Ricky Riffe, in red, addresses his lawyer as his hearing winds down in Lewis County Superior Court this morning.
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – Convicted murderer Ricky Riffe will be headed back to prison now after he was sentenced today in a 30-year-old child sex crime case involving a young relative.
Riffe, now 56, was convicted almost a year ago in the 1985 kidnapping, robbery and shotgun deaths of Ed and Minnie Maurin, of Ethel. While awaiting trial, prosecutors filed charges that during the same time period, he had sexually abused his young stepdaughter.
The former Mossyrock man made an Alford plea last month, pleading guilty to indecent liberties, but admitting no guilt after a deal was struck between the two sides.
Lewis County Prosecutor Jonathan Meyer and Riffe’s lawyer John Crowley both recommended this morning that he should serve six years and three months, the top of the standard sentencing range for the offense.
Lewis County Superior Court Judge Nelson Hunt agreed.
Riffe is already serving nearly 103 years in the Maurin case, but has appealed.
Clad in red jail garb, Riffe never turned his heavily whiskered face toward the victim as she spoke. He declined an opportunity offered by the judge to speak on his own behalf.
Riffe denies any guilt in both cases.
“It is disturbing to the state that he cannot accept responsibility for anything he has done in his life,” Prosecutor Meyer told the judge. “But that’s on him.”
The now-grown woman, the daughter of Riffe’s long ago wife Robin, who is since deceased, took a chair next to Meyer when she told the judge what she hoped for.
“If there’s any chance of asking of him never, ever getting out,” I will,” she said, reading from notecards. “And please do not allow the monster of my past to be housed anywhere in Western Washington.”
With intermittent sniffles, and glances to her right where Riffe sat facing straight ahead, she said she knows and he knows what happened that November night in 1984. She was nine years old.
“You, my mother and your brother will rot in hell,” she said.
The judge also signed a lifetime no contact order between Riffe and the victim.
From among the handful of individuals in the audience, came a parting shot as Riffe was led away by jail guards.
Robin Riffe’s sister Tammi Graham raised her voice loudly: “Rick, I hope this label goes with you for the rest of your life.”
He was initially charged also with statutory rape, but that charge was dropped in the deal, part of which included Riffe agreeing not to appeal. The crime of indecent liberties, as it existed in the mid-1980s, involves sexual contact with a child younger than 14 years old.
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For background, read “Ricky Riffe makes Alford plea in 1980s child sex abuse case” from Saturday Sept. 6, 2014, here
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