GUILTY WA - Ed, 81, & Minnie Maurin, 83, abducted & murdered, Ethel, 19 Dec 1985

http://abcnews.go.com/US/1985-washi...-couple-solved/story?id=16746875#.T_ylFeuRpXU

July 10, 2012

Washington state officials have apparently solved the 1985 cold-case homicide of an elderly couple with an arrest that fulfills a grieving son's promise to his parents.

Wilhelmina "Minnie" Maurin and Edward "Ed" Maurin's dead bodies were found Christmas Eve 1985. They had been shot to death and dragged into a wooded area.

"At their funeral, I laid my hand on their casket and I said, 'I will find out who did this,'" the couple's son, Dennis Hadaller, said at a news conference Monday.

A team of investigators from the Lewis County Sheriff's Office in Chehalis, Wash., was dispatched to Alaska July 8 to make an arrest in connection to the slayings.

Rick Riffe, 53, and his brother John Gregory Riffe, 50, have long been primary suspects in the cold case, according to the sheriff.

John Riffe died last month of ill health, just after the sheriff’s office prepared their probable cause statement, Mansfield said.

Authorities say potential witnesses were threatened by the brothers, even with death, if they spoke up.

“We’re very confident now one is dead and the other in custody, (other) witnesses will come forward,” Mansfield said this afternoon. “We would like to hear from them.”

http://www.lewiscountysirens.com/

From December 2013:

http://www.chronline.com/article_3d0d1f78-5c64-11e3-85f5-001a4bcf887a.html

Convicted murderer Rick Riffe was sentenced to just shy of 103 years in prison Tuesday afternoon in Lewis County Superior Court...

Riffe was convicted on Nov. 18 after a six-week jury trial resulted in guilty verdicts on seven felony counts, including murder, robbery, kidnapping and burglary...

Riffe abducted 81-year-old Ed and 83-year-old Minnie from their Ethel home, forced them to drive to a bank and withdraw $8,500, and shot them, Meyer said. Riffe then “discarded them like garbage” out on a logging road, Meyer added.

Click to expand...

I was watching television and saw an episode of Cold Case Files titled Killings On Christmas Eve. Here's the synopsis:

"It's Christmas time in the tiny town of Chehalis, Washington. Friends and family of Ed and Minnie Maurin are expecting to attend the elderly couple's annual holiday party but when guests arrive to the Maurin house no one is home. Multiple witnesses report seeing their well-known car driving along the highway, yet no one can locate the couple. The next day their car is found in a parking lot - empty but for copious amounts of blood. The couple's family launches a massive manhunt and their grandparents are found three days later, shot by the side of a logging road in the forest. Detectives determine the couple was kidnapped at gunpoint and forced to withdraw money from their bank account. They look for suspects who might know that the couple had more than a little cash - including their grandchildren - but their suspects can't be pinned to the crime. The case goes cold."