The Christmas Tree Farm Murders

Ed and Minnie Maurin, aged 81 and 83, owned a Christmas tree farm outside Ethel, in rural Lewis County, Washington. On the morning of December 19, 1985, Ed withdrew $8,500 in cash from their bank. Several people later remembered seeing the couple’s green Chrysler that day with younger men in it. By that evening the Maurins had been reported missing.

Their car was found in the parking lot of the Yardbirds shopping center in Chehalis, with blood throughout the interior. On Christmas Eve their bodies were discovered beside a rural road. Both had been shot with a sawed-off shotgun. Local brothers Ricky and John Gregory “Greg” Riffe drew suspicion, and Lewis County detectives questioned Ricky in Alaska in 1992, but no charges followed. In 2004 Detective Bruce Kimsey reopened the case and went back to the witnesses.

Ricky Riffe was arrested on July 8, 2012; Greg had died by then. At trial in late 2013, a former cellmate testified that Ricky admitted killing two elderly people, and another witness recalled Greg saying the brothers had killed before. The jury convicted Ricky on every count, including two of first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to 1,234 months, close to 103 years. The Washington Court of Appeals upheld the verdict in November 2015.