Jurors in the murder trial of Richard Hirschfield, charged with the 1980 killings of UC Davis sweethearts John Riggins and Sabrina Gonsalves, will hear evidence of his criminal history, including a 1975 conviction for robbing and raping a Mountain View woman whose younger sister and boyfriend also were in the apartment.

Attorneys disagreed in their opening statements Tuesday as to whether the crime bore similarities to the Davis murders.

Hirschfield served his time in a Vacaville prison, not far from Davis, where he was known to stay with friends — sometimes for months at a time — during the 1970s, prosecutor Dawn Bladet said.

The jury also will consider portions of a suicide note penned by Hirschfield’s brother, Joseph Hirschfield, shortly after Sacramento County homicide detectives came to his Beaverton, Ore., workplace to question him about his brother’s whereabouts around the time of the “sweethearts” murders.

“But I have been living with this horror for 20 years,” wrote Joseph Hirschfield, who had been living in a Rancho Cordova mobile home park around the time of the murders. “I was there. …My DNA is there.”

“This mystery is … forevermore solved,” Bladet told the jury. “Richard Hirschfield committed these murders, and I’m going to ask you to find him guilty at the end of the evidence.”

Parisi, meanwhile, cautioned the jury against getting “swept along” by the emotionally difficult case and instead urged it to focus on the quality of the DA’s case.

“The evidence tells you that the mystery is ongoing,” she said. “We’re confident you will hold the prosecution to its burden and deliver the only just verdict given the state of this evidence, and that is not guilty.”

Testimony in the case continued today.

Comments

comments