8 Mary Jo

Mary Jo Phillips told Peters that she was in her mid-thirties and the mother of five children. She’d lived with Randy for a time in 1986, she said. “He’s had four wives,” Mary Jo told her. Four wives! Peters thought. “I was engaged to him for awhile myself,” Mary Jo added.

Mary Jo said she had been divorced just after she met Randy and didn’t want to marry him. What’s more, Mary Jo told Peters, she and Randy argued about life insurance—insurance on her life. A switch closed in Peters’ mind. That’s got to be it, Peters thought—life insurance.

After five years as a detective, Peters knew as well as any cop that guessing about motive in the absence of facts was pure foolishness. People did all kinds of criminal things for all kinds of reasons, Peters knew; by far the most common reason for murder was simple rage. Most people who murdered their spouses did so on the spur of the moment, usually for reasons that seemed by any objective measure to be utterly trivial: a deprecation or complaint taken too far, an insult, a taunt, sometimes just an irritating habit that suddenly assumed unbearable proportions.

The disclosure that Mary Jo and Randy had “argued” about life insurance on her strongly suggested a possible motive for murder by Randy: money. It was rare indeed for a spouse to murder for cold hard cash; few had the stomach for it. But if it happened mostly on television or in the movies, that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen in real life. Could Randy Roth be capable of killing a wife for cash? It might explain a lot about his behavior.

And, of course, there was the wife who, according to Stacey Reese, had fallen from the cliff—if insurance was involved there, too, that might indicate some sort of modus operandi, “M.O.” in detective talk, the peculiar signature of action and motivation that signaled premeditation and planning. If Randy had done it once, Peters reasoned, and it had worked, maybe he’d tried it again.

But was there any life insurance on Cindy Roth? Short of asking Randy directly, there wasn’t any immediate way of finding out. It was becoming crucial to delve into the recent history of Randy’s life with Cindy Roth, Peters realized. She needed to find someone who was close enough to Cindy or Randy to know if Cindy had been insured, hopefully someone who could also provide an idea of the kind of marriage Randy had with Cindy.

Peters now asked Mary Jo to tell her more about Randy’s earlier marriages. Mary Jo was quite willing.

Randy’s first wife, said Mary Jo, was named Donna. She was the mother of a son by Randy, who was named Greg. Mary Jo said Randy told her Donna had disappeared when Greg was just a baby. Mary Jo had the idea from Randy that Donna might be living somewhere in California. Greg had stayed with Randy.

Randy’s second wife was Jan, Mary Jo said. She was the first one who had died. Randy and Jan had been living in Mountlake Terrace, a suburb north of Seattle. Randy had told her that Jan slipped during a roped ascent of Mt. Rainier and had fallen to her death, Mary Jo said. After the fall, Randy was investigated by the police, but nothing happened.

Was there insurance? Yes, Mary Jo said; Randy told her he’d received several hundred thousand dollars from life insurance on Jan.

Donna was the third wife, Mary Jo told her. Peters was confused. Wasn’t Donna the first wife? No, wait, you mean Randy was married to two different Donnas? Right, said Mary Jo. The second Donna was much younger than Randy, maybe ten years younger. That marriage only lasted three months, Mary Jo said. The second Donna had left Randy because she was afraid of him. Peters asked Mary Jo how she knew that Donna #2 (as Peters began to think of her, to keep her straight from the first Donna) had been afraid of Randy, and Mary Jo told her that she had once met and talked with Donna #2.

Cindy, Mary Jo continued, had been Randy’s fourth wife, and the second to die. Now Mary Jo was worried that she might be in danger herself because of what she knew about Randy. She had been keeping a diary that discussed Randy, Mary Jo now told Peters; when Randy found out about it, he wanted her to destroy it. Randy told her it was “too incriminating,” Mary Jo said. Peters wondered what was in the diary that Randy might think was incriminating.

Tell me more about Randy, Peters urged.

Well, Mary Jo said, when she met him in 1986, Randy lived in Snohomish County, just to the north of Seattle. He was a Vietnam veteran who collected martial arts trophies. He had lots of weapons around the house, including handguns and a sawed-off baseball bat with nails sticking out of the business end that he kept in a corner of the living room. He is paranoid, Mary Jo added.

Randy really doesn’t like women, she said, and didn’t like little girls, although he seemed to get along fine with boys. He didn’t drink or take drugs. He had never been physically violent with her, but was very strict with his son Greg.

“He has a military mindset,” Mary Jo said. “He was in Vietnam. He told me he had killed people and mutilated women and children, and that afterward, he had to go through three months of brainwashing just to be safe to be in society again.”

Holy cow! Peters thought. If Mary Jo was right about Randy, he was beginning to sound like someone who was certainly capable of committing murder.

Mary Jo filled Peters in on some additional details of Randy’s life, including the fact that he had recently been investigated in connection with another large insurance claim—this one from the theft of tools worth thousands of dollars from his house. More insurance, Peters thought. And there was one more thing, Mary Jo said.

“Do you know Randy has a brother who is in prison?” she asked.

“Oh?” said Peters.

“He killed somebody,” Mary Jo told her. Randy had told her a little about it, she said. There was something about bullet holes in the brother’s car that somehow had led to his arrest. Randy was contemptuous of his brother for having been caught, Mary Jo remembered. “‘You don’t get caught,’ was what he said,” Mary Jo added.

“Well, what happened?” Peters asked. “I mean, why did the brother commit murder?” Mary Jo wasn’t exactly sure, but Randy told her that a friend or a member of Randy’s family had been killed, and that Randy’s brother had evened the score by killing the person who had killed the friend or sister. Or something like that.

Wow, thought Peters, as she hung up the phone. Only the day before she had almost nothing to work with except a gut feeling that something was wrong about the drowning of Cindy Roth. Now, in less than twenty-four hours, the good leads had exploded: a possible love interest by Randy in Stacey Reese, possible hefty insurance proceeds from the death of a prior wife, an earlier police investigation into that death, an investigation into possible insurance fraud in the theft of tools from Randy’s house and even a brother who was in prison for murder! Who said detective work was boring?