More witnesses to testify about Pinyon Pines triple murder
Testimony continued Thursday in a hearing to determine whether there’s sufficient evidence to warrant a trial for two men accused of killing a woman, her boyfriend and her daughter in Pinyon Pines.
KESQ and CBS Local 2’s Zak Dahlheimer was at the courthouse in Riverside throughout the day Thursday.
Robert Lars Pape and Cristin Conrad Smith, both 28, are accused of the Sept. 17, 2006, deaths of 53-year-old Vicki Friedli, her boyfriend, 55-year-old Jon Hayward, and her 18-year-old daughter, Becky Friedli.
A confidential informant was the most recent to take the stand. He said he used to work with Smith at Knott’s Soak City water park in Palm Springs. During testimony, he said he remembered in late September 2007 seeing Smith as a lifeguard looking southeast towards a mountain range in a daze — not paying attention to the wave pool he was working at. At one point, the witness claims Smith said to him, “Something was wrong and we torched the [expletive] place”.
When the informant asked what happened, he said Smith shook his head and didn’t answer back, and after that conversation, Smith continued to act tense, according to testimony. He says on another occasion shortly thereafter, they both were sharing conversations about each other’s time in the military — and he recalled Smith telling him, “You can kill and not serve.”
The witness said he was not aware of the Pinyon Pines triple murders when these conversations took place because he was out of the country at the time. The preliminary hearing continues Monday at 1:30 p.m. in Riverside.
KESQ and CBS Local 2 will deliver updates as they happen.
Preliminary hearing began Monday
The defendants’ preliminary hearing began Monday at the Riverside Hall of Justice and at least four more witnesses are expected to testify. The Riverside County District Attorney’s Office on Monday called the
victims’ neighbor, Timothy Sumerlee, who recalled seeing their house engulfed in flames that September night and immediately running over to see whether he could do anything to help.
“I saw a head and torso,” Sumerlee testified. “I told the (firefighters) that I had seen something that looked like a body in that wheelbarrow.”
Sumerlee called the fire inside the victims’ house at 68550 Alpine Drive, just south of Palm Springs, “robust” by the time fire crews arrived. Sheriff’s Detective Ben Ramirez testified that Becky Friedli’s remains were in the wheelbarrow, about 70 feet north of the house. An autopsy listed her cause of death as “homicidal violence,” but nothing more specific.
Ramirez said Vicki Friedli’s charred body was located in the laundry room. She had been shot once in the head. Hayward was found in the kitchen, with a shotgun blast to the chest, according to the prosecution.
“There were two gas cans in the garage,” Ramirez said. “We found match sticks and lighter fluid on the north side of the house.”
Pape, of Cathedral City, and Smith, of Olympia, Washington, are each charged with three counts of first-degree murder, with a special circumstance allegation of multiple murders. The pair were previously charged with the killings, but after problems arose during grand jury proceedings in 2014, the District Attorney’s Office temporarily shelved the case. The defendants were re-arrested last June.
New evidence emerged following an exhaustive 16-month investigation, which included a cell tower analysis that placed Pape and Smith in Pinyon Pines at the time of the killings, according to an arrest warrant declaration by sheriff’s Investigator Lester Harvey.
The affidavit cited phone calls between Pape and his girlfriend, Sara Honiker, regarding an unregistered gun and a statement from an anonymous informant indicating Smith’s alleged admission to igniting a fire at the
victims’ home.
Pape and Smith told investigators they were in Cathedral City when the trio were killed, but analysis of cell phone records showed that the pair were on Monterrey Avenue, heading toward Pinyon Pines, according to the affidavit.
Investigators played back recorded jail phone calls, eventually finding two allegedly incriminating conversations between Pape and his girlfriend. According to Harvey, Pape discussed two guns registered under Honiker’s name, as well as a handgun that would “never be registered.” Investigators determined that a Glock model 22 .40-caliber pistol was among weapons potentially used in the killings.
In 2011, an anonymous source contacted investigators and alleged that in 2007, he or she overheard Smith discussing the fire and was admonished by Pape to shut up. Harvey said detectives identified and located the informant in May 2016, and that the person told investigators that Smith, a former U.S. Army ranger, once said that “You don’t need to be in the military to kill someone.”
Firefighters were called to the Pinyon Pines property shortly before 10 p.m. after receiving reports of a structure fire, at which point they discovered the victims. Photographs introduced during the preliminary hearing showed Becky Friedli’s legs dangling out of the wheelbarrow, while the upper half of her body was burned beyond recognition.
Pape had been in a relationship with the young woman at one time. The defendant, who’s being held without bail at the Robert Presley Jail in Riverside, could face the death penalty if convicted. Smith, who’s being
held without bail at the Southwest Detention Center in Murrieta, was a juvenile at the time and would face life in prison without the possibility of parole if found guilty.
