Troy Roberts
speaker
357 appearances
6 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 11 Dec
Troy Roberts’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Dec 2025 with 1.
Appearances
The lack of an arrest made it even harder. But by 2002, DNA science had advanced even more. The State Crime Lab was now routinely comparing DNA from cold cases to that of convicted criminals stored in a new database. When they uploaded the DNA from those semen stains on the blanket, incredibly, there was a hit.
The suspect's name was Richard Hirshfield. Local investigators had never heard of him, but they soon learned he had a very dark past. Who is Richard Hirshfield?
Prosecutor Dawn Bladet.
At the time of the DNA hit, then 53-year-old Hirshfield was in prison for molesting two little girls. Many years earlier, in 1975, he had been convicted of rape in Northern California.
In 2006, 48 Hours spoke to his California victims, two sisters, Marge and Michelle, who didn't want their last names used.
They were 22 and 16 at the time he entered their apartment, demanding money. when they told him they had none.
What are you thinking about right now?
Hirschfeld served only five years in prison for that crime. He was paroled in July 1980.
Five months later, John and Sabrina were murdered.
But this time, Hirshfield wasn't going anywhere. He remained behind bars in Washington in the child molestation case, while California investigators cemented theirs.
The answer to both questions was yes. Hirshfield once had friends in Davis who lived across the street from the condo Andrea and Sabrina shared. And that's where authorities believe Sabrina and John were abducted. So this was five days before Christmas? Yes. Most of the students had gone home?
And because this place was deserted, no one could hear their cries if they were abducted in the complex.
Investigators also learned that Richard Hirshfield had her brother, Joseph, who was living in this house near Sacramento at the time of the murders. It's just a few miles from where the bodies were dumped.
The next day, Joseph Hirschfeld got into his car and committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. The note he left behind was a bombshell.
Joseph's DNA was never found in the Riggins van, and no one knows exactly what role he played in the murders. But even with strong evidence, Richard's DNA and Joseph's suicide note, the case was moving at a snail's pace. It took 10 years to bring this case to trial.
Why?
The case had over 200,000 pages of discovery. Hirschfeld's defense team would file more than 200 motions and be granted many delays.
Is the system broken?
And time took its toll. Sabrina and Andrea's father, George, received a devastating diagnosis. He had Alzheimer's.
Finally, in September 2012, 10 years after the DNA hit and almost 32 years after the notorious murders, the trial of Richard Hirschfeld was set to begin.
Showing 281–300 of 357 · page 15 of 18
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