As always, thank you for hanging out and remembering Dawn and Richard Heikkila with me today. On January 30, 1991, Dawn and Richard Heikkila were discovered murdered after a welfare check was requested by Dawn's coworkers. Their son, Matthew Heikkila, initially told coworkers his parents had left due to a family emergency involving his brother at Dartmouth, but immediately, they were not buying it. When police entered the couple's New Jersey home, they found Dawn, a successful real estate agent, and Richard, a prominent Parkinson’s disease researcher, shot to death.. with a sawed-off shotgun and slugs that were labeled.. "Mom" and "Mom and Dad." This gruesome double murder stunned the local community and led investigators to quickly focus on the couples own son, Matthew, as the prime suspect.