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Danville has been making national headlines in recent weeks as details emerged about a former resident of the town who pleaded guilty weeks ago to murder charges in a 1998 cold case nearly two thousand miles away.
Timothy Stephenson, now 50, admitted in court on March 15 to killing 26-year-old Randall Oliphant in 1998 in Kansas City, Mo., where he was extradited in 2022 after being taken into custody locally on an arrest warrant.
Stephenson had spent much of the intervening time between the murder and his extradition to Missouri in Danville, marrying in 2008 to emergency room Dr. Joseph Ginejko who has practiced at John Muir hospitals in Concord and Walnut Creek. The couple have twin daughters together.
Ginejko filed a petition to dissolve the marriage in January 2020, along with a domestic violence restraining order, according to court records. The move kicked off a years-long series of hearings on the case including hearings on domestic violence allegations by the estranged husband simultaneously to a criminal investigation into Stephenson’s involvement in the 1998 homicide.
Ginejko was initially granted a temporary restraining order upon filing the petition, with a permanent restraining order effective through this February granted in February 2021, according to court records. An order to renew the restraining order was filed on Feb. 9.
Around the same time he filed divorce proceedings, Ginejko began talking to police about a confession Stephenson had made to him in 2014, in which Stephenson reportedly told him that he had shot and killed a man as he had pleaded for his life, according to a probable cause statement included in a search warrant for Stephenson’s cellphone in 2022 from Missouri authorities after he was taken into custody locally.
That man is believed to be Oliphant, who was last seen alive at the Dixie Belle Bar in Kansas City, Mo., on Jan. 17, 1998 and whose body was found in a rural area nearby on March 21, 1998. Stephenson was identified as the last person seen with Oliphant as the two left the bar before his disappearance and death, according to court records.
When contacted by investigators, Stephenson told them he had taken an “unknown male” to his home the evening of Oliphant’s disappearance, but that he had proceeded to drop the man off back at the bar later that evening, according to court records.
While investigators had reasons to suspect Stephenson’s involvement in Oliphant’s death, including cellphone records that showed roaming charges he incurred in the area where Oliphant’s body was found and learning that Stephenson had been familiar with the area, Stephenson was not apprehended at that time, according to the probable cause statement.
Stephenson went on to move to Danville and marry Ginejko 10 years later, reportedly telling him several years into their marriage in 2014 a different story about the man he brought home from the Kansas City bar in 1998 – specifically that he shot the man twice in the bathroom of his home, proceeding to remodel the bathroom in order to cover up the crime after disposing of the man’s body, according to court records.
With the case effectively cold at that point approximately 16 years later and no further developments or press coverage, the husband only learned Oliphant’s name after finding letters addressed to Stephenson from the man’s mother, according to court records.
It wasn’t until 2020 that activity in the investigation appeared to resume, at which point a portion of bone preserved from Oliphant’s body was submitted to an FBI laboratory in order to develop a DNA profile for Oliphant. Authorities went on to submit DNA evidence obtained from the Jeep Stephenson had been driving the night he met Oliphant, including fiber and hair samples to a state laboratory for re-analysis in March 2021.
The following month, Ginejko met with Stephenson amid divorce and restraining order proceedings in Blackhawk as part of a law enforcement operation in which Ginejko was equipped with recording devices and debriefed by authorities, with Stephenson providing conflicting information when pressed for details about the incident by his estranged husband, according to the probable cause statement.
After being provided with information by Ginejko and following DNA analysis, Stephenson was arrested by Dublin police and taken into custody at Santa Rita Jail on Jan. 2, 2022 on an arrest warrant that had been issued in Missouri on Dec. 16, 2021 for second-degree murder. Authorities later learned that Stephenson had withdrawn more than $17,000 from a joint bank account in San Bruno on Dec. 27, 2021, according to the probable cause statement.
Stephenson was extradited to Missouri later in 2022, serving a brief period of time on house arrest on a $250,000 with a relative who lived in the area as he awaited trial before being taken back into custody after he was found smoking methamphetamine when police acted on a search warrant in July 2022, according to reporting from the Kansas City Star.
While he initially pleaded not guilty in the murder case, Stephenson was indicted by a grand jury later that month as he remained in custody on drug charges.
Stephenson ultimately changed his plea to guilty this year on March 15, entering into a plea deal and being sentenced to 16 years in prison by a Missouri judge. Part of that sentence will be filled by time served, with Stephenson having been in custody for a total of 674 days as of the date of the plea.
Meanwhile, divorce proceedings are continuing to make their way through Contra Costa family court, with a hearing scheduled for this summer on the status of criminal charges against Stephenson and other updates on the situation.
