Robert Richards; Pathologist’s Testimony Helped Convict Serial Killers

Forensic pathologist Robert G. Richards, whose expert testimony helped convict Southern California serial killers Randy Kraft and William Bonin, has died. Richards, who was 77, had recently been diagnosed with leukemia, but died Friday of complications of pneumonia, said his daughter, Nancy Yatar.

“Richards’ work in the Bonin and Kraft killings was indispensable to the successful prosecutions, and indispensable is probably not a strong enough word,� said Bob Brown, the Orange County deputy district attorney who won convictions of Kraft and Bonin, two of Southern California’s most notorious serial killers.

They were both convicted of murdering 14 boys or young men.

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. 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, said Yatar.

“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.

A memorial for Richards will be held at 1 p.m. today at Fairhaven Memorial Park and Mortuary’s Waverley Church in Santa Ana.

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