Hours after Paul Stephen Riggins Jr. says he discovered his wife missing, he asked his 18-year-old girlfriend to move in with him and proposed marriage a few days later, the woman told a Howard County jury yesterday.
Riggins, now 43, is accused of killing Nancy Riggins, then 37, and disposing of her body in an incinerator. She has not been seen since July 1, 1996. Although police have found no physical traces of the crime, Riggins was charged with murder in October based on circ*mstantial evidence.
The girlfriend, 23, who became the family's babysitter at age 14, also told the jury that Riggins had talked about killing his wife months before her disappearance, and that he had been at home -- not at work, where he was supposed to be -- at the time Nancy Riggins was most likely killed, the night of July 1.
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The woman is not being identified because she was the victim of child sexual abuse -- a crime for which Riggins was sentenced in 1997 to 18 months in jail.
In an attempt to get Riggins to talk about his wife's death, police arranged to tape 13 conversations between him and the babysitter. At no point did Riggins say anything about harming his wife, defense attorney Joseph Murtha pointed out during a brief cross-examination, which will continue today.
Shaking but speaking clearly, the woman testified that she spent most of her teenage years in a secret relationship with Riggins that began shortly her 15th birthday.
The relationship began with some beer provided by Riggins at his house one night when he asked her to come over and baby-sit, she said. Then it progressed to Riggins "cajoling" her into bed one morning, and it reached the point where they spent several days a week together while Nancy Riggins was at work.
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"We would normally do things around the house, clean the cars, have sex," she said.
As a freshman at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, she spent every night with him at a waste treatment plant where he worked, sleeping with a pillow and blanket he brought for her.
"I loved him," she told the jury and about 40 spectators who crowded in to see one of the prosecution's star witnesses. Riggins, she said, told her he loved her, too, and repeatedly said that one day his wife would leave and they would marry.
Yesterday, she said Riggins talked of killing his wife months before her disappearance. "He said he could strangle her and burn her or put her body in the truck with the waste and nobody would ever find her," the woman said.
She learned of Nancy Riggins's disappearance the afternoon of July 2, 1996, when Steve Riggins -- the name he is known by -- stopped by her workplace to have lunch.
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"He was happy she was gone," she testified. "He wanted me to get my stuff and move in with him as soon as possible, within the week."
Riggins did not report his wife missing until July 3, telling police that when he came home about 7 a.m. July 2 after working an overnight shift, Nancy Riggins was gone. Their 5-year-old daughter was sleeping upstairs.
Police testified previously that they soon became suspicious of Riggins because, among other things, they learned that Nancy Riggins had discovered the affair in the days preceding her death.
According to the woman's testimony, the night Nancy Riggins was killed, Steve Riggins told her: "Don't worry [about the discovery]. He'd take care of it." That same night, she saw him pull into his driveway (they lived around the corner from each other), though he was supposed to be at work.
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Steve Riggins was able to sneak away from his job regularly because it wasn't very demanding, she explained. It entailed positioning a truck to catch processed waste, waiting until it was filled several hours later, then moving another truck in to take its place. In between moving trucks, he did "very little," she said.
The woman testified that she also saw Steve Riggins down the street from his house just before 8 the next morning -- July 2 -- as she was going to work. Police believe Nancy Riggins was killed sometime between those hours.
Within a week after Nancy Riggins disappeared, Riggins proposed marriage to her and gave her several rings, including one that she thought was Nancy Riggins's engagement ring, the woman testified.
NANCY RIGGINS
