Rick Riffe's defense attorney, John Crowley, cross examines Sherri Potter (not pictured) as a police sketch of the suspect she claims she saw outside of Yard Birds in Chehalis on Dec. 19, 1985, during Riffe's double-homicide trial in Lewis County Superior Court on Wednesday afternoon at the Lewis County Law and Justice Center in Chehalis.
Sherri Potter testifies during the Rick Riffe double-homicide trial in Lewis County Superior Court on Wednesday afternoon at the Lewis County Law and Justice Center in Chehalis.
Defense attorney John Crowley, left, and Rick Riffe, right, listen as Sherri Potter points to police sketch of the suspect she says she say outside Yard Birds in Chehalis on December, 19, 1985, during her testimony in the Riffe double-homicide trial in Lewis County Superior Court on Wednesday afternoon at the Lewis County Law and Justice Center in Chehalis.
Mike Haunreiter was visibly upset while recounting how he came across the bodies of Ed and Minnie Maurin in a wooded area near Adna on December 24, 1985, during his testimony in Rick Riffe's double-homicide trial in Lewis County Superior Court on Tuesday afternoon at the Lewis County Law and Justice Center in Chehalis.
Retired Alaska State Trooper William Gifford answers questions posed by Lewis County Deputy Prosecutor Will Halstead during Rick Riffe's double-homicide trial in Lewis County Superior Court on Tuesday afternoon at the Lewis County Law and Justice Center in Chehalis.
Two separate witnesses who testified Wednesday in the cold-case homicide trial against Rick Riffe said they saw the defendant in the Yard Birds parking lot on Dec. 19, 1985, the day Ed and Minnie Maurin disappeared.
The couple’s vehicle was found there after their death.
One of the witnesses picked Rick Riffe out of a photo montage 27 years after the slayings, while the other recognized the brothers’ photos on the news after Rick Riffe’s July 2012 arrest.
Riffe is on trial for the murder, kidnapping and robbery of the elderly Ethel couple.
Gordon L. Campbell, 74, of Vancouver, Wash., first spoke to police two years after the slayings and said he thought he might have seen a man walking along Kresky Avenue holding a shotgun.
The former Centralia man testified that at some point in January 1988, a little more than two years after the slayings of the Ethel couple, he went into the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office to talk to detectives.
“I figured I could contribute a little to it,” he said.
Campbell said he was driving around in the late morning to “kill time” on a Thursday, though he was not sure of the exact day or month, when he drove on Kresky Avenue past Yard Birds. He said he saw a man wearing a stocking cap and long coat walking along the road with a long gun in his hand.
Though police showed Campbell several photo montages that day in 1988, he did not pick anyone out.
In 2012, prior to the arrest of Rick Riffe, he met with Detective Bruce Kimsey and did not make any changes to his original statement. A few months later, after the news reported an arrest had been made, Campbell contacted police again.
After learning that two men were involved in the crime, rather than one, he told police that he remembered he had spoken to two men who were wiping down the interior of a green car, presumably to erase fingerprints, in the parking lot of Yard Birds that same day.
“It just seemed out of place what they were doing,” Campbell told the jury Wednesday.
He testified that seeing the photos of the John and Rick Riffe on the news “jogged” his memory, and said the two men on TV were the two men he saw wiping down the car.
Earlier this week, hours before he was scheduled to take the witness stand, Campbell’s story changed a third time: He told investigators that he had just recently remembered that he had not only seen the two men wiping down the vehicle, but had also spoken to them.
He testified Wednesday that he drove his car up to where the two men were cleaning out the car, and told them they should go to a car wash.
One of the men, identified by the witness as John Riffe, turned to his brother and told him to shut the car door.
The other eyewitness who testified Wednesday, Sherri Potter, picked Rick Riffe out of a photo montage in 2012 and identified him as the man she spotted walking with a gun in the Yard Birds parking lot on Dec. 19, 1985.
The Centralia woman told the jury she was on her lunch break with her coworker and friend, Mary Jones, now deceased, shortly before noon that day.
After eating lunch at Taco Time at about 11:40 a.m., the pair drove into the Yard Birds parking lot, Potter told the jury. While in the lot, Potter saw a man walking near the north end of the parking lot carrying a gun.
Because he had a gun and was walking fast, she continued to watch him walk toward Kresky Avenue.
After learning about the disappearance of Ed and Minnie Maurin a few days later, she realized the man she saw was likely involved and contacted police.
Potter and her friend then went to Portland with police to meet with a sketch artist. Based off of her and her friend’s description, a sketch of the suspect was created and released to the public.
Later on, investigators and Potter were unhappy with the composite sketch, so Potter and her friend met with a different sketch artist in Seattle and a second composite was created and released to the public.
In 2012, before Rick Riffe was arrested, Potter met with Kimsey and picked a photo out of a montage that she said she was confident was the man she saw 27 years prior. She testified she picked him due to the lack of chin as well as his “really dark eyes.”
“I feel very confident that was the person I saw that day,” she said.
She later learned the man she had picked out was Rick Riffe.
Testimony resumes today.
