MIRAMAR, Fla. – A man was convicted and sentenced Monday in the 1980 murder of a Miramar woman.
In December 2022, Miramar police announced that a grand jury had indicted Ronald E. Richards for sexual assault and murder in the Jan. 22, 1980 killing of 32-year-old Evelyn Marie Fisher-Bamforth.
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Richards, now 76, bashed Fisher-Bamforth’s head and raped her inside her mobile home, officials said.
According to a Broward County judicial assistant, Richards entered a no contest plea for the murder and sexual battery charges in exchange for the state attorney recommending a concurrent term of 12 years in prison.
It was the oldest cold case solved in #MiramarPD history. Evelyn Marie Fisher-Bamforth was killed in January 1980. Today, more than 44 years later, we finally have justice for Evelyn. Ronald Eugene Richards was convicted of her murder and sexual battery. #NeverForgotten pic.twitter.com/P9fvVkXZAH
— Miramar Police (@MiramarPD) April 8, 2024
Miramar police said it was the oldest cold case solved in the department’s history.
Police believe Richards, convicted of manslaughter in 1975 after killing his girlfriend in Ohio, may have been a serial killer, with more victims potentially out there.
Miramar police said he became a person of interest after another agency called on the department’s assistance to make an arrest on an attempted murder and rape.
“You never have closure,” Fisher-Bamforth’s husband, John Bamforth, said in a taped statement after the indictment was announced. “Certainly justice for Evelyn is the most important thing.”
Richards will be returned to an Ohio prison to complete his sentence there, as well as the Florida sentence.