Best known as the guitarist in Jane’s Addiction and Red hot Chili Peppers and his high profile
relationship with Carmen Electra, Dave Navarro would experience Trauma at a truly young age
with his mother being murdered when he was just 15 years old. It’s a story that could
have easily ended with Navarro suffering the same fate as his mother, not once, but twice.
Born in 1967 to parents James Navarro and Constance Hopkins, his mother and father
would split in 1975 and Dave would live with his mother in bel-air after their split. His
mother would work as a model even appearing on the game show the price is right. It was
following her divorce Constance would date a bodybuilder named John Riccardi for about
2.5 years but after she broke things off with he refused to llet her go and started stalking
her. Former reporter at America’s Most Wanted and one time Howard 100 News host
Jon Lieberman would recall “He would break into her car and disconnect wires. And when
she got into the car and it wouldn’t start, he would be standing there, hovering over her,”
Meanwhile a Donna Brant, a former producer at America’s most wanted would recall
“Connie was at dinner with some friends and Riccardi just showed up at this restaurant,
sat down at the table staring at Connie for like three to five minutes….’ He
doesn’t talk, he just sits and stares at her, threateningly,”“And Riccardi finally gets up,
he makes a motion right at Connie’s head like he’s gonna shoot her. ‘I
can kill you anytime I want, because you belong to me,’”
It wasn’t just Connie who was terrorized initially by Riccardi as Dave Navarro would admit to howard
stern in 2001 a week before the murders took place he was at home when Riccardi broke into his mom’s
apartment, got violent, handcuffed him and put a gun to his head before letting him go. Navarro
wouldn’t report the incident to the police until after his mother was murdered. The guitarist would
tell Howard Stern about Riccardi. Truth be told, as i did trust the guy and i was close to him.
Tragically on March 4, 1983 the guitarist’s mother and his aunt Susan Jory were murdered
by Riccardi. A lot of press outlets claimed it was his mother’s friend that was murdered, but
navarro stated in his 2001 interview with howard stern it was his aunt that was also murdered the
same night. Riccardi would end up breaking into Dave’s mother’s apartment and shot and killed
both women. The guitrist would admit in his 2001 interview with howard stern he could’ve
been murdered that night along with his Mom and aunt, but a change in plans saved his life. The
murder happened on a thursday and he would reveal that he was supposed to be at his Mom’s apartment
that night because him and his father would spend time together every wednesday, but something came
up that week with his Dad so he rescheduled with his father to Thursday. Dave was 15 at
the time of his mother’s murder and knew right away Riccardi was responsible, but he vanished.
Dave would tell howard stern he was already playing guitar at the time having started four
years prior and put his energy into music and drugs admitting to the shock jock he
used the murder as an excuse to do drugs and alcohol because it numbed the pain.
He would elaborate more telling Dr. Phil I was 15 years old when that happened, when my mother
was killed. And just naturally, I started finding myself gravitating towards drinking,
and smoking weed, and the occasional line of coke, and some psychedelics.
In the same interview Navarro revealed the emotional toll the murder took on him “The
murder basically tore our lives apart. To be honest…you don’t know what to do,
you don’t know where to turn, you don’t know how to live, how to trust. It completely throws
your emotional stability out of bounds. To the viewers and to the people that call in, you really
do make a difference; your calls really make a difference in our lives — in the victims’ lives.”
His mother’s killer would be caught eight years later in 1991 when America’s most wanted aired
a segment on Riccardi and a tip led the police to him. He would be arrested in Houston, Texas.
The LA Times would publish a story in 1994 that read” FBI agents said that when they
caught up with Riccardi he was living in a stylish Houston condominium filled with cash,
jewels and other evidence of a lucrative burglary trade.”
Navarro would tell John Walsh in 2004 about hearing about his mother’s killer being caught
I’ll never forget the day when they got him,” Navarro told host John Walsh during his 2004
appearance on America’s Most Wanted. “It was an amazing feeling. It was such an amazing
sense of joy and anger and hurt and confusion.” Riccardi had long maintained his innocence but in
1994 a superior court convincted him of murder of both women and was originally sentanced to death,
but in 2012 that was eventually overturned to life in prison as one of . Navarro would testify at his
mother’s trial revealing in his book, Don't Try This at Home (via Feelnumb), "I had to face the
killer in court last year (1999). I had to take the stand as a witness, and to the left of me
were pictures from the crime scene on a f**king board. I had to ask for them to be covered.
In 2015 Navarro would release a film called Mourning Son about his mother’s murder and
the effect it had on him. Not only that but the film would see him finally confront his mother’s
killer at san quentin state prison. While the interaction wasn’t allowed to be filmed
he would appear on Dr. Phil’s show to talk about the experience. Navarro would be quoted as saying
​​One of the ways in which trauma survivors get past trauma is to walk through the ugliness.”
Upon meeting his mother’s killer in jail he would be quoted as saying
according to cheatsheet.com “I wanted it to make me feel scorn and anger and rage,
and it just didn’t.” There was no confrontation, no screaming, just “an
awkward exchange,” he said. “A lot of things came flooding back. And I almost was watching
myself as an outside observer, so it took a minute to get my body and mind and emotional
and spiritual stability all back in sync.” “He’s just some old dude dying in jail.”