Fatal 1998 hit-and-run haunts East Bay man's family, friends: Bay Area Unsolved
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It's a scene Bill Crislip has relived repeatedly for more than 25 years: a hit-and-run that killed his friend as he watched in stunned disbelief.
"I heard the engine rev up, and I looked, and Rick had jumped up on top of the hood, on the roof, and he came off the back of that trunk," Crislip remembered tearfully. "I heard his head hit the pavement. I couldn't even think."
Before that moment, Bill said it had been like any other moment at the Berkeley Warehouse, Dec. 17, 1998. He worked at Rick DeVecchi's family trucking business. He was outside when he saw a stranger looking into Rick's pickup truck.
When Rick went to investigate, that stranger got back into his own car and did the unthinkable: sped up, aimed his car at Rick, and ran him over.
Inside the office, Rick's younger brother, Rob DeVecchi, was also at work.
"I heard the car speeding up. I heard the four-barrel carburetor open up. And the next thing I heard was Bill screaming, 'It's Rick. Call 911. It's Rick.' I just bolted down the stairs, ran out into the street," Rob said, the horror still real to him.
He found his brother lying in the street.
"I basically held my brother's hands. I was talking to him. And one of the things that I could never get out of my mind is, his eyes were rolled back, but the palpitations in his chest were not right. They were just ungodly. And I knew we were in big trouble."
Once help arrived, he called to deliver the awful news to Rick's family.
"My mom woke me up to the news," Rick's stepdaughter Christa Castañeda told Juliette Goodrich. "She was very stressed, and she said that she received a phone call from Robbie, his brother, and that we needed to go to Highland Hospital, because dad was in an accident."
For three days, Christa and her mother, along with all of Rick's loved ones, kept a vigil at the hospital.
"I was just praying and hoping that he would come out of it, and it never happened," Christa said sadly.
The family buried Rick on Christmas Eve.
Rick's youngest brother, Randy DeVecchi, has worked hard ever since to win justice for his brother.
"Why didn't the guy just drive down the street and go? Why did he have to swerve and hit the accelerator and kill my brother? It just, it made no sense. There wasn't any rhyme or reason why it happened," he said.
Randy tracked down the only scant surveillance video of the killer's car: a light-colored Cadillac with a partially dark roof and a missing front left hubcap. They got a partial license plate: the letters C - U - S.
Randy also helped raise money to push the reward for information up to $50,000 and got Rick's story on the television show America's Most Wanted.
And when Crislip told him he'd been having flashes of memory two years later, Randy contacted the FBI looking for a forensic sketch artist. They recommended an artist at the San Jose Police Department, and it was there that Randy found Gil Zamora.
Together, Zamora and Crislip were able to produce a new suspect sketch that Bill felt was much more accurate than the first from 1998. (To see Juliette's extended interview with Gil Zamora, see our YouTube page.)
But after all Randy's efforts, it's still been 27 years and counting at the Berkeley Warehouse.
"Every day we come here in the morning and see the scene of the crime and open up and work all day," he explained. "And then, you know, it's never gone. It's right there in front of us."
Rick's family hopes someone reading this now will come forward with information. So does Crislip.
"I hope somebody somewhere saw something, remembered something, and will say something, so we can put this to bed," Crislip said.
Berkeley police would welcome any information, no matter how small the detail may seem. The department can reach them at 510-981-5900.