Justice for Evelyn: B.C. woman's killer finally sentenced for 1980 cold case murder, rape in Florida trailer park

Evelyn Fisher of Chilliwack was killed by Ronald Eugene Richards 45 years ago; now 78, Richards indicted and pleads while serving two 50-year sentences in Ohio

Two years after charges were laid in the January 1980 rape and murder of Evelyn Fisher of Chilliwack, the man who killed her in a trailer park in Miami, Florida, was sentenced.

Ronald Eugene Richards was 32 years old and out on parole for manslaughter of a former girlfriend when he killed Fisher, a Tzeachten band member, also 32, and living 12 doors down with her husband John Bamforth.

The 78-year-old Richards has spent most of his life behind bars. He is currently serving two concurrent 50-year sentences in an Ohio prison.

Advanced DNA technology in 2022 meant the main suspect in the case, who was Richards all along, was definitively tied to the killing. This was a classic whodunit case from the start, according to Miramar Police Department detectives, and was shelved back in 1980 with Richards’ DNA on file. 

Officers in this police department in a suburb of Miami would occasionally go back to the case to see if there was anything more they could find.

“Throughout the years it was looked at time and again,” Miramar Police Department (MPD) public information officer Tanya Rues told me in 2022.

Detective Jonathan Zeller was a school kid when Fisher was murdered, but decades later he would be one of those officers who came back to look at the file from time to time.

“The DNA technology wasn’t what it is today,” Rues said. “Luckily because of that, and Detective Zeller’s hard work, he doesn’t like to say it, but he has a heavy case load. He decided on his own to revisit the case.”

Part of that revisiting involved the DNA. With technology far superior in 2022 than in 1980, it definitively tied Richards to the murder. 

He was indicted by a grand jury in Miramar on Nov. 30, 2022, and charged with one count of first degree murder and one count of sexual battery for the violent incident in a mobile home park on Jan. 22, 1980.

“This is the oldest solved cold case in Miramar’s history,” public information officer Tania Rues told me at the time.

Richards was extradited from prison in London, Ohio, for the indictment. He remained in prison while awaiting trial, and on April 8, 2024, he changed his plea to guilty on both counts, according to current MPD public information officer Janice McIntosh. 

“He was sentenced the same day to 12 years in prison for both counts,” McIntosh told me this week. “He received credit for time served of 363 days. The sentences were to be served concurrently.”

Richards was then returned to the Ohio Department of Corrections to finish serving his Ohio sentence along with his new Florida sentence, which will be completed in April 2035. Even if he lasts to 88 when the sentence is over for Fisher’s murder, he still has decades to go on his Ohio sentences.

Husband was blamed

Evelyn Marie Fisher was born in Sardis on March 23, 1947, and lived most of her life in the area before her final six years in Miami, according to her obituary in The Chilliwack Progress in 1980. She graduated from Chilliwack Senior Secondary and the Riverview School of Psychiatric Nursing, and she worked as a psychiatric nurse in Florida.

Her husband John Bamforth is a controversial figure in the family, blamed by some for her death even prior to which he was blamed for allegedly being abusive to her. 

“The first time I saw her I fell for her,” Bamforth told Florida police in a video interview after Richards was indicted that I obtained.

They met in Port Moody where he was a bartender and she was working as a nurse at nearby Riverview. They began dating in 1969 and in 1970 he got a job as a beverage manager at a five-star resort in Grand Cayman. Six months later she came down and joined him and they were married.

After a year or so, Bamforth, who is originally from England, said Fisher got what they call “island happy” and needed to get away. She left for Miami. Three days later, he quit his job and followed her.

“She’s looking at me from the photo,” Bamforth says in the video. “She’s the calmest person you could ever meet.... Everybody loved her. She was just great to be around.”

He explained how they decided to settle in Florida at Haven Lake Estates, which at the time was a brand new mobile home park in the Miramar area, a suburb of Miami.

The day she was killed he hadn’t been informed. He arrived home, got out of the car and noticed a sticker on the door that said “do not enter.” He broke the seam and went in.

“I saw what I saw, which was furniture disturbed, cushions. I walked back to the bedroom. We had a California king bed and half the bed was soaked with blood.”

The police came and took him to be questioned. He was a suspect at first but he said that didn’t concern him because he knew he didn’t do it. The murder hit him hard, profoundly changed his character he said.

Detective Zeller explained that while some of Fisher’s family assumed Bamforth did it, he was fully co-operative ever since 1980.

“He told us he wanted justice,” Zeller said. “He went back with the body, to Chilliwack. From my understanding he was blamed and because of that his life went in a downward spiral. He started drinking, went back to England. His life was never the same after that.”

Fisher’s funeral was held Feb. 2, 1980, at S. Mary’s Catholic Church in Chilliwack, with Father T. McCarthy officiating. She is buried at the Tzeachten Reserve cemetery. Among the pallbearers at her funeral was Steven Point, who would go on to become a lawyer, a judge, and lieutenant-governor of British Columbia.

Her obituary in 1980 stated she was survived by her parents, Charles and Ethel Fisher, her brother Leonard and his wife Lorraine of Chilliwack, four nieces and two nephews; and numerous aunts, uncles and cousins. Leonard died in 2012.

I tried to speak to living relatives when this first came to light in 2021, but they did not want to speak to the media about Fisher and the case. I reached out again in 2022 after the grand jury indictment but they did not respond. 

As for Bamworth, he said in 2022 he’s not a vindictive person but he certainly wanted to see justice for Evelyn.

“I don't believe in this closure thing,” he said in the video. “One never has closure … but certainly justice for Evelyn is the most important thing.”

Solving a 43-year-old murder felt very good Zeller told me.

“It’s also a good feeling for everybody that was involved in this case. For the family, in particular for Evelyn’s husband.

“We accomplished a very important thing getting this indictment,” Zeller said back in 2022. “This is the first hurdle, and the next step is a trial, or no trial, because maybe he dies in prison. I don’t worry myself with that.”

-30-

Want to support independent journalism?
Consider becoming a paid subscriber or make a one-time donation so I can continue this work.

Paul J. Henderson
pauljhenderson@gmail.com
facebook.com/PaulJHendersonJournalist
instagram.com/wordsarehard_pjh
x.com/PeeJayAitch
wordsarehard-pjh.bsky.social