13 things about Bokchito, Oklahoma’s Richard Sommerhalder

Richard Anthony Sommerhalder was an American convicted mass murderer who lived in California, United States before moving to Oklahoma, USA. He is Johnny Lee Sommerhalder‘s younger brother and Dennis Sommerhalder‘s older brother.

Johnny was a Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, California resident and the president of the motorcycle gang the Grim Reapers Motorcycle Club of Santa Rosa, also known as the Grim Reapers. Dennis was a resident of Bokchito, Bryan County, Oklahoma, USA.

BIOGRAPHY

Richard was also known as Blue. Here are 13 more things about him:

1. He was a resident of Aptos, Santa Cruz County, California and Rohnert Park, Sonoma County.
2. He ran a craft shop in Aptos where people regularly went to buy drugs.
3. He was 3 years younger than Johnny and 6 years older than Dennis.
4. In 1968, he dated Kenneth Duane Mulkey‘s former wife Suzanne Mulkey, then 19, and his brother Johnny and four other Grim Reapers members killed her mother Shirley Ackley, 34, and stepfather Curtis Ackley, 28.
5. In 1971, he was convicted on drug charges.
6. In 1976, Sommerhalder killed Karen Percifield, 25, of Ohio, USA and Buz Bezore‘s wife Vicki Bezore, 31, of Aptos and Dr. John Gorman‘s daughter Mary Gorman, 21, of Boulder Creek, California. John was from Oregon, USA.
7. He frequently visited the Aptos Club in Aptos, which was near the Bay View Hotel in Aptos where Percifield was last seen alive in 1976.
8. He was found guilty of two counts of second-degree murder for raping and murdering Vicki and Mary after they gave him a ride in 1976 and served eight years and six months of his 15-year sentence.
9. Short after he was released from prison in 1986, he threatened his parole office and deputy sheriffs so he was imprisoned in Soledad, Monterey County, California.
10. In 1988, he was paroled again and he went to stay with his brother Dennis in Bokchito.
11. In 1994, he died at age 47 and was buried at Old Bennington Presbyterian Church Cemetery in Bennington, Bryan County.
12. He was not immediately identified as Percifield’s killer when the Santa Clara Country Sheriff’s Office found in 2019 multiple evidentiary items to develop a deoxyribonucleic acid profile of her killer, which were sent to the California Department of Justice Bureau of Forensic Services for further testing.
13. In 2023, the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office submitted forensic evidence to Othram in The Woodlands, Texas, USA to identify Percifield’s killer, which led to his identification as the killer.

TIMELINE

On April 3, 2025, the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office announced that Richard’s DNA profile matched that of Percifield’s killer. This was confirmed by forensic DNA experts at Othram Laboratories in Texas, USA.

1960s

• On January 11, 1968, he used information Suzanne gave him to break into Curtis and Shirley’s trailer home in San Rafael, Marin County, California where he and Steve Tannahill stole $40 in coins and a .32 Smith & Wesson revolver, which he gave to Johnny in Santa Rosa as a gift.
• On January 12, 1968, his brother Johnny went back to Shirley and Curtis’s trailer home in Marin County with Santa Rosa residents and Grim Reapers members Ronald E. Long, then 25, Thomas Lawrence Casewell, then 22, and Kenneth Allen Preston, then 20, ransacked the place then murdered Curtis and Shirley when they arrived home.
• On June 29, 1968, his brother Johnny and Preston were sentenced to death, which was upheld on September 19, 1968 after Johnny’s appeal.

1970s

• On June 30, 1971, he was convicted on drug charges after selling 93 capsules of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) to an undercover officer in Fresno, Fresno County, California.
• He fatally stabbed Percifield twice in the chest and she was found dead in Aptos Village Park in Aptos on May 28, 1976.
• He beat and fatally stabbed Vicki and Mary, who both disappeared in June 1976 from Vicki’s residence in Rio del Mar, Santa Cruz County.
• In July 1976, he was arrested for raping two women.
• On September 1, 1976, he was arrested for the murders of Vicki and Mary and was represented by John Bohrer.
• On September 3, 1976, he was named a person of interest in the murder of Percifield but the investigators at the time did not have sufficient evidence to arrest him.
• In June 1977, a jury of eight women and four men found him guilty of the murders of Vicki and Mary.
• On July 5, 1977, Buz and John filed $4 million in claims against Santa Cruz County and the state of California for allowing him to be free on parole at the time he killed Vicki and Mary.

1980s

• On January 16, 1988, Santa Cruz County district attorney Art Donner announced a drive to get petitions asking that he not be returned to the county.
• On January 20, 1988, California Department of Corrections officials announced that he would not be paroled to Santa Cruz County where a petition movement against him was in progress.

1990s

• When an article about his criminal past was bublished on February 23, 1990 by The Californian, a newspaper based in Salinas, Monterey County, some residents of Bokchito got angry at the reporter for exposing him.
• On January 3, 1994, he turned 47.
• On May 12, 1994, he died.