Trial starts for man accused of killing girlfriend, dumping body in Columbia River

A 34-year-old pregnant woman’s body surfaced in the Columbia River nearly three years ago.

Brandy Ebanez had been badly beaten and strangled before being wrapped in plastic, weighted down with bricks and thrown into the water.

Now, a jury will decide if her boyfriend, Richard Jacobson, 37, was responsible for killing her. They heard opening statements on Monday in his trial for first-degree premeditated murder.

Prosecutors claimed Jacobson became so enraged that he attacked Ebanez, who was five months pregnant, while their daughters were in the apartment in September 2022.

“The person who ... stripped her naked, put a WinCo grocery bag on her head, wrapped her in a plastic bag, duct taped it, weighted her legs with bricks and threw her into that water like garbage, was the defendant,” Chief Deputy Prosecutor Julie Long said.

While Long painted Jacobson as a man possessed by jealousy and anger, Defense Attorney Katherine Bohnet said her client was a caring father whose girlfriend had run away..

She argued police immediately assumed Jacobson was the killer without looking for any other suspects.

“Of course it was the boyfriend, we got our guy,” she said. “But that holds true, only if the police hold up their end of the bargain. Only if the police exhaust other possible scenarios.”

She pointed out other inconsistencies, such as the fact that no one saw Jacobson move Ebanez’s body out of the apartment. She also noted the primary witnesses to the murder, Ebanez’s daughters, had been told about what happened before they were interviewed about the murder.

Kennewick Murder

Ebanez and Jacobson had a troubled relationship marked with domestic violence. Friends have previously said that he was abusive and tried to isolate her.

Earlier in April, Ebanez called police after he grabbed her by the hair, pulled her off the bed and strangled her until she passed out, according to court documents.

Long told the jury a court order was supposed to keep them separated, but Ebanez loved the man and let him continue to live with her in the Desertbrook Apartments in Kennewick.

The couple started arguing again on Sept. 15, 2022, when his anger and paranoia took over, Long said. Over the course of hours, the couple argued in their bedroom while their two daughters, ages 9 and 12, listened. He wouldn’t let Ebanez out of the bedroom.

When the girls tried to go into the bedroom, they were told by Jacobson that they were arguing.

At one point in the night, he came out and questioned the girls about who his mother was seeing and where she kept her drugs. His daughters told him there weren’t any other men and she didn’t use drugs.

When they were leaving for school the next morning, one of the girls said goodbye to her mother. She didn’t respond.

When the girls got home later that day, Jacobson began to spiral. Long said that he had hidden Ebanez’s body underneath the bed, and didn’t want the girls to go back to school or contact family members.

She said he was afraid they’d let something slip that would make people suspicious.

He told his daughters that their mother had left with another man to do drugs and wasn’t coming back.

Jacobson then began to scour the apartment, something that was out of character for him, Long said.

“He’s wiping down walls. He’s cleaning the bathroom. He’s dragging out garbage bags from the bedroom,” Long told the jury. “He doesn’t allow them to go into the bedroom.”

One of the girls did look into the bedroom and found the furniture rearranged. She said it smelled “like something had died in there,” Long said.

Washington State Patrol crime lab technicians found evidence that a body had been under the bed.

Video and receipts show Jacobson bought trash bags, duct tape, bungee cords and gloves. He returned later and bought a dolly and bricks.

Long said he wrapped the body in plastic bags and used the dolly to take Ebanez’s body to his car. Cellphone data showed that he drove to Pasco. It’s believed he put the body in the river at that time.

He left for Oregon with the girls on Sept. 23. Four days later, a Kennewick police officer found Ebanez’s body on the Kennewick side of the Columbia River near the cable bridge.

Police were able to identify her, and found she had bruises from her head to her toes, and had been strangled hard enough to break a bone in her neck.

“He intended and he wanted to kill her,” Long said. “He beat her and beat her and beat her and wrapped his hands around her neck and squeezed the life out of her. “

Investigation Problems

Bohnet told the jurors that police found a suspect and just looked for evidence to confirm what they believed.

Along with only looking at Jacobson, the information from the two girls was tainted by a family member who told the girls about the murder before they could talk to police, Bohnet said. This changed how the girls saw the events of the past couple of weeks.

She also pointed out other inconsistencies in the evidence. She pointed out that prosecutors say that the body was dropped on the Pasco side of the river, but they don’t have an explanation for how it ended up in Kennewick.

“Richard is a father who did his best to provide for his growing family,” she said. “Was he perfect? No. And he’d be the first person to tell you that, but killing the mother of his children was not one of his mistakes.”

She argued that Jacobson and Ebanez got into a fight in September about her being with other men and doing drugs, and she stormed off and left.

“She’s done this before,” Bohnet said. “This argument, though, got so heated that it made Richard cry and believe that this time she wasn’t coming back.”

Jacobson was distraught and decided to leave the Tri-Cities with with his daughters and go to Portland. They had been planning on taking the trip previously.

He took the girls out of class out of fear that Ebanez would take them, Bohnet said.

They were able to spend a couple days together having fun before Jacobson was arrested.

“We believe the state will not be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Richard committed premeditated murder,” Bohnet said.

This story was originally published June 9, 2025 at 3:16 PM.