Robert Richards; O.C. Pathologist, 77, Helped Convict Serial Killers

Forensic pathologist Robert G. Richards, the “Dr. Quincy of Orange County” whose expert testimony helped convict Southern California serial killers Randy Kraft and William Bonin, has died and will be memorialized today, a colleague said.

Richards, who was 77, had recently been diagnosed with a rapidly progressing form of leukemia but died Friday of complications of pneumonia, said his daughter, Nancy Yatar. A memorial will be held at 1 p.m. at Fairhaven Memorial Park and Mortuary’s Waverley Church in Santa Ana.

Those he worked with in law enforcement and forensics said Richards was a legendary pathologist whose tenacity, attention to detail and ability to convey it to juries was a rare combination in his field.

“I had an overwhelming amount of respect for Bob Richards,” said Bryan Brown, a veteran prosecutor and the Orange County deputy district attorney who won convictions of Kraft and Bonin, two of Southern California’s most notorious serial killers. Kraft, convicted of killing 16 people, was known as the “Scorecard Killer.” The California Supreme Court upheld his death sentence in August. Bonin, convicted of 14 murders, was known as the “Freeway Killer” and was executed in 1996.

“Richards,” Brown said, “was one of the very few forensic pathologists, quite frankly, in the world who had both the ability to determine the cause and circumstances of death in the most difficult cases but also had the ability to relate those complicated medical procedures to the jury. Typically, you don’t have people with those two skills.”

“People will understand if you say this was the ‘Dr. Quincy of Orange County,’ ” added Dr. Richard Fukumoto, since 1965 a fellow forensic pathologist for the county, referring to the popular television series that starred Jack Klugman.

Forensic pathology is a specialty with very few experts; there are about 500 in the U.S., whose job usually entails testifying in court--frequently undergoing withering cross-examinations.

“Richards’ work in the [cases of the] Bonin and Kraft killings was indispensable to the successful prosecutions, and ‘indispensable’ is probably not a strong enough word,” said Brown, who has tried more than 100 murder cases and now is senior assistant district attorney of Orange County.

Richards was born Dec. 14, 1923, in Price, Utah, and in the 1930s his family moved to San Bernardino. He earned his medical degree there at Loma Linda University in 1948. During the Korean War, he served as a captain in the Army Medical Corps, stationed at a hospital in Japan. After his discharge, he returned to school and became a certified pathologist in 1956. He founded Anato-Chem Medical Laboratory in 1957 and started working on contract for the Orange County coroner’s office that year, Yatar said.

“At one point he got $35 for an autopsy, and that included court testimony,” recalled retired Chief Deputy Coroner Jim Beisner, who worked with Richards from 1960 until Richards’ retirement in 1988. “He maintained his own company because you couldn’t survive just on the county work.”

He became a certified forensic pathologist in 1970, possibly the first in the county coroner’s office, Fukumoto said.

Richards could have made much more money had he been willing to “testify for hire” in other counties, finding errors in the work of other forensic pathologists, Beisner said. But Richards’ refusal to do that gave him great credibility with prosecutors and defense attorneys, Brown and Beisner agreed.

“And in all those years,” Beisner added, “I don’t recall a single time in which he was proven off base.”

Richards, who was a resident of Orange, was predeceased by his wife, Jewell, and is survived by five children, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.