Courtesy of KMIR News

The trial for two men accused of pinyon pines triple murder involving the family of a 2005 Hart High grad has a hearing next week in a Riverside County courthouse, officials said.

A motion to dismiss charges against defendant Robert Pape, 26, who is accused of committing the murders in Pinyon Pines in 2006, is scheduled to be heard Monday, KESQ, a local CBS affiliate, reported.

Pape and co-defendant Cristin Conrad Smith, 25, were arrested in March and charged with the murder of Hart High graduate Becky Friedli, 18, her mother, Vicki Friedli, 53, and her mother’s boyfriend, Jon Hayward, 55.

Pape’s defense attorney, Richard Blumenfeld, told KESQ he filed the motion for dismissal based on the grounds that the prosecution’s case is “entirely circumstantial and paper thin, and rests in no small part upon assumptions and suppositions as to means, motive and opportunity which do not withstand scrutiny when measured against the objective facts.”

An official with the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office did not immediately return calls seeking comment on the case.

Pinyon Pines Triple Murder

An Indio judge denied a similar motion to dismiss charges against Smith in March.

Pape and Smith face three counts of murder with special circumstance allegations of committing multiple murders and two sentence-enhancing firearm-use allegations.

Firefighters responded to reports of a fire at the Friedli’s Alpine Drive home on the night of the murders and discovered Becky Friedli’s burned body in a wheelbarrow about 70 feet from the house.

After the fire was knocked down, they found the bodies of Hayward and Vicki Friedli inside the house. Both victims had been shot.

According to a grand jury affidavit, Pape and Becky Friedli dated for 15 months before they broke up in January 2006. She reportedly told a friend three weeks before she was killed that Pape had told her “that if he couldn’t have her, nobody could.”

According to testimony and court documents, a cousin and friends of Becky Friedli told investigators that she mentioned plans to go hiking with Smith and Pape.

“Pape later told investigators that he and Smith decided not to go hiking with Becky and instead the two men were only with each other the night of the murders,” Riverside County District Attorney’s Office spokesman John Hall said in a statement to KMIR News.

Smith was found to be a possible contributor to DNA on a business card discovered near what investigators believed was the starting point of a trail left by the wheelbarrow containing Friedli’s body, according to authorities.

FBI Special Agent Kevin Boles testified at Smith’s preliminary hearing that cell phone records for Smith and Pape showed all calls made to the defendants between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. went to voicemail.

Shotguns, a handgun holster and shoes also were seized from the suspects’ homes.

Pape could be eligible for the death penalty if convicted because he was an adult at the time of the killings.  Smith — 17 at the time of the slayings — faces life in prison without the possibility of parole if found guilty.

Becky Friedli graduated from Hart High School in 2005, and has family members in the Santa Clarita Valley.

Melissa Lampert contributed to this article.