jury, the lawyers and judge discussed certain prohibited and allowed practices relating to the way the defense lawyer could cross examine Pierce.
Judge Brosey noted the witness seemed evasive and hostile and directed prosecutors to make sure she knew she was was not excused from possibly having to return to the stand.
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter
Wouldn’t you use everything at your disposal to find the animals who slaughtered your Mother and Father ????? I would rather see that , then what we squander our taxpayers money on now.
Riffe will walk on the murder charges. He’ll get convicted of ‘symbolic’ lesser charges though.
If this trial results in the conviction of Riffe, then this double homocide will have been ‘solved’.
That being said, it would open the floodgates to investigative reporters who have been waiting for decades to shed just the smallest fraction of light into the ongoings of the L.C. Sherriff’s dept. over the last several decades.
I’m afraid that if Riffe is convicted, then the LC “System” will be opening themselves up to all manner of scrutiny from outside sources. Is the corrupt kangaroo court system of Lewis County prepared to deal with the fallout after decades of mismanagement, lawlessness, and fraud?
I highly doubt it.
The Sheriff is an elected official, the Commissioners do not have the authority to direct the Sheriff to do anything. I hope that the Sheriff spends countless hours and taxpayer $ to get murders off the streets. Good for you Dennis for never giving up. Thank you Sheriff’s office for all your hard work.
Guessing most folks under the circumstance might be inclined to do the same….So were you an employee of the SO directed to spend countless hours and taxpayer $? The Sheriff is an elected official and not under the direction or supervision of the commissioners. I have no doubt though that he pushed with all his collective might just like any other person who lost heir parents to such a terrible crime…such as former trooper Rhonda Reynolds mother who pushed the sheriff’s office for years; and won! Nothing wrong with that!
While it is true that Denny was a Lewis County Commissioner, he could not direct the sheriff’s office to do anything. The sheriff is an independent elected office, for a very good reason. He did ask and I am sure he used the limited power of his office in his effort to find the murderers of his family. I for one, do not fault him for that. We all knew when we elected him that was among his purposes in running for the office.
Why does Lewis County have a faction that does not want crimes such as this one and the murder of Rhonda Reynolds solved? I could bring up a few more.
they forgot that he was a lewis county commisioneer and directed the sheriff dept. to spend countless hours and taxpayer $$$$$ to find out also.