Brazen daylight killings of veterinarian and wife still haunt a Bay Area suburb

On Jan. 24, 1986, Harve Ringheim and his new wife Keiko were killed in their home on Brighton Drive in Dublin, California. Neighbors noticed a man standing on the lawn earlier that day, but no one acted on it. In the late afternoon, 9-year-old Beth Ringheim arrived for her usual weekend stay and found her stepmother slumped in the living room with her head in a bucket of water and her hands duct-taped behind her back. Beth also found her father bound and bloody, then called for help. Police arrived but could not save them. Forty years later, the killings remain a mystery, with Alameda County Sheriff’s Office detective Pat Smyth now handling the case despite being across the street at Dublin High at the time.

"At first, Beth couldn't understand what she was seeing. Her stepmother was slumped over in the living room, her head in a bucket of water and hands duct-taped behind her back. Her father was bound and bloody. Beth raced out of the house and called a neighbor for help. When Dublin police arrived, there was nothing they could do. The Ringheims were dead."

"Forty years later, the killings of Harve and Keiko Ringheim remain a mystery that has bedeviled generations of Alameda County detectives. The case now rests in the hands of Alameda County Sheriff's Office detective Pat Smyth who, in a twist of fate, was nearly a witness to the shocking daytime crime. While Harve and Keiko were being targeted, Smyth was across the street, attending class at Dublin High."

""I remember this vividly when it happened," he said over the phone last week. "Dublin was much different than it is now. It was much smaller. There are roughly 4,000 kids in high school. At the time, we had 800. It was a very small town. Everybody kind of knew everyone.""

"Some time that morning, neighbors saw a man standing on the lawn of 7168 Brighton, the home of veterinarian Harve Ringheim and his new wife Keiko. But no one thought anything of it until later. In the late afternoon, 9-year-old Beth Ringheim, Harve's daughter from his first marriage, arrived at the home for her usual weekend stay with her dad."

Read at SFGATE