SACRAMENTO — After six weeks, 455 exhibits and testimony from dozens of witnesses, the guilt phase of the UC Davis “sweethearts” trial is expected to wrap up sometime next week, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Michael Sweet told jurors Thursday.

The case then will proceed to closing arguments and deliberations, where the seven-man, five-woman jury will decide whether defendant Richard Joseph Hirschfield, 63, kidnapped and killed UCD students John Riggins and Sabrina Gonsalves on the night of Dec. 20, 1980. He has pleaded not guilty.

Hirschfield’s attorneys continued their case Thursday by introducing testimony from two of the roughly 25 witnesses who have died in the 32 years since the murders occurred.

Joyce Hullender and Katherine LeBas both testified at pretrial hearings for the so-called “Hunt group,” a foursome prosecuted in the early 1990s under the theory that one of the defendants, David Hunt, orchestrated the murders to draw suspicion away from his half-brother, serial killer Gerald Gallego, who was in jail for a similar crime.

Charges against the Hunt group were dismissed in 1993 following the discovery of DNA on a semen-stained blanket in Riggins’ van that excluded the three male defendants as donors.

A pretrial ruling made any mention of Gallego or the copycat premise off-limits, but Hirschfield’s attorneys are introducing prior testimony that points to Hunt and one of his cohorts, Doug Lainer, being seen in or near the van around the time of the killings.

In her Sept. 27, 1990, testimony, read aloud in court Thursday, Hullender said she came upon the van on Folsom Boulevard near Hazel Avenue sometime between 10:30 and 11 p.m. on the night of Dec. 20, just after she left a holiday gathering at a nearby restaurant.

Hullender said she was “aggravated” because van was blocking the traffic lane, so she stopped, got out of her car and peeked into the vehicle through the open driver’s side door. She reported seeing “a lot of paper, a lot of junk” strewn about the van, and a baseball cap on the seat.

Hullender said she then heard footsteps and ran back to her car, catching a glimpse of an “average-sized man” getting into the van as she left.

Under cross-examination, Hullender acknowledged she had made no mention of a man in her original statement to authorities, whom she called in response to a newscast seeking possible van sightings.

It wasn’t until her 1987 interview with Davis police Lt. Fred Turner, whose investigation led to the Hunt group’s arrests, that she described seeing a man with eyes that “looked empty.”

“I simply didn’t think I knew enough to help anyone,” Hullender said.

Jurors also heard several rounds of testimony from LeBas, who reported seeing a “banana cream”-colored van and its distinctive license plate, 3S MUM, on Watt Avenue near Arden Way around noon on Dec. 21, 1980.

LeBas said she stared at the male driver with “sandy blond hair” for a minute or more as he made a U-turn from northbound to southbound Watt. “All of a sudden he made a face at me like, ‘Take a good look.’ …It was the meanest face I ever saw.”

The next day, LeBas read a newspaper account of the students’ murders and the van description, which left her so “terrified” that it took her nearly three months to report the sighting to police, on the advice of her ex-husband.

LeBas said Sacramento sheriff’s detectives seemed to dismiss her story because “it did not fit (their) scenario.” It also conflicted with other witnesses who saw the van parked in the same spot on Folsom Boulevard from the night of Dec. 20 until crime-scene investigators collected it two days later.

But LeBas remain convinced, cutting out facial features from magazines to create a collage that resembled the man she saw. She threw it away in 1989, a few months before being contacted by Yolo investigators, but said the man’s face remained on her mind.

She identified Lainer as the driver in a photo lineup, and again in the courtroom.

“You can ask me this 20 years from now — it will always be the same,” LeBas said at the 1991 hearing. “I will never forget what happened to me.”

— Reach Lauren Keene at [email protected] or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter @laurenkeene

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