SACRAMENTO — His 18 years working as an undercover police informant hinged on his ability to lie. But Ray Gonzales swore he told “nothing but the truth” Tuesday about an alleged confession he elicited 25 years ago in the UC Davis “sweethearts” murder case.
He’s emerged as a key defense witness in the trial of Richard Joseph Hirschfield, whose lawyers claim it was four other suspects who kidnapped and killed UCD students John Riggins and Sabrina Gonsalves from Davis on the night of Dec. 20, 1980.
Gonzales told defense attorney Linda Parisi he was helping authorities build criminal cases around narcotics, stolen property and burglary suspects when around 1987 he saw something in a Sacramento newspaper that caught his attention.
It was a sketch of a possible suspect in the slayings of Riggins and Gonsalves, whose bodies were found two days after their abductions in a ravine near Folsom Boulevard and Aerojet Road.
“The sketch matched David Hunt,” Gonzales said, referring to a childhood friend who had gone on to a life of crime. So Gonzales called one of his police contacts and said he might have information about the dormant homicide case.
Gonzales recalled being introduced to Davis police Lt. Fred Turner and Sacramento police Lt. Ray Biondi, who came up with a plan: send Gonzales to establish a relationship with Hunt cohort Richard Thompson “to get information out of him in regards to … the Davis killings.”
Thompson and Hunt shared an extensive criminal history, including Thompson’s November 1980 breakout from San Quentin State Prison with Hunt’s help before the pair embarked on a multi-state robbery spree.
Gonzales’ first of four meetings with Thompson took place on July 14, 1987, at the Cecil Hotel, the downtown Los Angeles establishment that Thompson called home. Gonzales secured the room next door, and the ruse was on.
“I told him that David Hunt was interested in getting in touch with him,” said Gonzales, who wore a recording device to capture the conversation on tape. They continued their meetup at a nearby bar, where, according to Gonzales, Thompson launched into a confession about the 1980 crime.
“He talked about abducting the kids, and that he killed Sabrina Gonsalves and that (Hunt) killed John Riggins,” Gonzales said. “Apparently, John Riggins put up some kind of a struggle, but David settled him down real quick.”
Thompson said Hunt’s wife, Suellen, tagged along during the incident, but didn’t see the victims’ bodies because “she was too skittish,” Gonzales said. As part of his ruse, Gonzales claimed Hunt was concerned about Suellen as a witness and questioned whether she should be “taken care of.”
“(Thompson) said if Hunt gave him permission, he’d do it,” Gonzales said.
Duct tape
Gonzales said Thompson offered more details about the Davis murders, saying the abductions occurred at what was then the Lucky shopping center on Covell Boulevard and Anderson Road. He said Thompson described Hunt as the “enforcer” during the incident, while he took the role of “diplomat.”
Thompson also allegedly made multiple references to duct tape, which had been used to cover the victims’ faces and bind their limbs, though that detail had been withheld from the public at the time. At one point, Gonzales said he had a person he needed to “deal with” and asked Thompson what he and Hunt would use to control someone.
“Excuse my language, but he said they used a whole lot of (expletive) duct tape,” Gonzales testified. When it came to talk of the Davis murders, “he never denied it.” Thompson died of emphysema in 1998.
Although both Turner and Biondi have testified that the bar’s background noise rendered the covert recording inaudible, Gonzales recalled Tuesday that it recorded the alleged admissions just fine.
But his confidence wavered under cross-examination, when Deputy District Attorney Dawn Bladet pointed out multiple inconsistencies between his recollections Tuesday and his testimony in the early 1990s, when the Hunts, Thompson and Doug Lainer were prosecuted for the Riggins-Gonsalves murders in Yolo Superior Court.
“I don’t remember” and “I don’t recall” became common responses, along with “It’s been a long time.”
The Hunt group’s charges were dismissed in 1993 after they were excluded by newly discovered DNA evidence that nine years later identified Hirschfield, 63, as a suspect.
Gonzales admitted he had a couple of motivations to snitch on Hunt, including a $30,000 reward in the “sweethearts” case and Hunt’s troubled past marriage to Gonzales’ sister, a potential conflict that went unmentioned to detectives at first.
“It had something to do with it, yes,” said Gonzales, who also acknowledged ratting out Hunt in the past. “Dave’s a bad guy.”
He said he didn’t remember testifying at a pretrial hearing for the Hunt group that his first meeting with Thompson included no mention of the murders, and that he had consumed as many as 16 beers during that initial conversation.
“I was high, you know, just like Mr. Thompson,” Gonzales said in 1990, according to a transcript of the Yolo hearing Bladet produced in court.
“That’s nonsense, because I never said that,” he said Tuesday. “I don’t recall a lot of the things you’re bringing up.”
Turner testified earlier this week that he instructed Gonzales to record a statement about the alleged confession after the barroom recording failed. But Gonzales couldn’t explain why it didn’t contain the crucial duct-tape comments, or why he didn’t mention them to homicide detectives in a debriefing a few days later.
Recordings of subsequent meetings with Thompson were audible, but none referred to either Riggins or Gonsalves by name, a fact that Gonzales dismissed while on the stand. He also refuted portions of transcripts in which Thompson appeared to be confused by references to the Davis murders or denied them outright.
“What I’m telling you is the truth — it came out of Thompson’s mouth,” said Gonzales, who made several offers to take a polygraph test. “Why would I lie?”
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter @laurenkeene