The Sweetheart Murders

A Birthday Gift May Yield Clues About A Brutal Double Murder

(CBS)  Parisi claims there’s another possibility: that Hirschfield might have been wandering in the area and found the van.

"He had a misfortune of stumbling upon this van on the night that Sabrina Gonsalves and John Riggins were murdered, and somehow just left his bodily fluids on the blanket?" Roberts asks.

"That is not beyond the realm of possibility,” she replies.

But retired detective Ray Biondi doesn’t buy it, saying "I find that to be totally preposterous."

There’s someone else who doesn’t buy Hirschfield’s innocence – his ex-wife Lynn, who was briefly married to him 10 years ago. She is speaking out for the first time and has a stunning accusation: that Hirschfield molested her son.

To protect her son’s privacy, Lynn has asked 48 Hours to not reveal her or her son’s identity. She says when he was a child, she could not understand why her son suddenly became withdrawn.

"When he was seven years old, he was the happiest child you could imagine. And his eyes sparkled and he laughed all the time. And then one day that was gone," she tells Roberts.

Then, to Lynn’s shock, Hirschfield was arrested for molesting two little girls in their neighborhood.

"And I just started piecing all these little things together. And one day I just asked him, 'Were you molested by Richard?' And he said 'Yes,'" she recalls.

Lynn never pressed charges to spare her son the ordeal of a trial. Hirschfield denies he ever abused his stepson. His conviction for the molestation of the two little girls has since been overturned on technical grounds.

This time, Hirschfield faces the death penalty, a punishment Sabrina’s father George, says he deserves. “Even in fact the death penalty for him would be a break compared to what he gave the kids, when he took those kids’ lives they didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to their parents. And they were suffering,” George says.

But with some 100,000 pages of discovery, this case may not go to trial for another year or two.

"Well I think the frustrating part about all of this is whether we’ll be alive. I’m 71 years old. And that is a concern," says John Riggins’ mother.

Proceedings were further delayed when Hirschfield was beaten by other inmates and suffered a broken hip. The title of Joel Davis’ book, “Justice Waits,” seems more apt than ever.

While Andrea waits for justice for her beloved sister, she has filled the void in her life by adopting three more children, always with Sabrina in mind.

"I wanted to do this. And I wanted this to be in her memory," Andrea tells Roberts. "I was gonna have the kids she didn’t get to have."

And as she thinks of that tragic, foggy night, she derives comfort from another one of Sabrina's birthday gifts: a book on horses, also found in the van.

The inscription reads: "Dearest Andrea. This is just a small token of our appreciation for all the late night help and all the moral support and guidance you gave us in our first quarter of college life."

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Richard Hirshfield's trial is scheduled for Sept. 2007, but it is likely to be postponed.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Joel Davis continues to write about the case.