Former Tri-Cities policeman ordered to prison for Spokane cold case murder
A former Pasco police office will serve more than two decades in prison for beating and strangling a woman near a Spokane race track nearly 40 years ago.
Judge Jeremy Schmidt handed down the 25-year prison sentence for Richard Aguirre on Monday in the murder of 27-year-old Ruby Doss.
The sentence came more than two months after Schmidt found Aguirre guilty of first-degree murder.
Doss’ body was discovered near Playfair Race Course in January 1986.
But leads to her killer dried up and her death remained unsolved until 2015. Then investigators got a break when DNA from a condom on the scene tied it to Aguirre. At the time of the murder, he was a 19-year-old in the Air Force.
Less than two years after Ross was killed, Aguirre began a 27-year career at the Pasco Police Department.
That career ended after he was charged in Franklin County in an unrelated rape case. An initial trial in 2016 ended in a hung jury, and he was later acquitted during a second trial.
But the DNA collected in the case led investigators to connect him to Doss’ death, the Spokesman-Review reported.
Aguirre’s sister, Denise Aguirre-Sarver, sent in a statement to the Tri-City Herald following Monday’s sentencing. They believe the wrong man was convicted for the crime.
“The state forensic scientists did not find our brother’s DNA on her nor on her 50+ personal items found at the scene,” she said. “They did find ‘unknown male DNA’ around the neck of her sweater and underneath her bloodied partially ripped fingernail.”
She promised to continue to support Aguirre.
Spokane murder trials
Spokane prosecutors tried Aguirre in 2021. The seven-day trial ended in a deadlocked jury, which was unable to reach an agreement about whether Aguirre was responsible.
Instead of having another jury trial, Aguirre and his attorney decided to present their evidence to Schmidt and have him decide. After four weeks of testimony late last year, the judge handed down his verdict just after Christmas.
Doss, a sex worker, only had time to see one client in the roughly hour and forty-five minutes between when she was last seen and when people discovered her body, prosecutors argued.
Prosecutors also said that he told friends that he had hit and choked a woman around that time, but she was alive when he left, the Spokesman-Review reported.
His attorney, Karen Lindholdt, argued police did not thoroughly investigate other suspects and contaminated evidence, making the DNA unreliable.
She promised to appeal the verdict.
In his decision, Schmidt said he found the DNA evidence compelling and didn’t find issues with how it was collected or processed to create a reasonable doubt.