[ominous music]
MIKE HADALLER: I didn't get the call until 8:30 at night.
I had came home from working out in the wet, cold snow and ice,
and had dinner, and was headed off to bed when my dad
called and said, you need to come
down to Grandma and Grandpa's.
And I knew something was wrong right then.
As soon as I got out of my pickup,
I was greeted by one of the officers.
He said, we don't know for sure, but your grandma
and grandpa is missing.
And there looks like there's been some foul play.
I walked in and I see papers strung around in the house.
They kept a bunch of bank statements in shoe boxes,
and they were strung out over the living room.
Grandma's purse was left by her chair, tucked behind the couch.
She never left the house without her purse.
DAVID NEISER: The Maurins had some financial means,
and they sold Christmas trees from their Christmas tree
field.
One scenario was probably that maybe they'd been kidnapped
and were being held somewhere.
DENNIS HADALLER: I thought somebody
grabbed Ed and my mother and that they
would hold them ransom.
BRUCE KIMSEY: The very next day, in the early morning hours,
an employee at the Yard Bird shopping mall
reports a vehicle matching the Maurin's description.
Detectives responded over to the parking lot,
and they found the car.
He could see that the car was covered in blood.
The detectives could see damage from what
appeared to be shotgun pellets going into the dash.
Mr. Maurin's hat, that he's known to wear all the time,
was laying on a floorboard, and still no sign of Ed and Minnie.
MIKE HADALLER: I was out scouring the different county
roads when I got the call over the radio,
and said they had found their bodies.
DENISE HADALLER: A friend of mine
was the one that found them.
He saw Grandma laying alongside the road,
then Grandpa was in a brush close to her.
MAN (VOICEOVER): Minnie had been shot in the left shoulder
in the neck, and then Ed had been shot
almost square on in the back.
DAVID NEISER: We go to the scene.
We realize that there are drag marks saying they were drug
from their car and dumped like garbage
along the side of the road.
When the Maurins were killed, the public
asked us about it constantly.
The question would be who.
Who would do this to two 85-year-old, defenseless
old people?
We really wanted to succeed, but we had no murder weapon.
We had no fingerprints of suspects at the crime scene.
We had no DNA evidence because there
was none in that day and age.
BRUCE KIMSEY: There's dozens and dozens
of fingerprints in the house, in the vehicle and the exterior
of the vehicle.
The majority of those prints came back to Ed and Minnie
and some other family members.
One of the biggest items that was collected as evidence
is that they found a bank receipt in Ed's pocket.
JONATHAN MEYER: When he got there the money still wasn't
ready, and so rather than wait in the bank,
Ed went back out to the car.
And when the teller went out to get him, Ed got out of the car
before she got too close.
She thought that she saw someone else in the car,
but couldn't be sure.
DAVID NEISER: When Ed Maurin withdrew $8,500 from the bank,
the question became who knew that they
had that money to withdraw.
What if it was a family member of the Maurins?
There were cigarette butts in the car.
Ed and Minnie did not smoke, and Mike Hadaller did smoke.
JONATHAN MEYER: Some family members
were looked at a little bit harder
than others simply because of their history, and one of those
was Mike.
Mike had had a history with law enforcement.
MIKE HADALLER: It made me mad, pissed me off,
and I pretty much told them to kiss my ass.
DAVID NEISER: One of the bigger tips
we had was from two ladies who were cutting through the Yard
Bird's parking lot.
This was their first description of a suspect leaving
the vicinity of the car.
DAVID NEISER (VOICEOVER): We took pictures of anybody
who met the physical description of the sketch
that we had drawn.
DENISE HADALLER: I know that workers
that had worked on that Christmas tree farm
were suspects, also.
The police took pictures of them too,
and then they made a lineup of, I don't know, 8,
10 pictures, or however many they had.
BRUCE KIMSEY: The detectives gave that photo montage
of black and white and small pictures
to all these witnesses, and nobody
could identify a suspect.
MIKE HADALLER: There was a lot of fingers pointed at me,
but what are you going to do?
It was really hard to clear your name.
Makes you very angry, and turns you into a mean person instead
of a loving, caring person.
And I'd just go out and get drunk, end up in a fight.
Cops came and got me, and I told them don't you
think she should be out finding my grandparents killers.
They weren't doing justice by my eyes.
The rage in me wanted to come out because I
wanted to know who did it.
BRUCE KIMSEY: When I was hired at the Lewis
County Sheriff's Office, this case
was already cold for 20 years.
I needed to find every witness in this entire investigation
and then talk to them one more time.
JONATHAN MEYER: You know, it was amazing
that as we sat and talked with my witnesses
they knew that they had seen someone.
But it wasn't until that they saw the clearer
photographs that they were able to pick out
who it was in the back seat.
BRUCE KIMSEY: I think there's a witness out there
that knows what happened.
MIKE HADALLER: I'm driving around in my pickup
and I have this guy holler at me.
And so I turn around and look, and it's an old buddy
from high school, Jake Shriver.
JAKE SHRIVER: I saw Mike periodically, you know.
And I would ask him, hey, what's going on
with your grandparents' case, you know?
After the murders, I always have to pass the Maurin's house.
My heart would just sink and I would
just put my head down in shame.
I said to Mike, I'm sorry.
Please forgive me.
MIKE HADALLER: He said, I can't do this anymore.
I said, you can't do what?
He goes, I got to tell you something.
And he said, you don't understand the hell
that I've lived with this [bleep]
on my mind for the last 20-some years.
JAKE SHRIVER: I just had to tell the truth.
I feel responsible for causing them so much pain for so long.
I still feel horrible.
Back then, I mean, I was scared, and I was a 17-year-old kid.
I never told anyone, but I know what happened.
My mother was driving Highway 12 west.
A car pulled out in front of us.
It was an older car, and they were going slowly.
So I said to my mother, I said, pass them.
So we passed them, and it was the Maurins.
It was foggy out, but I could see who was in the back seat.
Mr. Maurin was driving, and in the passenger
front seat was Mrs. Maurin.
In the back seat, there was two people.
But I knew them when I was young because they
worked for the Maurins on their Christmas tree farm.
It was Rick Riffe and Greg Riffe.
And I told him, a few days later Greg Riffe walks over.
He said, did you tell anybody?
I said, no.
I said, I did not say anything to anybody.
I said, I swear to God-- and I had not said anything.
And he said, well, if you say anything,
the same thing that happened to them will happen to you.
We'll kill your mother.
We'll kill your brothers.
We'll kill your father, and then we'll kill you.
The Riffe brothers started driving by our house
almost daily.
They killed these sweet, innocent elderly people,
and they're not going to stop after that.
They're going to kill my whole damn family.
[somber music]
[bleep]
BRUCE KIMSEY: This is my theory of what happened.
Rick Riffe and his brother, Greg,
they were known drug addicts and criminals in the area.
The Riffes knew who Ed and Minnie were because of Dennis
Hadaller and Hadaller Logging, and so they
knew there would be money.
That night the Riffe brothers knocked on the door.
When they get into the house they
discovered bank statements, but there's no money.
In the morning they're kidnapped out of their house.
They're taken to the bank.
They get the money.
And they take them up this logging road.
They were killed inside their own vehicle.
Then they turn around and come back
to the Yard Bird's parking lot.
Short time later, they leave and they move up to Alaska.
MIKE HADALLER: In my eyes, there's only one place
them two brothers deserve to be, and they
both need to be in the ground.
BRUCE KIMSEY: We have the warrants.
We're good to go, so we start booking
the flights to go up to Alaska.
And this is when I discovered that John
Gregory Riffe had died.
You know, we spend all these years working up to this,
and the day we get the warrant, he's dead.
But I knew that Rick Riffe was still alive, so we
knew we had to get on this now.
We're walking down the gravel driveway of Rick Riffe.
The Alaska State investigator knocks two or three times,
and the door creaks open.
He stands up, and he looks a lot different from what I expected.
He has tubes going into his nose.
He's on an oxygen machine.
We tell him we have a warrant for two counts
of murder, robbery, kidnapping.
And he is so matter of fact, at this point,
the state investigator advises him he's under arrest.
[ominous music]