California death row inmate who killed UC Davis college sweethearts in 1980 dies

A death row inmate who sexually assaulted an 18-year-old UC Davis student before killing the teen and her college sweetheart in 1980 died Monday at a medical facility used to treat prisoners, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Richard Joseph Hirschfield, 75, spent nearly 12 years on death row after a Sacramento jury handed down a verdict of death. He was declared dead from natural causes at 4:50 a.m. by a nurse in the hospice unit at Vacaville’s California Medical Facility, CDCR said.

Couple John Riggins and Sabrina Gonsalves disappeared Dec. 20, 1980 after volunteering at a performance of “The Nutcracker” at a local theater in Davis and heading to a birthday party, according to The Sacramento Bee’s archives.

The UC Davis freshmen were found dumped near Lake Natoma with their heads wrapped in duct tape and throats slit.

John Riggins’ parents, Kate and Dick Riggins, living in San Luis Obispo County on the Central Coast for decades, told The Bee in an email that they think of John and Sabrina daily.

“Yes, we are greatly relieved he is dead,” Kate Riggins wrote.

Law enforcement arrested suspects in the couple’s death in the years that followed, but released them. Their DNA did not match semen stains found on a blanket — a birthday gift for Gonsalves’ sister — left at the scene, according to the archives.

A suicide note from Hirschfield’s brother and a DNA match led authorities to arrest Hirschfield in 2004 — 24 years after the murders.

A national data bank for DNA profiles matched Hirschfield’s DNA to the genetic material left on the blanket. Investigators began to question his relatives, including his younger brother.

After detectives left, the brother penned a note implicating himself and Hirschfield in the murder and killed himself, according to the archives.

Five months before the murders, Hirschfield had just been released from prison after serving time for rape and burglary stemming from a case in the Bay Area, then-Deputy District Attorney Dawn Bladet said during her closing arguments while imploring jurors to vote for death.

He kidnapped Riggins and Gonsalves who dreamed of becoming a medical engineer and occupational therapist, respectively, and tortured them, Bladet said.

But defense attorney Linda Parisi, representing Hirschfield, said her client never had a chance at life. His mother was impregnated by her stepfather. Hirschfield suffered brain damage that led to controllable anti-social impulses, she said.

But jurors rejected that argument and voted to give him the death penalty. He was sentenced in January 2013 and put on death row in San Quentin, according to CDCR.

The Bee interviewed Hirschfield imprisoned at San Quentin in 2015. He expressed his disgust with the legal system and maintained his innocence.

Kate Riggins expressed her gratitude to former Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, under whose tenure the case was prosecuted, and Sacramento Superior Court. She also thanked former Davis Enterprise reporter Joel Davis for his book, called “Justice Waits” that helped to renew interest in the cold case.

“The conviction would (never) have taken place if Joel had not persevered to find the perpetrator,” Kate Riggins wrote.

This story was originally published December 16, 2024 at 7:24 PM.