Twisted Listers Presents TCC #3 The Sweetheart Murders

Take two on this case! This week, Cindy is looking at a previously cold case that was finally solved over 30 years after a young couple was abducted from Davis, CA, while on their way to a surprise party. As some of you may know, Davis is Cindy's home town, so this case is very near and dear to her, as it was to many people who grew up there, including a journalist named Joel Davis, who became so interested in the case he actually helped get it reopened, and finally solved. Follow along with all the twists and turns of a 30 year case finally solved by a former classmate of one of the victims (with a little help from new DNA technology). This case is sad, frustrating, and ultimately bittesweet - we're glad the monster who killed them was finally caught, but nothing will ever bring this beautiful couple back, or remove the stain on the community from which they were taken one cold, foggy night in December 1980. 

Instagram: @truecrimecalifornia

Sources:
Justice Waits: The UC Davis Sweetheart Murders, by Joel Davis (available on amazon)
https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/the-sweetheart-murders-a-look-back-at-the-case/
https://serological.com/forensic-dna-testing/davis-enterprise-richard-joseph-hirschfield-found-guilty-of-sweetheart-murders/

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everyone, welcome to True Crime California. I'm your host, Cindy,
and I'm glad you're here, and welcome back everybody. This

(00:22):
is take two for the third episode of True Crime California.
Now I have already actually released this episode, but then
I took it down because it wasn't really how I
wanted it to be. So last week I had the
stomach flu and it lasted like a whole fucking week,
which totally sucked. I had also been dealing with someone
who I thought was like a really good friend, but
they turned out to be a covert narcissist and there

(00:44):
was a lot of fallout there. So just personally, I
had a really tough week. But I told myself I
was going to release episodes every Thursday, light clockwork, no
matter what, and I couldn't let myself already get behind
on the third episode. So I recorded this episode super
late at night. I didn't have time to edit it.
I sort of just posted it and it wasn't how
I wanted it. So I'm redoing this episode. It's going

(01:06):
to be a lot better this time. This case is
actually the case that inspired me to start this podcast,
Like at California based true crime podcast. So I really
wanted to make sure that I told this story in
a way that I was really proud of and that
I felt good about releasing. So if you've already listened,
please feel free to listen again. I think this time
it's going to be better telling. And if you haven't listened,

(01:29):
then good you can hear this the first time in
the way that I want it to be presented. I
will still be releasing a new episode. I have another
case already ready to go for Thursday, but I just
really wanted to redo this so that it would be
so something I could be proud of. So I'm going
to do the case of the UC Davis Sweetheart murders.
This is the story of Sabrina Gonzalvez and John Riggins

(01:50):
to eighteen year old young adults just starting college who
met and fell in love while working together at the
Parks Department in UC or in Davis, which is where
the city is now some of you may know, but
not all of you. I'm sure that Davis is where
I'm from. I was born in the city next door
and raised mostly in Davis, and I have a lot
of sort of you know, parallel moments in my life

(02:13):
to like what these young people had. In fact, when
I was in or just getting out of high school,
my cousin worked for the Parks Department, which is where
they worked and met. And I actually, when I was eighteen,
lived in an apartment that was about a block away
from where Sabrina lived at the time that this case
takes place. So a lot of the areas that they

(02:34):
talk about in this case, I can put myself there.
I can actually picture them. So it was really.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Interesting to me.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
It became very personal for me this case, and I
think it became personal for a lot of people who
live in Davis because it's a small town, it's a
safe town.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
This was a huge case.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
So again I'm just going to jump in to the
case and hopefully give it a better retelling this time.
So this case happened in nineteen eighty, which this is
worth three for three now for cases that happened in
either nineteen eighty or nineteen eighty one. I didn't mean
to do this, but apparently, you know, I couldn't help it.
Although all my favorite cases, the cases I wanted to cover,
were from around this time. I think it also kind

(03:11):
of shows that this was a big time for a
lot of murders in California and beyond, obviously, but you know,
we're starting to see serial killers, there's missing hitchhikers. There's
just all sorts of like unsolved murders and missing people
and things sort of happening at this time. But even so,
this one really rocked the city of Davis and the

(03:32):
entire area because Davis is just such a safe place.
In fact, since nineteen seventy there's been far less than
one murder per year in my hometown, even though it's
only eleven miles from the capital city of Sacramento. It's
eleven miles west, so eleven miles towards San Francisco. But

(03:52):
it's very, very small, safe. Lots of professors live there
with their families, so it's you know, lots of education,
lots of money. It's just a very safe place. So
every time a murder happens, it makes the news. So
there are some notable murders, some of these I may
cover later on, but these include the twenty nineteen murder

(04:12):
of twenty two year old Natalie Corona.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
She was a police officer and.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
She was responding to an active shooter in downtown Davis,
which was crazy because you really think this could never
happen in my hometown or never happen to me, and
yet there it was. There was also the double murder
of Oliver Northrup and Claudium Maalpin in twenty thirteen. I
covered that on my other podcast, Twisted Listers, but I
may do it again in more detail here. And then
more recently in twenty twenty three, there was a series

(04:39):
of stabbings in which two people were killed, and that
was very unfortunate. It was a young college student who
was having like something of a mental health crisis. It
was a really sad story all around. But these stories,
like I said, they really are very few and far between,
as you can tell. You know, there's multiple years between them.
And even these cases weren't as big at the time

(04:59):
as the one of Sabrina and John that I'm gonna tell.
So I'm just gonna jump into it again and hopefully,
you know, just just tell this horrible story in a
way that you know, honors the victims and their families.
And I'm actually going to start in the year two
thousand and two, twenty two years after the murders, and

(05:22):
this in twenty two, twenty two. In two thousand and two,
police visit a forty seven year old man by the
name of Joe Hirshfield. Now Joe lives with his wife
Lanna in Beaver Creek, Oregon, which is just outside of Portland.
They have a really nice, easy life. Joe's aph well
paid mechanic. He also teaches scuba diving, and he and

(05:43):
his wife Lana live in a triple wide on two
and a half acres of land with.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
A barn, dogs, sheep.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
And even though it's a triple wide, it's a nice,
big house and they are just living the life that
they want. It's idyllic, it's easy. They have lots of friends.
Joe mostly has friends online. He's really big into the
online community and he was known in a bunch of
chatrooms as Joker Joe.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
So just you know, happy couple, you know, good life.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
That being said, there was another side to Joe, with
some neighbors calling him a loner or saying he was weird,
and a lot of them said he just really kept
to himself and if he didn't know you, he didn't
want to know you. One neighbors said they'd live next
to him for eleven years and had barely spoken more
than a few words in that entire time. So there's

(06:33):
kind of two sides to this guy, but most people
who knew him seem to really like him. So now
it's November nineteenth, two thousand and two, and police come
to his house, to Joe's house, while he's at work,
and they tell his wife Lana they're looking for him.
She calls him at work, She's like, hey, they want
to talk to you. He comes home and he talks
to them. They've got some questions for him, and police

(06:55):
tell him the questions are in relation to a murder
that happened back in Sacramento in nineth teen eighty and
they believe it may have involved his brother, Richard Hirshfield.
Now he speaks with police on the phone briefly. They
tell him, you know, there's new DNA technology we're able to,
you know, link Richard to this crime. And you know,
it's only a matter of time. We're just going to
keep testing things and getting more DNA, and you know

(07:19):
it's tied to this murder of these two eighteen year
old college students. They explain in big terms how the
DNA works. I don't think they're trying to like tell
him too much, but they're like, you know, people can
leave it at the scene. And his wife Lana later said, Oh, yeah,
we watched crime shows and he would like kind of
tune in when they're talking about DNA, So they have
like a vague idea of how it works, but not
really a lot, and he's just kind of like whatever.

(07:40):
He talks to the police. The police leave. The following morning,
Joe kisses his wife goodbye on his way to work,
gets in his car, and she doesn't that's it. She
goes about her day. A few hours later, Lana goes
into the to the barn and she finds Joe's car
in the barn. It had not he not driven to work.

(08:01):
She walks up to the car and she finds Joe inside,
having suffocated himself with the engine fumes. Joe had committed suicide,
and he also left behind a suicide note. Part of
it read quote it's only a matter of time before
they find my DNA too. So he had the most

(08:25):
beautiful hair. That is what the Living Insolves women say
when they talk about John Riggins. John Riggins, along with
his amazing bright red hair, was born in northern or
sorry in North Carolina in nineteen sixty two, and moved
with his parents and two younger siblings to Davis in
nineteen sixty nine when he was seven years old.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
Just a side note.

Speaker 1 (08:47):
About me, I also moved back to Davis from southern
California when I was seven. So John was a popular
kid from a good family. He fit right in with
the Davis community. Davis is, like I said, it's a
bu call. It's surrounded by farmland, but very well educated, small, safe, insular.
John's father was a doctor. John was a talented athlete

(09:08):
and he excelled specifically in baseball, which also my cousin
did and my son. So I'm just linking myself. I
promise I'll stop. As noted, John's hair was one thing
that made him stand out among his peers, but beyond that,
he was just a really great guy, well liked by
everyone who knew him, and honestly a very talented athlete.
And that's why people really knew him. He was a

(09:30):
very very talented athlete. As he grew up, John got
into rock and roll, but he kept it pretty chill
like most kids who grew up in Davis. He was
a really good kid, well raised, had a good head
on his shoulders. He would drink occasionally, but never did drugs,
despite many of his friends doing them around him. But
even his friends weren't doing anything more than like smoking weed,
you know, So he was just he was keeping it

(09:51):
even more chill.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
But the one thing that he was not very chill
about was girls.

Speaker 1 (09:57):
He was super into girls, and girls were super into him.
But he never really had a girlfriend, and wrote from
what we know he was a virgin until his death.
Now he never really had a girlfriend, not because a
girl didn't like him, like I said, but he wasn't
really good at closing the deal, as they say. He
would flirt, the girls would flurt back, but when it
came time to pull the trigger, he'd usually take too

(10:19):
long and miss his chance. And part of me wonders
if it's because he was never actually interested and just
liked the thrill of the chase. So he remained single
all through high school, at least for the most part,
and in the summers. Like I had mentioned, he had
a job in the parks department while he waited to
attend UC Davis. Once he graduated high school, he decided
to stay home, close to home, and probably wanted to

(10:41):
capitalize on living with his parents, which is a really
good idea. It is here at the Parks Department that
he met Sabrina Gonsalvez. Sabrina was unbelievably.

Speaker 2 (10:51):
Beautiful, kind, patient, innocent.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
She was the kind of girl you'd want to babysit
your kids, and despite being the youngest of three kids
in her own family, she was by all accounts the
most motherly, always making sure everyone was taken care of
before she took care of herself. Like John, Sabrina was
born in nineteen sixty two, and she was born in Oakland, California,
but moved around quite a bit because her father was

(11:16):
in the service.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
In high school, she.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
Actually moved to Germany and convinced her parents to let
her attend a German speaking high school because she wanted
to fully immerse herself in the culture, and she wasn't
afraid of the hard work it took to catch up
with her peers who were native German speakers, and she
actually did a good job and graduated and learned how
to speak German, just forcing herself to learn it while

(11:39):
in school. And that's the type of person she was,
and she never complained. She wanted the challenge and she
met it, and she excelled. The summers between you know,
high school, Sabrina would go to Davis and stay with
her sister Andrea and work at the parks Department. Now,
Andrea had originally wanted to attend Berkeley for college, and
she could have, except that her font, who had lived

(12:01):
in Oakland, was afraid of the crime in the area,
which we will see is sadly very ironic because it
makes sense to go to Davis if you're worried about crime.
But then again, here we are. So Andrea went to
Davis and Sabrina followed. She officially moved out the summer
prior to college starting and went back to work at

(12:21):
the parks department for probably like the second or third year,
which as we know, is where she met John Riggins.
And as soon as she officially lived in Davis for good,
they became a couple. So I think they'd been you know,
circling each other the last couple of summers. This summer
they made it official. They were completely taken with each other.
They spent as much time together as possible, and they

(12:41):
were like, honestly inseparable and just so happy. John's friend said,
you know, once he got together with Sabrina, we didn't
see much of him, but they didn't mind because they
knew how happy he was. Sabrina was very religious, very innocent.
John was, as we know, a very slow mover and
an all around good guy. So they were just like
a perfect couple. They went on a bunch of trips together,

(13:03):
they spent every weekend together. They were very much in love,
and her family loved him as well, and not just
his red hair. Sabrina's mother, Kim, said he had the
best manners and was just such a wonderful young man.
Now this time, the couple had already discussed marriage and
had even planned the names of the six children they

(13:23):
were going to have. Very unfortunately, though, this was not
meant to be. Before we get there, though, I'm going
to talk about another murder, another double murder that happened,
And this happens in Sacramento on November two, nineteen eighty
so just a few weeks before John and Sabrina's murder.

(13:46):
So November second, nineteen eighty two, young sweethearts Mary Beth
Sowers and Craig Miller, who were college students at Sacramento
State University left a party in Sacramento around one am.
Their friend followed behind them out of the party about
a minute later and saw them sitting in the back
of an unfamiliar car. Now he was either drunk or

(14:07):
not thinking about it, but he jumped in the front
of the car to surprise them, like boo, you know,
like to scare them. And when he got in the front,
he realized there was a man inside who he also
did not recognize. The man told him in a very
angry tone to get the fuck out of here, and
a woman who was with him, who was somewhere around
seven months pregnant, slapped this friend in the face and

(14:28):
asked him, why the fuck are you in my car.
The friend taken aback, just got out and stood there
and watched as the car drove away with his friends inside,
and he was luckily had to shit together enough that
he remembered the license plate because he knew something was wrong.
The two people in the car with the college sweethearts

(14:49):
Mary Beth and Craig were Gerald Gallego and his pregnant wife, Charlene.
Gerald had decided that he wanted a sex slave and
Marybeth Sours was the perfect target as she was stunning
and young. She was like beauty pageant beautiful, like blonde,
just unbelievably gorgeous, and so he just probably stalked her

(15:12):
and waited for her to come out of this party
and took her and her boyfriend. So he first drove
the couple out to the middle of nowhere, robbed Craig
of twenty dollars, then marched him about, you know, fifty
feet in front of the car and shot him three
times in the head, right in front of Mary Beth.
She must have been absolutely fucking terrified. He then took

(15:34):
her back to his shared home with Charlene, and while
Charlene watched TV and slept on the couch, he repeatedly
raped Marybeth in the bedroom. After doing this for hours,
he then took Marybeth back out to a different area
in the middle of nowhere and shot her exactly as
he had shot Craig. Marybeth's body was not found for

(15:57):
twenty days. The friend who saw them being abducted notified
police immediately, but the police likely didn't do shit until
it was too late, you know, because the police don't
give a shit. Generally. That being said, Quig's body was
found hours after he was killed, and once that happened,
police took things seriously. They immediately went to Gerald Gallego

(16:18):
and Charlene's apartment because they ran the plates realized it
was his car, because these two are nothing if not stupid.
But Gerald and Charlene were not at the apartment and
they saw the cops there and they went on the run.
It took until November seventeenth for the couple to be
caught in Omaha, Nebraska, after Charlene's mother notified the FBI
that she had called and asked to have money to

(16:39):
be wired there. Now, Gerald Gallego had a half brother
named David Hunt, who loved and admired Gerald entirely, which
is interesting because David is the older brother, the older
half brother. But anyway, this man, David was also a
complete scumbag piece of shit who had a laundry list
of crimes under his belt and who had spent a
lot of time in prison, and he also broke out

(17:01):
of prison more than once. And it also recently helped
his friend Richard Thompson escape about two weeks after Gerald
killed that couple. Now, Gerald was in prison at this
point after getting caught for the murders of Marybeth and Craig,
and police began linking him to ten other murders, which
would later be dubbed the sex slave murders. So that

(17:22):
means that Gerald here is a fucking serial killer, which
could be its own case. And so again another case
that maybe I'll cover someday, but I think some of
it's going to kind of get covered here and you'll
see how that unfolds. Now, this is another piece to
the story that's important, mostly because of the similarity to
the case of Sabrina and John in that it's a couple,
they're young college sweethearts, it's a double murder, and it's

(17:45):
in the same area. So we'll come back to this,
but just remember these people. So now it's the night
of December twentieth, nineteen eighty, about six weeks later, and
John and Sabrina were working at the Children's Nutcracker, which
this year is in its forty seventh year, so a
long standing tradition that actually started not long before they
started working there. It's held at the Memorial Center, like

(18:06):
Veterans Memorial Center, I think in Davis and it's hosted
by the city, and because John and Sabrina worked for
the city, they were picked to work this event. After
the Nutcracker was over, they were scheduled to go to
a surprise birthday party for Sabrina's sister, who was turning
twenty two on the twenty second, So this is two
nights before and in fact, another really shitty thing to

(18:30):
note is that December twentieth, this night was John's parents'
wedding anniversary, So the twentieth is their wedding anniversary. The
twenty second is Andrea's birthday. So they were meant to
go to this surprise party and they were throwing Andrea
off the trail. They told her, oh, we're gonna go
see a John Lennon movie because he'd been killed just

(18:51):
a couple weeks earlier, on December eighth, nineteen eighty, which
is actually today. Crazy enough, rip John Lennon. So instead,
once they were done working, the couple pretty much vanished
into thin air. As I noted, Sabrina lived with her
sister Andrea, so when she didn't show up to the
party and wasn't home when Andrea got home, she was
pretty annoyed.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
She was like, I can't.

Speaker 1 (19:11):
Believe my sister missed my party and she's still out
with John. It felt really thoughtless and very out of
character for them, and I think Andrea maybe would have
thought more of it, but she was still getting over
the flu which she had just had, so she just
went to bed.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
When she got home, she.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
Was annoyed, but she didn't really think too deeply about it,
I think because she was a little bit out of it,
and she also thought maybe they just ended up working
late and they decided to actually go to that movie. Unfortunately,
as she found out in the morning, this was not
the case. The following morning, when she woke up, she
immediately knew that Sabrina hadn't come home. And the way

(19:47):
she knew this is because Sabrina was such a reliable
person that every night when she came home, she'd turn
off the fan that was like in their living room
before going to bed. So Andrea got up and saw
the fan was still on, and she immediately knew. She
walked into Sabrina's room found that her bed had not
been slept in, and her wallet and other personal items
were still there. She panicked and called her older sister,

(20:10):
teres I think it's Terisa or Teresa, I don't know,
and then her parents, now Teresa or Teresa also lived
in Davis and that's where the party was being held,
so they all lived nearby. So she then she calls
her sister, and then she calls her parents. She also,
I believe, at that point, called John's parents, who found
that his room was also undisturbed. He was not in there,

(20:31):
and their family van, which he had borrowed the night before,
was still not back at the house, so it's missing.
They called police, and at first they weren't very worried,
they weren't very interested, but the family pushed. They were like, listen,
these two did not run off to Vegas and get married.
They didn't stay out all night. They're really good, innocent kids,
they're virgins, they're religious, like kind of laying it all out.

(20:52):
And the police agreed to start looking for the couple,
which would only happen I think in a small town
like this most places, and the next case I'm actually
will like kind of exemplify this. They're not going to
do that for you. But because we're in Davis, because
the families probably knew some of the police, they decided okay,
we're going to help you, even though it hasn't been
twenty four hours, and by the end of the day

(21:12):
the police were very worried as well. Unfortunately, it wasn't
until two days later, on December twenty second, Andrea's birthday,
around eight thirty am, that the van belonging to the
Riggins family was finally found on fulsome road in Sacramento.
It's not a well traveled road. Many of them are
out there like aren't even now, and especially back then.

(21:33):
It was a lot of farm land, but the van
was in plain sight, so it's interesting that it took
this long to find it. The van was quickly identified
and towed for processing, but John and Sabrina were still
nowhere to be found again. Unfortunately, this changed two hours
later when police were walking down a small dirt road
about a quarter mile from where the van was found

(21:54):
and found two wet, rigid bodies laying in a ditch.
The body identified as John was lying face up, while
the body belonging to Sabrina was face down as if
she had been on all fours before falling forward. Both
bodies were covered in duct tape, as were their heads
and faces, and only Sabrina's legs were uncovered, which is

(22:16):
horrifying to think about and also feels obvious as to
what probably happened, which will be of importance later. The
bodies were taken to the medical examiner for autopsies and
their causes of death were determined. John had been beaten
on the head five times with something very heavy, probably
because he was attempting to defend himself and Sabrina. He

(22:38):
had also had his throat cut, but no major arteries
were cut, so it likely took him hours to die.
On top of this horrifying detail, he was likely conscious
for a good part of it, but was not able
to save himself because he could not move because of
all of the tape. Sabrina had two deep cuts to

(23:01):
her throat to the point where she had nearly been decapitated. Luckily,
this meant that she had died nearly instantly. Even though
it sounds horrifying, the small favor is that she didn't
lay there for hours like John likely did. Their hands
were bound in another type of tape as well, so
the killer or killers really took some time with this,

(23:23):
and again, as noted, Sabrina's legs were not taped and
one of her boots was partially off. Her panties were
also found to have been inside out and partially twisted,
but the medical examiner found no signs of sexual assault,
which is crazy to me, but that is the official Like,
that's what.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
They said officially.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
At this time in nineteen eighty, they had also found
a bruise on Sabrina's vagina, but they explained that it
was probably due to her being kicked into the ditch,
which is like just as awful. In the van, authorities
found a ton of ffavidence, some of which they completely ignored,
as we'll see, but some of which they processed.

Speaker 2 (24:05):
This included a.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
Tire iron, which was removed from its place in the
back of the van and was likely the weapon used
to beat John on the head, which is terrible. Hopefully
he was unconscious, but I just don't know. It also
included a paper bag with three half gallons of fully
melted ice cream inside, ice cream that was intended for
the surprise party. It also included presents that had been

(24:28):
torn apart, presumably by the attacker or attackers, including a
quilted blanket the couple had bought Andrea to help keep
her warm. During these cold, foggy winter nights. And I
do want to point out that the night that John
and Sabrina were abducted was particularly foggy and Davis like
the country roads and even in the city, the fog
gets so thick you can't see five feet in front

(24:49):
of you, like it's super dangerous. I used to drive
to this little town called Winters, it's like ten miles
away from Davis, because I had like a boyfriend there
and it was insane in the winter. It was so
eerie and scary and just like straight up dangerous because
the fog was so bad, And on the night that
they were taken, the fog was like that. So it
just adds like another element to this fucking crazy ass story.

(25:13):
Now we have to remember that there wasn't really DNA
in nineteen eighty, but even so, the blanket was kept
as evidence but was not really processed, so they didn't
like look for evidence on it, which is crazy. Also,
the Riggans family was never asked to identify the items
in the van, so police never knew what did and
did not belong to them, which I feel like would

(25:34):
have been super helpful to know if like the killer
left something behind. So it was a really shoddy police
work and very disappointing.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
That being said, some of the things that.

Speaker 1 (25:45):
They paid attention to did sort of help them create
a timeline and a place of abduction. This includes the
ice cream because they kind of knew, you know, some
information about the ice cream that helps, you know, build
a timeline. I'll talk about that, but first I just
want to mention this was really terrible. The funerals were
held within a couple of weeks of the murders. They

(26:08):
were held from them separately, but the people mourned the
couple together and there were literally like five hundred people
at each at each funeral, just you know, the mourners.
So many people were affected by this, and so many
people cared about this case when it happened. This is
really fucking sad. So police continued their investigation and realized
that they had two theories for when and how the

(26:29):
couple were abducted. As I had mentioned, the presence of
the ice cream kind of helped because it meant that
Sabrina had gone home to pick it up after leaving work,
as her sister, Teres had bought two of the half
gallons during the week and left them at her house,
which I found weird because the ice cream is for
Andrea's surprise party, but it's in her freezer, so I
don't really know how they.

Speaker 2 (26:49):
Like pulled that off. Who knows.

Speaker 1 (26:51):
In any case, they knew that if she had the
ice cream, that means she went home. However, Teres had
only bought two half gallons and herself had bought the third,
and so there's contention about when she did that and
what that means for the abduction because nobody can say
for sure when she bought the ice cream because there
was no receipt, so she could.

Speaker 2 (27:10):
Have bought it that night.

Speaker 1 (27:12):
So if she had bought it before that night, also
like during the week, and distored it in the freezer,
then it's more than likely they were abducted outside of
her apartment as they came to pick all of the
ice cream up. If Sabrina bought the ice cream that night,
then they could have been abducted from the grocery store
parking lot where she bought the ice cream. And this
grocery store parking lot, it's the same grocery store that

(27:33):
I used to go to when they were going there.
It was a Luckies and when I was going there.
It's an Albertson's, but it's still like weird that I
know exactly where it is. And again, like I mentioned,
I used to live really close to where this happened.
I personally think they were probably abducted from the apartments
because those apartments are so quiet and so dark at night,
and with the added fog, it's like would be really

(27:55):
easy to take somebody and nobody see it. So anyway,
like I said, it's very possible they were taken from
her apartment because John also always liked to park in
a dark corner up against a bush, So he's just
adding like another layer where this guy can hide and
pop out and grab them, throw them in the van
and drive away. Again, this is what I believe, but
the other theory has some weight as well. Mostly what

(28:18):
the weight is that they were abducted at the Luckies
parking lot. It's supported by eyewitness accounts, but most of
them sound kind of weak. There are like two or
three people who thought that they saw them in the
shopping mall that night.

Speaker 2 (28:32):
That being said, they still could have.

Speaker 1 (28:34):
Gone bought the ice cream at Lucky's and then gone
to her house and picked up the rest. So I
really don't know, but I personally really believe that they
were abducted outside of her house, if I had to
choose a theory. But either way, it's within, you know,
a half mile of each other. There are other theories
as well, like it's possible that they were taken outside
of Teresa's house when they got to the party, Like,

(28:55):
there's nothing to say they weren't abducted then. But all
we know is that they did definitely go to Sabrina's house,
they got the ice cream, and then they were taken.
Beyond this, there were other sidings of the couple after
the abduction that are more for certain because people saw
the van. So around eight thirty pm, a motorists saw

(29:16):
the van barreling down Covell Boulevard, which is a main
street that you would definitely use to drive to and
from Sabrina's apartment from most.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
Areas of Davis.

Speaker 1 (29:24):
This witness said there were three people inside. They couldn't
make out any details because there was a blanket up
against one of the windows, which means you know that
the blanket was already unwrapped.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
At this point.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
Another driver saw the van swerving all over the Interstate
on eighty we just call it eighty up there, which
could have meant that John was fighting the abductor at
this point, or maybe Sabrina was being assaulted, or maybe
John was driving and you know, the abductor was like
fucking with him, like who knows. But somebody else saw
it driving erratically on the freeway. Another man actually saw

(29:58):
the van backing into the dirt where it was eventually found,
but didn't call police even though he had a quote
weird feeling about it, which is really unfortunate that he
didn't call because if they had found John and Sabrina,
John maybe could have survived. Now Sabrina wouldn't have, which
is terrible, but John could have. Or maybe he was
seeing it before they were murdered. You know, who knows

(30:21):
what would have happened. Now. Later, the van was seen
by somebody at a bar called Rudy's Hideaway that was
really close to the murder side. It was kind of
like one of the only things around. And I can
tell you from experience, there are bars like that that
are just like out in the middle of nowhere, like
a biker stop. Like you're driving down the country road
and you just pull over and get a beer. So
the person who saw this was a woman, and she

(30:43):
said that the van was blocking the road and when
she kind of went to look inside, like what's going on?
Why is this blocking the road, she saw a baseball
hat on the front seat, wrapping paper thrown everywhere, and
saw a single man get inside of the van. So
this is likely after the murders, like he killed them
and then went to this bar. Yet another sighting was
from a couple who said they saw two suspicious men

(31:06):
coming out of the trees, suspicious looking, sorry, men coming
out of the trees later that night, very close to
where the bodies were found. They actually called out to
the men, who entirely ignored them, and these witnesses, a
few of them, gave a description of the single man
that they saw as having a beard and long hair
parted down the middle. And then there was another sighting

(31:31):
that morning where a witness saw a man matching the
same description in a yellow, bloodstained shirt come out of
the trees and get into a brown pickup truck which
then drove away and he got in as the passenger.
So some of these things are all going to kind
of connect later. But I just want to give you
the eyewitness accounts. Police had nothing more than that. At

(31:52):
least they didn't think they did, because they didn't fucking
check any of the evidence they found in the van, basically,
so they started looking at anything that could be a lead.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
They looked at old.

Speaker 1 (32:00):
Boyfriends of Andrea's. They looked at like a family John
delivered papers too, because I guess one of the people
in that family died and they thought like maybe his
brother decided to kill somebody to avenge his death. I
don't know. It was a weird lead. I didn't really
look into it. They even looked into Henry Lee Lucas,
but there was nothing to tie any of these suspects
to the murders. Now, around this time, a jail informant

(32:23):
brought up the name of one David Hunt, who I've
already sort of mentioned, who was potentially in the area,
had a record a mile long, and had just helped
another criminal escape prison. He was also the half brother
of now suspected serial killer Gerald Gallego. Police reached out
to David Hunt after he was caught in March nineteen

(32:44):
eighty one for like the breaking his friend out of prison,
and he declined to speak to them saying I'm on parole,
but I didn't do it and I would never hurt
a young girl. He was not interviewed again until nineteen
eighty seven, let him go for six years. He just
said I didn't do it, and they said, thanks for

(33:04):
letting us know, sir, have a nice day now. The
case sat cold, but in nineteen eighty three a new
detective took over the case and took it to an
FBI profiler, who said the crime was likely one of opportunity,
that Sabrina may have even died from suffocation due to
the duct tape on her face, that the killer was
smart and methodical, and that he acted alone in the abduction.

(33:27):
Using the tape and the beating of John is proof
that the killer was alone because two men wouldn't have
needed to do all of that to subdue the victims.
He also said this was the killer's first murder because
there were hesitation marks on John's neck, but the marks
on Sabrina's neck were much deeper, indicating that he got
used to what he was doing after the first time.

Speaker 2 (33:47):
He said that.

Speaker 1 (33:48):
Despite the pathologist's findings that the motive was likely sexual
assault of Sabrina and that the murderer was a loner
and that while this loaner probably dated, he still had
you know, sexual issues and probably felt no remorse after
the killings, only a fear of being caught. Now again,

(34:08):
this was great to have this profile, but it ultimately
kind of led to nothing, and again the case went cold.
Then in nineteen eighty six, another detective from Davis, Fred Turner,
took it over and took a second look at David Hunt,
who at the time was in prison for kidnapping, wherein
the couple he kidnapped were bound with duct tape.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
He was then the detective.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
Able to prove that David Hunt could have been in
Davis at the time of the murders, as he had
been wed earlier that day in Carson City, Nevada, which
is only a three hour drive from Davis. Lastly, from motive,
he pointed to the fact that Gerald Galago was looking,
you know, to get out of prison, and so this
would have been a perfect copycat crime to take place

(34:53):
while he was incarcerated, and to prove that he was
not the killer police were looking for, which is obviously
stupid because they had a time of evid against him.
But you know, people do dumber shit than that. Police
went to David Hunt's accomplice the when he broke out
of prison, Richard Thompson, who was at that time out
of prison, and they tried to get information out of him.
It would make sense if he had been the one

(35:15):
to pick up David Hunt. You know, the pickup truck
they saw a man getting into. It would make sense
for Richard Thomas to be the one driving that pickup truck.
So they went to the Cecil Hotel, which, if anybody
knows true crime knows, that's a very significant place in
Los Angeles, and rather than trying to talk to him
as police, they sent in a snitch. Now, this guy
was friends with David Hunt and Richard Thompson, so he

(35:36):
already had like a relationship with him, and he's a snitch.
So they think like, oh, it's gonna go great, but
he fucking blows it. Basically, he can't get much of
anything on the recording that he he's wearing a wire
and the only thing he got Richard Thompson to say
was if I was gonna tie someone up, maybe I'd
use duct tape. During this conversation, Richard Thompson also said

(35:56):
he'd use fishing wire, handcuffs, a ton of other eyes.
But the police still thought, oh, this is a damning
confession because they're grasping at straws. The snitch also said
that off tape, of course he got a full confession,
but I mean that doesn't really count for anything. What
they got definitely wasn't enough. So they decided. But they

(36:16):
were convinced, you know, at this point that David did it,
and they're like, we just need more evidence. So they
go and they talk to suell And Hunt, David's then
wife and the one that he married the day before
or the day of Sabrina and John's murders in Carson City.
So at this time that they go talk to suell
and David, Hunt is in prison and Suellen is just
waiting dutifully for him to get out of prison so

(36:39):
they could go on in wedded bliss. Unfortunately, during this
time with Suellen learned from the police like, hey, we
know you're married and you think you don't have to
like testify against him, but one you're still married to
someone else, so your big miss marriage is not legal,
so you can be compelled to testify him against him.

(37:01):
And second, if you got married after he did these crimes,
you can still be forced to testify him against any
crimes you knew about before you were married. So these guys,
the whole thing is stupid. But anyway, so they go
and they talked to Sue Allen. They find her dodgy
and difficult to deal with, and they got some information
from her. They didn't really help them so much as

(37:23):
convinced them further that she was lying. They found that
she had rented a van for a few days around
this time, and she wouldn't She gave them like the
wrong van company, so she said it was like hurts
when it was budget something like that. So they found
her being deceptive and that was really problematic.

Speaker 2 (37:40):
She also told them.

Speaker 1 (37:41):
That they got married in Vegas, which is eleven hours
from Davis, which would have made committing the murders impossible.
Police found it really interesting that she couldn't remember where
she'd been married just a few months earlier. They were
also really upset about the van about lying about that
because it took him a year to figure out where
the van came from. They'd been wanting to check the

(38:02):
mileage on the rental van to show that they did
or could have driven to Davis that day, but by
the time they found the information on the van, they
couldn't prove the mileage, so she was really like throwing
the cops off, and the fact she was doing this
made them want to launch an official investigation into these people,
and police went really hard on this. That being said,

(38:27):
despite their best efforts, cops didn't really have anything concrete
against David Hunt, Richard Thompson, or anybody else that they
thought was involved, and in fact, the only piece of
hard evidence they had, which were fingerprints found inside the van,
did not match David Hunt or Richard Thompson. Additionally, David

(38:48):
and Sell and Hunt both passed lie detector tests. Richard
Thompson failed the same test, but they're notoriously unreliable, so
you couldn't really use it anyway. What police did have
was a lot of circumstantial evidence, including another witness who
was with the group on the day of the murders,
who said that he was left alone in a casino
in Carson City that evening, while Hunt and Thompson said

(39:11):
they had quote family business to attend to, which sounds
a lot like they could have been attempting to help
Gerald Galago by way of copycat killing. Also, Gallego's mother
said David Hunt had called her and offered to do
quote anything to help. Now, going back to the witness,
the witness gave a timeline that made it entirely, entirely

(39:32):
possible for Hunt and Thompson to have committed the killings
before coming back to their shared motel rooms and driving
from Carson City back to Arizona, where they were staying.

Speaker 2 (39:41):
At the time.

Speaker 1 (39:43):
So they take this kind of timeline circumstantial information, they
go to the DA's office, and.

Speaker 2 (39:47):
In nineteen eighty nine, nine.

Speaker 1 (39:50):
Years after the murders, police finally arrest David Hunt, Richard Thompson,
and Suellen Hunt for the murders. They also, I think
arrested this witness for some part in the murders. But
most of this was an attempt to get these people
to turn There was no physical evidence, a lot of
witness testimony, and a lot of circumstantial evidence and a

(40:13):
very solid motive. That being said, many in the Sacramento
Police Department did not agree with the arrests. Some of
them didn't even really think they did it, and they
said that the police in charge had blinders on, but
the prosecution decided to take the case and essentially they
said this David Hunt busted his friend Richard Thompson out
of jail. The two of them, along with suell and Hunt,

(40:36):
then decided to pull off a double murder to help
his half brother Richard Galago get out of trouble. They
had a man named Doug Lanier help them out. That
was the witness I forgot to give his name prior
sorry for which Suellen later wrote him a one thousand
dollars check for helping run interference during the murders. They
then had Doug reserver room at a Sacramento Mitel six,

(40:57):
where Suellen waited while David and Richard went to Davis
to find victims to kill. There is no record of
any Motel six motel rental because their records didn't go
back that far, so this is again just conjecture by
the prosecution. That being said, the rental van was seen
several times in Sacramento on December twentieth, so there's some

(41:18):
sort of eyewitness quote unquote proof they were in the
area on the day just before the murders. The murders
were then committed according to prosecution, and though Gallegos had
used a gun to kill his latest victims, it was
believed that Hunt and Thompson used knives because they were
seen by people and they didn't want to draw too
much attention, so they didn't want to use guns because
it would have been allowed, the bar was nearby, et cetera.

(41:41):
The bodies were left uncovered when they were dumped, just
as Gerald Gallego's victims had been, and the group all
then went back to Carson City. Doug Lanneer, this witness,
also said that he witnessed a blood ritual take place
between David Hunt and Richard Thompson, which was super fucking
weird and also made it seem like they were getting

(42:04):
ready to do something big, like a murder. Also helping
the case against Hunt and Thompson was the fact that
Gerald Gallego did in fact opened a discovery case just
days after Sabrina and John's murder, saying that it showed
he may have not been the killer of the other victims,
as another murder took place just after the one he
was accused of while he was in prison, so it

(42:25):
all circumstantially lines up. During this time, police offered every
single person involved in the case except for David Hunt,
a deal if they would turn on him or each other.
None of them took the deal, with Lanier, who was
also on trial, as I mentioned, saying he would gladly
take it, but he didn't have anything to prove they

(42:46):
did the murders, and he had no idea if they
actually did so. Basically, the discovery phase of the pre
trial went on for a long time. All of these
suspects were in prison for three years waiting for trial.
But in the end, all police could prove was that
the men had the time and opportunity and the motive
to commit the murders. They didn't have fingerprints, they didn't

(43:08):
have confirmed sightings of the men in Davis or with
the victims. They had the rental van, but it's a
rental van. It could have been any rental van. And
of course they didn't have DNA. Now this was due
in large part the fact that DNA wasn't really a
thing too much back then, but it is going to
come into play. So they didn't have anybody close to
the men to say they were involved, and the only

(43:29):
person who said they admitted it to the killings. Was
that jail house snitch, who it turned out was a
former brother in law of David Hunt, So could have
had a motive for trying to get him in trouble
because it's a former brother in law, so they're no
longer part of the family. And again, all of his
admissions that he caught were not caught on tape while
he was wearing a wire, So how would that even happen. So,

(43:51):
like I said, the group was arrested in nineteen eighty
nine or maybe early nineteen ninety, and it took until
nineteen ninety two for some of them to even go
to trial or to start to go to trial. And
just prior to the trial, the defense said, hey, can
we review all the evidence in the case, including the
blue quilted blanket. And here's the crazy part. As I
had mentioned, the blanket had never been tested for seminal

(44:15):
fluid meaning semen or any other bodily fluids. At the
start of the investigation. The request had been made, but
whoever was processing the blanket either ignored the request or
just forgot about it, and the police never followed up.
They never followed up. When police took the case up
again in nineteen eighty seven. They did ask for a

(44:36):
review of the blanket, but apparently they used the wrong jargon,
so instead of saying we specifically want you to check
for body fluids, they just said, oh, test the blanket again,
which is such a scientist thing for them to be, like,
I'm going to give you exactly what you ask for
and double check to make sure it's actually what you want.
So again, no bodily fluids were tested for Now, the

(44:57):
defense finally went because the blanket was still an evidence,
thank god, So they took it and they went to
get it tested for DNA. Now we're in nineteen ninety two.
DNA testing is still very basic, but they were able
to get enough evidence to have it tested. Now the
prosecution we're like, hey, hey, we want to do this too.
We're not going to trust the DNA if it comes

(45:18):
from you, which nowadays I don't really think is as
much of a thing, but this is still a very
new science.

Speaker 2 (45:22):
So they're like, we want to test our own.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
So both sides did their own independent testing and both
came back with the exact same results. None of the
men being charged, nor John Riggins could be tied to
the seminole fluid found on the blanket. This also proves
that there was a sexual assault, despite what the medical

(45:45):
examiner found during the autopsy the first time, which is like,
how could you miss that? How could you miss that?
There is semen on a blanket? And it gets worse,
We'll get there. It was clear someone ejaculated on the
blank but it wasn't any of those men. The prosecution
dropped the case the week the jury was being chosen,

(46:07):
stating they simply did not have enough evidence to prosecute
the Hunt gang. They were dismissed, but like, they could
be charged again. I never remember if it's with prejudice
or without prejudice. That means you can be charged again.
So I'm just gonna say they can be charged again.
Although they were set free, because they were still able
to be charged again in the future, even ten years later,
most people thought they were still the killers, including Sabrina's family.

(46:30):
Let me say that again, even ten years later, meaning
nineteen years on from the murder, we still didn't have
a conclusion. So basically, in everybody's mind, it was an
unsolved case that everybody quote unquote knew was solved. Now
I want to kind of switch gears a little bit here.
The book that I read about this case is one
of those things kind of like your own backyard podcast.

(46:52):
The writer Joel Davis kind of became a part of
the story while investigating it. Now, Joel Davis grew up
in Davis and was peripheral friends with John Riggins, so
this case always interested him because he found out that
John was missing on his birthday, so his birthday is
also right around this time. In his adult life, he
became a journalist and around the year two thousand he

(47:12):
began investigating this double murder because it obviously affected him,
as it did so many in the Davis community. After
some research, Joel came to believe that the Hunt group
in fact did not do the murders and found a
Sacramento prosecutor, Anne Marie Schubert, who used DNA recently to
solve the cold case, and decided to bring this cold
case to her attention, and she jumped right in. She

(47:35):
looked at the DNA and had it tested again. Now
we're in two thousand and two, DNA testing and become
a lot better science, like a much more accurate science,
and they now had databases of sexual criminals to match against.
On August twenty seventh, two thousand and two, after waiting
months for the results, the DNA produced a hit, and

(47:56):
it was so random it shocked everyone. The hit was
for a career criminal and repeated sex offender who had
never been mentioned before, who was also a rapist, a
man named Richard Hirshfield. Now you might recognize that name
from the start of this story in November two thousand
and two, when we go and talk to Richard's brother

(48:17):
when the police went and saw him in Oregon. At
the time of the match, Richard was fifty three and
in jail for at least another eight years. He'd done
two years of a ten year sentence because he had
been convicted of child molestation. Now the prosecutor, Schubert and
the police started looking into Richard and found he absolutely

(48:38):
was the right guy.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
He was released from.

Speaker 1 (48:41):
Prison near Davis the summer before the murders. He worked
in Davis as an air conditioning repairman or air conditioner repairman,
and likely worked at Sabrina's building, so he could have
seen her previously, known where she lived, and waited for
her to come home in the dark to attack her.
He also had a long history prior to this of
a attacking women and couples, even in their own homes,

(49:04):
so he was brazen enough to do this foreshore. He
also fit the descriptions given by eyewitnesses.

Speaker 2 (49:10):
He was six ' to.

Speaker 1 (49:11):
One, were an army jack that had been described by
at least one witness, and he had that long hair
parted down the middle and a beard. Now this brings
us back to the beginning of the story and joker
Joe Hirshfield and his two page long but ultimately very
vague suicide note. In it, he said I was there

(49:32):
for the murders, but Richard killed them. So he straight
up says I witnessed my brother murder these young people,
which means the theory about how the couple were killed
changed and got a whole lot worse. Now, while it
was initially thought they'd been abducted and killed in a

(49:53):
short amount of time, basically taken out to the country,
beaten and killed, it now seemed much more likely that
there to were had lasted hours. As it turns out,
Joe Hirshfield lived about seven miles from where the bodies
were found at the time they were murdered, and with
his semi confession, police believed the couple were abducted, made

(50:13):
to drive to Joe's house. Beaten, Sabrina was raped potentially
by both men while John had to watch, and then
were taken by either one or both men out to
the country road where Richard killed them. Part of what
made them think about this was that Joe was so
convinced his DNA was going to be found at the
crime scene. Although later they kind of walk this back

(50:37):
a little bit, but at the time they're thinking, well,
maybe Joe killed one and Richard killed the other, hence
the differing knife marks. But either way, they're thinking that
the way these kids were killed was way worse than
they originally thought. It. Also, at this time came out
that there was semen found in Sabrina's throat, which is

(50:58):
beyond fucking horrifying. The first time I read that is
when I stopped researching this case. Something about it, something
about her just being like a virgin and this being
the last night of her life. It just really fucked
with me. But beyond that, it also matches another rape
that Richard committed in nineteen seventy five, where he forced
the woman to give him oral sex, and for which

(51:19):
he was of course paroled only five years later, which
was only five months before committing these murders. In any case,
at the time as DNA which matched to the crime.
Like I said, he was already in jail for child
molestation and wasn't getting out until twenty ten at the earliest.
So this gave police and officers all the time in
the world to get their case together before charging him,

(51:39):
and boy did they take their time. So they got
the DNA in two thousand and two, it took them
two more years to announce they had a suspect, which
meant two more years for the families to sit and
wait for justice for their murdered loved ones. You know,
we're twenty two years on. So Joel Davis, the writer
of the book that I was talking about that I
read for this case, later wrote an op ed after
the trial where he said, you know, the name of

(52:00):
his book was far too accurate and that it was
frustrating for him to see them take so much time.

Speaker 2 (52:05):
To do this.

Speaker 1 (52:06):
He said he regretted not coming out with the information
about the DNA match in two thousand and two when
he'd heard about it because he did get the name
from a source, but out of respect for the case,
he didn't mention it for two years until two thousand
and four when police came forward.

Speaker 2 (52:19):
And he now.

Speaker 1 (52:19):
Regrets that because he thinks it would have moved the
case along for him to report that they had DNA,
it would have sort of forced their hand. But police were,
you know, their excuse was like, oh, we don't have
the funding, like these things take time. He's already in prison,
who cares. Essentially all that said, Richard Hirschfield was finally
charged for the double murders in two thousand and four,
and this crafty motherfucker and his lawyers put in every

(52:41):
continuance and delay possible. He didn't actually go to trial
for these murders until September of twenty twelve. So he
was charged in two thousand and four, and he did
not go to tril till twenty twelve, ten years after
his DNA was definitively linked to her. It was like
one in two hundred and fifty billion chance that it
was you know, somebody else, which is actually just not

(53:03):
even like mathematically possible. There's not even that many people
in the world, so fucking ridiculous it took this long,
So the trial, which lasted only about two months, was
pretty much a slam dug from the beginning. The defense
did attempt to say that Joe was the killer and
that Richard only masturbated in the van, but that didn't
go over well, obviously for a number of reasons, even
though to this day Richard Hirschfield maintains his innocence. In fact,

(53:26):
they never found any of Joe's DNA at the crime scene,
and what they ended up thinking happened was that Richard
pretty much did probably act alone, basically driving to the
bar after he killed the couple and then asking his
brother to meet him, and or after he like abducted
the couple, who knows, and asking his brother to meet him.

(53:48):
So it's possible that he, you know, could have left
the bodies in the ditch, went or left them in
the ditch unable to move, went and called his brother,
and then Joe saw him kill them. Like I don't
really know, but what police essentially say is that Joe
was only kind of peripherally involved, but obviously was witnessed

(54:08):
to the killings and helped his brother after the killings.
So I mean, I don't know how peripheral that is,
but for the purposes of the prosecution, they basically said
it was Richard Hirschfield, and as far as the DNA goes,
it all just kind of points to him. So again,
even if Joe was there, he probably wasn't very actively involved.

(54:29):
I mean, and who knows. He killed himself, so it's
kind of like, what are you gonna do anyway, But
so I will never really know, but we know that
Richard Hirschfield did this. So of course, you know, he
was found guilty sentenced to death because he's in California,
he's just gonna die on death row. But even as
a symbolic sentencing, like that's something for the families, you know,

(54:50):
to know that, like the you know, the judge and
the jury took this very seriously.

Speaker 2 (54:55):
And speaking of the.

Speaker 1 (54:55):
Families, you know, everyone's still living their lives, doing their
best to honor the memories of John and Sabrina. John's
parents moved to the coast and they're just kind of
enjoying their retirement. They're quite a bit older now. As
far as I know, they are still both alive, and
I really hope that they are able to enjoy you
know grandchildren he had siblings. I really hope that they're
able to enjoy good life. Sabrina's family is definitely continuing

(55:18):
on and keeping her memory alive. Her sister Andrea got
married and had a daughter who she named Sabrina. And
Andrea's daughter, Sabrina wrote a poem for her aunt Sabrina,
which I won't you know, read here, but you can
actually find it in the back of Joel Davis's book.
It's a beautiful tribute to Sabrina. It shows just how
loving and amazing her entire family was and still is

(55:40):
despite this, you know, very tragic loss. And I really
love that he ended his book with that. The book
is called Justice Waits the UC David Sweetheart Murders. Justice
Waits the u CE Dave Sweetheart Murders. But if you
just look up Justice Waits, you'll find it. So I
wanted to sort of follow in his footsteps here and
just say, you know, it's really wonderful to see people
being able to have love in their lives and find

(56:02):
joy even when someone so evil as this man hurts them.
And I just find that really inspiring, and so I
wanted to call that out. So that's it that's the case,
I feel like this round went much better. I'm going
to be really happy to post this, really proud to
post this, and I hope if the families ever hear it,
that they feel that I did the story justice and

(56:23):
that I painted their family members in the light that
they deserve because they seem like truly wonderful people and
this is just such a fucking horrifying case. So thanks
everybody for listening. I'll be back in just a few
days with a new episode. Please like, rate reviews, share
with your friends. Some people told me they're having trouble
finding the show on Spotify. It's because I'm a new show.

(56:47):
The more downloads you get, the easier it is to fined.
But if you can't find me there, you can go
to Instagram. It's true true Crime. It's just at True
Crime California, and I have a link tree that will
link you to Spotify there. If that's where you prefer to.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
Listen Apple Podcasts, you can find me pretty easy. Everywhere
else hopefully.

Speaker 1 (57:03):
You can find me pretty easy, but worst case scenario,
you can use my tree. So thanks everybody. I will
be back soon, and until then, stay you know, stay
safe out there bye bye,