Former deputy Richard Herrington describes the logging road outside Adna where the Maurin’s bodies were discovered on Dec. 24, 1985.
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – A broken window at the back of the Maurin’s farm house, an impression of a shoe print on the nearby furnace, a game of Rummy-O and a folded newspaper sitting atop the lace table cloth of their dining room table.
And an unmade bed.
Richard Herrington, a former detective with the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office, pointed out the conditions he observed, preserved in photographs displayed on a large courtroom screen.
It was the evening of Dec. 19, 1985. Family members had begun gathering at the Ethel home at 2040 U.S. Highway 12, after guests arriving for a noontime Christmas party found their elderly hosts weren’t there. Ed and Wilhelmina “Minnie” Maurin were missing.
Former Deputy Michael Pea had already described responding about 6:10 p.m. with Deputy Joe Doench, and finding no evidence of a struggle, but seeing a shoe box with bank statements strewn alongside the bathtub and Minnie Maurin’s purse hidden beneath a newspaper and tucked partially behind a couch.
Eighty-one-year-old Ed Maurin’s pickup truck was parked in back, but the couple’s car was not there.
Herrington testified they collected prints and investigated until 1 a.m.
It was about 9:25 a.m. when Herrington got the call the Maurin’s automobile was located in the Yard Birds parking lot in Chehalis.
Most of the hours that followed in Lewis County Superior Court this week focused on the blood found in the front seat of the vehicle and the subsequent Christmas Eve Day discovery of the couple’s bodies laying off a logging road near Adna.
Two of Minnie Maurin’s grown children have been at the courthouse since the jury was convened early last week. On Thursday they spoke on the phone with each other and their remaining living sibling, but stayed home. The prosecutor had given them notice of the graphic evidence that would be shown.
The trial in the county seat of Chehalis is expected to last through the month.
Fifty-five-year-old Ricky A. Riffe is charged in the abduction, robbery and shotgun deaths of the Maurins.
Herrington, who nearly 28 years later is the special agent in charge of the criminal unit for the Washington State Gambling Commission, answered questions from lawyers off and on for two days.
The morning was foggy and cold and the windows were frosted up on the 1969 Chrysler Newport, Herrington testified. Photographs and a videotape taken on Dec. 20, 1985 show the car parked at the far northeastern edge of the lot, behind a row of big trucks.
The keys were in the ignition, a red blanket was draped over much of the driver’s side obscuring mostly from view large blood stains.
“We definitely had a crime scene,” Herrington testified.
By the time they finished examining the car, they had numerous items to be placed into evidence; buckshot from the floorboard on the driver’s side, a man’s hat, a white shoe and a small pillow from the passenger side.
The ashtray was full, Herrington said.
Back then, Roger Ely worked as a scene investigator for the Washington State Patrol in Kelso.
His analysis suggested the Maurins were each struck with a blast from a shotgun with a shortened barrel in their upper back as they sat in the front seat. He couldn’t say which was shot first.
“I believe the shooter was in the backseat, approximately behind her husband,” Ely said.
The blood stain patterns indicated to him the couple were dragged out from opposite sides of the car.
Ely resumed his testimony on Friday morning. And Herrington was recalled to the stand.
Denny Hadaller returned to the courthouse, prepared to leave the room at any time during the discussion of his mother and step-father’s demise, but he stayed.
More photos and a videotape taken on Dec. 24, 1985, took those in the courtroom to the scene up Stearns Hill Road. It was morning, it was cold. A passerby had found the Maurin’s bodies.
On the the tree-lined gravel logging road they found tire marks, Herrington testified. They saw blood trails leading short distances to what they looked for, he said.
Off the outside edge of the right fork in the road in the salal was Ed Maurin; he was clothed in trousers, a shirt and a jacket.
Just off the inside edge of the left fork, lay Minnie Maurin in her housecoat.
Their garments were pushed up as though they’d been dragged there by their feet.
Judge Richard Brosey dismissed the jury early yesterday, at noontime so court personnel could attend the funeral of a longtime bailiff who passed away last week.
The trial is expected to resume on Monday morning.
Defendant Ricky A. Riffe, 55, far right, observes as lawyers work during a break in the Chehalis courtroom.
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter