40 years ago, a daytime double killing rocked a sleepy Bay Area town

Friday, Jan. 24, 1986, dawned crisp and sunny on Brighton Drive. Across the street, hundreds of students trudged into Dublin High School, ready for the coming weekend. 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.

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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. Her mother waited for Beth to head up the drive and into the house before driving off. The front door was unlocked, as it normally was, in anticipation of Beth’s visit. 

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.”

Harve Ringheim was no stranger to the community. At 41 years old, he was a successful veterinarian at a clinic in Pleasant Hill, and he’d dabbled as a real estate developer, helping create a $1.3 million shopping center at Taylor Boulevard and Pleasant Hill Road. He was also on the board of directors for a summer homestay program for Japanese exchange students. In 1978, a young college-aged woman named Keiko was sponsored by the Ringheims to stay with them. After the Ringheims’ marriage ended in divorce, Keiko, then in her late 20s, began dating Harve. In March 1985, the couple married.

On Jan. 23, 1986, Keiko and Harve returned home from a ski trip. As far as anyone knows, they spent an ordinary evening at home. The next morning, around 10 a.m., Harve went to a nearby car wash. That was the last time anyone saw either Ringheim alive.

Sometime between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m., a person, or multiple people, entered the home. Keiko was bound with duct tape and strangled. Harve was found with his hands tied behind his back, dead from multiple stab wounds. “We believe it almost looks like she was done away with first and he came in on them,” the Dublin police chief said at the time. 

There was no sign of sexual assault, robbery or forced entry — although the door was routinely left unlocked on Fridays for Beth. Theories as to why the Ringheims were targeted circulated widely in the sleepy suburb, ranging from drug dealers looking for tranquilizers used by veterinarians, to someone targeting Keiko specifically. Over the years, investigators have suggested it looked like a murder for hire. But 40 years later, Smyth said there’s still “no overriding, obvious motive.”

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“That’s the big question,” he said. “Why? I wish I knew the answer to that.”

In 2011, DNA tests of evidence from the scene developed two male profiles. They haven’t matched any known offenders in law enforcement databases though, Smyth said, and additional lab work over the years hasn’t pointed to any clear-cut answers. Forensic genealogy is a possibility — Smyth has used it on other cold cases — but for now, detectives have tried every avenue currently available to them, he said. 

Still, Smyth believes there’s a chance the Ringheim case could be closed someday. 

“I’m always hopeful there is. We wouldn’t be doing the work on this case if we didn’t think this was a possibility,” he said. “You gotta look at it that way. There’s pieces of evidence, trace evidence, that 10 years you thought you could do nothing with. And now you can.”

At the 40-year mark, Smyth is hoping fresh media attention could jog people’s memories. Any detail, no matter how small, may be critical. Sometimes, especially after decades, people will call detectives with the name of a suspect, surprised they weren’t already arrested for a crime. 

“No father and no closure is a feeling I can’t describe,” Beth Ringheim said in 2014. “Somebody out there knows everything.”

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office via the tip line at 510-667-3622.