A man is found murdered in his home; his vintage motorcycles stolen
Bernard Hirst III, 54, male, was found dead inside his home in the rural community of Olalla, Washington. On March 30, 1982, deputies discovered him at a residence along the 15000 block of Crescent Valley Road with severe head wounds, the scene indicating a violent attack that unfolded within his own house. His vintage motorcycles were missing, and there were signs someone tried to burn the home—a detail that suggested an attempt to destroy evidence even as investigators secured the scene.
Public records place his death in late March 1982 in Kitsap County; some genealogical indexes list March 28 as the date of death, which aligns with the possibility that he died earlier and was found two days later. These records corroborate his age and location while underscoring the narrow, grim timeline that ended with the discovery on March 30.
The theft of his motorcycles gave the crime a starkly tangible motive, yet the attempted arson complicated the picture, hinting at a perpetrator intent on obscuring what happened inside the house. Despite the distinctive nature of the stolen property and the brutality of the assault, publicly available sources do not report any arrests. The case remains listed online among unsolved Kitsap County homicides, with no suspect publicly identified and no resolution noted in the record.
