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.
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter
Bobbie…imagine for just one minute how her family felt. reverse it with your family…we will forever miss her! The lord above will be the final judge here!
I’m the ex sister~inlaw of Lisa Rife whom is deceased and mother of Peanut who wrote above . My sister~inlaw was murdered by Greg Riffe. Brown Mortuary in chehalis confirmed this by the way the bullet went through her head once her body was shipped down from Alaska to her poor grieving mother. Our family feared them. I am ready to talk about what i know at anytime… This brother is harboring info of this murder as well as that poor family (The Hadaller’s/Maurin’s) Convict this KILLER!!!!
I know it wasn’t suicide!!! That was my aunt & she had every reason to leave that pos that died!! Cause she knew what those two did!!!!!
i know it was suicide! i had friend that was there when she did it and it was totally out of the blue!
“They were really poor, they never really had a lot of nothing,”
So they always had a lot of something? Good thing courts don’t always have to take the way people say things literally 😛