SACRAMENTO — Richard Joseph Hirschfield should die for the brutal Dec. 20, 1980, kidnap-murders of UC Davis sweethearts John Riggins and Sabrina Gonsalves, a Sacramento Superior Court jury ruled today after just 2 1/2 hours of deliberations.

In doing so, jurors rejected defense attorneys’ pleas for mercy for the 63-year-old defendant, who they said should be shown compassion in light of his damaged brain and traumatic childhood.

Jurors deliberated an hour Wednesday after receiving the case, then met for 90 minutes this morning before notifying court officials of their decision.

The verdict brings to a near end the case that began nearly 32 years ago with the abductions of Riggins and Gonsalves, both 18, from Davis on a foggy night five days before Christmas — a crime that shook Davis to its core and changed the way many families watched over their children.

The couple, both youth recreation leaders for the city of Davis, had just come from ushering a performance of the “Davis Children’s Nutcracker.” Riggins, an aspiring doctor or engineer, envisioned himself contributing to the creation of prosthetic limbs. Gonsalves dreamed of being a veterinarian or caring for special-needs children.

“These kids were as good as good gets, and they were robbed from every one of us, not just their families,” Bladet told the jury Wednesday in her closing argument.

Authorities thought they’d solved the horrific murders in the late 1980s, when Davis police arrested the so-called “Hunt group” under the theory that they’d committed a copycat crime to benefit lead suspect David Hunt’s half-brother, serial killer Gerald Gallego.

But the case unraveled in 1992, when newly discovered DNA evidence matched neither Riggins nor any of the Hunt group’s three male defendants. The murders remained unsolved for nearly another decade until a cold-hit DNA match in 2002 pointed to Hirschfield with 1-in-240-trillion odds.

Defense attorneys revived the Hunt-group theory in the trial’s guilt phase but failed to sway the jury, which convicted Hirschfield of two counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances after only three hours of deliberations.

The penalty phase began Nov. 26, with Bladet noting Hirschfield’s previous rape and child molestation offenses, and eliciting testimony from a woman who said Hirschfield, her uncle, molested her several times when she was a young girl.

Defense attorneys asked for compassion, saying Hirschfield was a product of a troubled, “chaotic” childhood and brain abnormalities that may have affected his behavior in his adult life.

“This is the time to punish, but it’s time for the killing to stop,” lead defense attorney Linda Parisi said in her closing remarks.

Here are some significant dates in the UC Davis “sweethearts” murder case:

Dec. 20, 1980: John Riggins and Sabrina Gonsalves, both 18-year-old UC Davis freshmen, vanish from Davis after ushering a performance of the “Davis Children’s Nutcracker,” and as they prepare to attend a surprise party for Gonsalves’ sister Andrea.

Dec. 22, 1980: Authorities discover Riggins’ van abandoned off Highway 50 and Hazel Avenue. The inside is trashed; gifts intended for Andrea — including a blue-and-red bundle-up blanket — have been unwrapped. The couple’s bodies — throats slashed, heads wrapped in duct tape — are found several hours later in a wooded ravine near Folsom Boulevard and Aerojet Road.

Nov. 14, 1989: Davis police arrest the so-called “Hunt group” — David Hunt, Suellen Hunt and Richard Thompson (Doug Lainer is charged six months later) — in connection with the Riggins-Gonsalves murders. Their theory: that David Hunt orchestrated the killings as a “copycat” crime to cast suspicion away from his half-brother, serial killer Gerald Gallego, who in December 1980 had been jailed for a similar crime.

June 1992: California Department of Justice criminalist Faye Springer, conducting a routine review of evidence in the case, discovers four semen stains on the blanket from Riggins’ van, which investigators previously believed held little evidentiary value.

January 1993: On the eve of trial, Yolo County prosecutors are forced to dismiss charges against the Hunt group after testing shows DNA extracted from semen stains matches neither Riggins nor any of the three male defendants. The case goes cold once again.

Summer 2002: Former Davis Enterprise staff writer Joel Davis’ work on a book about the “sweethearts” case generates interest among Sacramento County authorities, who run the previously unidentified DNA profile through a national database. They get a hit: Richard Joseph Hirschfield, until then an unheard-of suspect serving time for child molestation in Washington state.

Nov. 20, 2002: Joseph Hirschfield, Richard’s younger brother, commits suicide a day after being questioned about his brother’s whereabouts around the time of the Riggins-Gonsalves murders. He leaves behind a note that says, in part: “I have been living with this horror for 20 years. I was there. My DNA is there.”

September 2004: Hirschfield is extradited to California, where he’s charged with two counts of first-degree murder with four special circumstances alleging multiple murders and murder in the commission of kidnapping, rape and oral copulation. Prosecutors eventually decide to seek the death penalty.

Sept. 4: Hirschfield’s trial begins, more than eight years after his arrest.

Nov. 5: Jury deliberates just over three hours before convicting Hirschfield of both counts of murder and all but one special circumstance, sending the trial into a penalty phase.

Nov. 26: Penalty phase begins.

Dec. 6: Jury recommends that Hirschfield be sentenced to death.

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Richard Hirschfield. Enterprise photo

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John Riggins

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Sabrina Gonsalves

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Kim Gonsalves, mother of murder victim Sabrina Gonsalves, center, is flanked by surviving daughters Andrea Gonsalves Rosenstein, left, and Terese Atallah in the hallway Monday afternoon at the Sacramento Superior Court. They were gathered to testify in the penalty phase for convicted killer Richard Hirschfield. Sue Cockrell/Enterprise photo

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Dick Riggins, right, escorts family members and friends into the Sacramento Superior Courtroom for the start of Richard Hirschfield’s penalty phase hearing. Sue Cockrell/Enterprise photo

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