A former Kent man who has been jailed for the past two and a half years while awaiting trial on murder, arson and gun charges was charged this month with three additional counts of murder, accused of killing a father and son in Auburn in 2021 and killing another man in 2019 who was identified from DNA extracted from his rib bones.
Richard Bradley Jr., 40, was charged in May 2021 with premeditated first-degree murder for allegedly luring 44-year-old Brandi Blake to the 160-acre Game Farm Park in Auburn then killing her and burying her body in a shallow grave, court records show. She died from blunt force injuries.
When King County sheriff's detectives located Blake's body, they also found three human ribs about 30 feet from Blake's grave that have since been matched to Emilio Maturin, who was 36 when he was last seen alive in July 2019, according to prosecutors. Bradley was charged with premeditated first-degree murder in connection with Maturin's death on Dec. 5.
Bradley was considered a person of interest in the March 2021 fatal shootings of Michael Goeman, 59, and his son, Vance Lakey, 31, when he was also charged that May with second-degree arson for allegedly offering a man $1,000 to torch the father and son's Dodge Durango after it had been impounded, according to court records. Prosecutors amended the charges on Thursday, adding two counts of second-degree murder to the arson case.
Goeman and Lakey's bodies were found in the same general area off an unmaintained county road outside Auburn, near the 36800 block of 56th Place South, in April 2021, according to charging documents in the arson case.
Bradley used the same scheme to kill all four victims: He told them he needed help digging up a stash of stolen gold, lured them to a wooded area, killed them, then stole their vehicle and whatever possessions were inside, Senior Deputy Prosecutor Thomas O'Ban II wrote in the Maturin charging documents. He was later seen driving the victims' vehicles in the days after they went missing, O'Ban wrote.
Goeman had received a large inheritance just before he and his son were killed, Blake had won $20,000 at a casino and was known to carry large amounts of drugs and cash before her death and Maturin always took his cash and drugs with him when he left the house, according to charging documents in the murder and arson cases.
Bradley is now being held without bail in the King County Jail. Defense attorney Peter Geisness, who court records show is representing Bradley in all four murder cases, did not immediately return a phone call Friday seeking comment.
Maturin's girlfriend reported Maturin missing to Auburn police on Aug. 2, 2019, two weeks after he disappeared. She later told sheriff's detectives that she overheard Bradley say "he needed help digging up some buried gold in Auburn," and though Maturin was initially skeptical, he left their Kent town house with Bradley and never returned, charging papers say.
They left in a white BMW that Maturin had recently purchased, and Maturin took a pound of heroin, some meth and $15,000 in cash with him, according to the charges.
The girlfriend tracked Maturin's cellphone to Game Farm Park and drove there to look for him but got scared and left, the charges say.
Less than 24 hours after Maturin and Bradley left together, Auburn police located an unregistered BMW parked in the 300 block of Stuck River Drive early on July 19, 2019, and waited for the driver to return, charging papers say. Officers attempted to stop the BMW, but it took off, and Bradley was arrested after a car and foot chase for eluding police, the charges say.
The location where the BMW was parked "is adjacent to a large field area near where the rib bones were found" in May 2021, a detective wrote in charging papers.
Detectives obtained a DNA sample from Maturin's mother, which was compared to male DNA from the ribs. Scientists at the State Patrol Crime Lab determined last year that the DNA evidence from the ribs is at least 922 million times more likely to have come from the woman's biological child compared to unrelated individuals, say the charges. The probability that the two are related is at least 99.9999999%, according to the charges.
