19, 1985, family and friends arrived at the Maurin’s home for a Christmas party, but the elderly couple were not home. The Riffe brothers then allegedly shot the couple in their car with a shotgun and dumped their bodies. They then allegedly forced the couple to go to a Chehalis bank and withdraw thousands of dollars. The Riffe brothers allegedly held the elderly couple hostage in their home before abducting them about a week before Christmas in 1985. Hadaller also hired private investigators more than a decade ago to investigate the murders. “At my mother’s funeral, I put my hand on her casket and I said, ‘I won’t ever give up as long as I live,’” Hadaller said. John died a week before the sheriff’s office bought tickets to travel to Alaska to make the arrests, according to a release from the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office.ĭuring the early 2000s, Hadaller, a former Lewis County Commissioner, announced he was offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest. Rick Riffe and his brother John have been the persons of interest in the double-homicide for decades, however detectives lacked the evidence needed to make the arrest. “I thought about it at least three or four times a day.” “It has been 26 years and seven months,” said Dennis Hadaller, Minnie’s son.
The couple had been abducted from their home several days earlier. The bodies of Minnie, 83, and Ed, 81, were discovered Christmas Eve 1985 in a wooded area on Stearns Hill Road, west of Adna. Investigators from the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office arrested Rick Riffe, 53, King Salmon, Alaska, on Sunday for the 1985 murder of the elderly couple Wilhelmina “Minnie” and Edward “Ed” Maurin. By Stephanie arrest has been made in one of the most notorious unsolved murders in Lewis County history.