19 “He Was Very Serious”

Years later, Belinda Howard described something of Randy’s personality to Peters. “He was just the kind of person who, you know, was mysterious enough … where you wanted to break that and figure out who he was.” That mask of quiet mysteriousness later became one of Randy’s most potent tools in attracting and controlling women.

Controlling people was one of Randy’s earliest defense mechanisms. Belinda recalled a trip she made with Randy and his family to visit Lizabeth’s parents in Eastern Washington.

“Over there,” she told Peters, “we had just a little argument. We were in his aunt’s living room watching television and I was sitting on the floor with my back to him, purposely ignoring him, you know, giving the cold shoulder, and he was throwing little things at me, teasing me, and saying, ‘Come on, turn around and talk to me,’ and I was just ignoring him.

“It was nothing, no big deal. He wasn’t trying to hurt me physically by throwing things at me. He was just trying to get my attention. After a while he got up and left the room, and a little bit after that I got up to go see where he went. And he did a complete turnaround.

“Now he was ignoring me and he would not speak to me, and I begged him for hours to speak to me and please tell me what was wrong, why wouldn’t he talk to me? He completely turned the situation around, and when he finally did, after hours of—I mean, I was just emotionally broken down. I was crying and everything was horrible.

“He finally said, ‘I’m too much like my father,’ and ‘We’re breaking up.’ That was all he said. Then he got in the car and he left, and I didn’t see him for a couple of days.”

Belinda’s story was interesting in that it showed that even at sixteen or seventeen, Randy had already learned some of the techniques of control that were later to mark his relationships with other women.

Belinda’s “cold shoulder” was likely seen by Randy as a challenge to his control over her; when attempts to cajole and tease Belinda into submitting to him failed, Randy withdrew and punished Belinda, to the point where Belinda was “just emotionally broken down.” Years later, Randy was to employ the same techniques with Donna Sanchez Roth, Janis Roth, Donna Clift Roth, Mary Jo Phillips and Cindy Baumgartner Roth. Mary Jo referred to it as the “hot and cold” aspect of Randy’s personality.

On another occasion, Belinda’s mother—who didn’t like Randy and tried to prevent Belinda from seeing him—went to Randy’s house to pick Belinda up. Belinda’s mother pulled her out of the Roth house and marched her to the car. Randy came out after Belinda and chased the car down the street, screaming at Belinda’s mother and pounding on the windows.

“Why was he doing that?” Peters asked.

“I don’t know,” said Belinda. “I guess he was real possessive of me. I practically lived at his house. I was there all the time. And another time, my mother came over to get me and he bodily—she told me this the other day—he bodily threw her off the property.” Belinda’s mother had a friend with her, and Randy slammed the door on the friend’s leg and held it shut while the friend was screaming for Randy to stop.

Randy’s penchant for control extended to his lack of sympathy for injuries and illnesses suffered by others. Lizabeth for years had suffered from severe migraine headaches, often taking to her bed for long periods, throwing much of the burden of running the family onto Randy. Randy felt he had no choice but to accept this responsibility, yet at the same time resented his mother for this and had contempt for her suffering. Once Belinda experienced this side of Randy’s behavior herself.

Belinda had just gotten her first car, she told Peters—an “old beater.” Randy was driving the car, Belinda was sitting next to him, and one of Randy’s high school buddies was sitting next to Belinda. Randy was driving the car fast through the residential neighborhoods of Lynnwood, Belinda said: “You know, rippin’ and tearin’ up and down the streets and practically two-wheeling around corners, just for the sheer pleasure of doing it, and as we went around, as we made a right-hand turn around a corner, the door behind the driver opened.…

“So I got up on the back of the bench seat where I was sitting, then leaned back and fell into the back seat and reached over and pulled the door shut.” But as Belinda was trying to climb back into the front seat, the door opened again. Just then Randy put the car around another right-hand corner and Belinda flew out through the open door. “I just went flying right out the door and bounced across the street … ended clear across the street sitting on the sidewalk.” Randy stopped the car, and Randy’s friend ran back to where Belinda was sitting on the curb “totally dazed.” Randy’s friend checked her arms and legs to see if anything was broken and asked anxiously if she was all right.

But Randy’s reaction to the accident was completely unexpected. “Randy parked the car and jumped out and ran over to me, and he crouched down and he grabbed my left upper arm and he squeezed it really hard and he said, ‘If you make a sound, I’ll hit you.’”

“Was he being serious?” Peters asked.

“He was very serious,” Belinda said. “He was very serious. Yeah, I think that the incident scared him that if I had made—if I’d started crying or wailing like I’d been hurt or something like that and somebody had to call an ambulance or the police because of a so-called car accident, you know, it would have put him in a limelight which he probably wouldn’t have cared to be in at that time.”

“Did he show any concern for you being hurt?” Peters asked.

“Absolutely none,” said Belinda.

Belinda Howard was not the only girl Randy dated while he was in high school. During the summer between his junior and senior years in high school, Randy met a sophomore-to-be named Theresa McGuire.

Terri, as she was known to her family and friends, was an extraordinarily attractive, petite blonde. Almost from the beginning she adored Randy, no matter how Randy treated her. Even while Randy surreptitiously dated Belinda and another girl named Jan Johnson, Terri kept her faith in Randy. “I always knew he would come back to me,” Terri later recalled. “I never pushed him or demanded; I never judged him or criticized him. I thought I could change him with love.”

But Randy had learned to appear to be different people, as the occasion required. With Belinda, Randy tended to be the rowdy rebel; with Terri, he was the romantic protector. “I tried to please him as much as possible,” Terri recalled. Meanwhile, Randy constantly told Terri that he wasn’t good enough for her, a feeling that doubtless derived in part from Randy’s own inner awareness that he wasn’t the person he tried to appear to be, as much as the fact that the McGuires were much better off financially than the Roths.

But Terri also sensed in Randy a great yearning to be something more than what he was becoming. “I always told him, ‘You can be anything you want to be.’” Terri said. By encouraging Randy and appealing to his better instincts, Terri thought she could help Randy rise above his grim surroundings, which by 1973 had become grim indeed.

“Randy never liked his home life, that was evident,” Terri said. “He hated being there. Looked for any excuse not to be there. There was no laughter, no happiness. I could feel how he felt.” There was constant bickering in the Roth household, punctuated by worry over money, Liz’s headaches and frequent religious asides, which usually invoked the name of God to manipulate behavior. “‘Randy, God wants you to take care of your mother.’” Terri remembered Liz telling Randy. “He had total resentment against his mother.” Inexorably, some of this sense of God the Punitive Demander began seeping into Randy’s personality, along with the perception that his ultimate fate was really a matter only God could decide. That, of course, also relieved Randy himself of some of the responsibility.

Occasionally Terri caught Randy staring at Liz with what she privately thought was Randy’s “evil eye.” Randy began wearing dark glasses indoors so that no one could see what he was thinking. Liz kept telling him to take off his glasses, otherwise people might think he was a thief or something.

As his senior year unfolded, Randy spent increasing amounts of time over at the McGuire household, or the house of another close friend, Mike Conrad. Sometimes Randy would stay at the McGuires until nearly two in the morning in an effort to avoid going home. Liz frequently called the McGuires demanding to know Randy’s whereabouts.

When Terri and Randy were at the Roth house, Randy rarely interacted with the other family members, usually spending most of his time in his room with Terri or down in the garage working on his car. Even among his own family, Randy felt different. Other Roths smoked; Randy hated smoking. The Roths drank; Randy never drank. Randy preferred health food; the rest of the Roths ate whatever was handy.

By his senior year in high school, Randy had developed a reputation as one of the meanest kids in his school.

“Everybody knew you just stayed out of his way,” Terri recalled. Other kids learned never to confront Randy or ridicule him. “Somehow accidentally your mirrors on your car would get broken, or a scratch would appear on your paint,” Terri remembered. “You never teased Randy, never made him look like a fool.”

Randy also got into a number of fights with other kids and was frequently suspended from school for brief periods. No other boy could approach Terri without getting the brunt of Randy’s possessive anger.

“That’s what they called it, the Wrath of Randy,” Terri said. On several occasions Randy punched out other boys for touching her or even approaching her. Randy made it clear that Terri was his exclusive territory.

But while Randy played the role of the gallant knight with Terri, at other times he displayed less savory behavior.

To Sue Peters, Belinda Howard recalled an instance when she and her mother caught Randy breaking into their apartment by climbing through the kitchen window after jimmying it open. Belinda’s mother later confronted Randy and asked him what he had been doing. Randy shrugged. “I just wanted to see if I could do it,” Randy said.

The family of Randy’s third girlfriend, Jan Johnson, also suspected Randy of having burgled their house. A neighbor saw a car that looked like Randy’s parked in the Johnsons’ driveway during the time of the burglary. Later, the family discovered a Purple Heart medal and a handgun had been taken from the house.

By the spring of 1973, U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam was reaching its end. Randy, according to Terri McGuire, was completely indifferent to the issues of the war; if he said anything about the war at all, it was to vaguely conform to the sort of cynicism about its aims that was then widespread among young people. But the draft had been halted several years before, so Randy was in no risk of being conscripted. On March 29, 1973, the last U.S. combat troops were withdrawn from Vietnam. Five days later, on April 4, 1973, Randy joined the Marine Corps Reserve.

Terri later recalled why Randy joined. “He wanted to get away from home,” Terri remembered. “Also, he couldn’t get a job. He thought he could get some training that would help him.” But why the Marines? “In Randy’s mind, the Marines were the best, the elite,” Terri recalled. “He thought if he was going to go into the service, it could only be the Marines, because they were the top.”

But either the recruiter didn’t spell things out for Randy, or, as Randy later claimed, the recruiter lied to him. Randy thought he could get the job training he needed to make his way in the world after leaving the Marines. Instead, when Randy signed up, he somehow failed to understand that his two-year active duty reserve commitment meant he wouldn’t get any of the training he wanted. The Marine Corps generally despised two-year reserves as scrubs or fainthearts. Certainly, whatever job training the Marines had to offer wasn’t going to be wasted on the likes of a two-year wimp like Randy. But Randy wasn’t to find that out until it was too late.

In the meantime, Randy had about six months before having to report for basic training. In August of 1973, Randy confronted the same dilemma that his own father had encountered eighteen years earlier: Terri was pregnant.

The thought of becoming a father terrified Randy, Terri later said. “He said he knew he could never have been a good father,” Terri recalled. Somehow it was all bound up in his relationship with Gordon, which had never been very good. What to do?

On the night of August 25, two days after Randy took his formal oath of induction into the Marines, a man wearing a ski mask held up a tire store in Lynnwood by knifepoint. One of Randy’s high school classmates, Jesse Akers, was the only employee in the store at the time. The robber waved the knife in Akers’ face and threw him to the floor, then tied him up and left him in a back room. The robber stole $240 and some eight-track tapes.

“I knew who it was right away,” Akers said later. “I thought it was a joke and almost said, ‘Hi, Randy.…’ I knew it was Randy. He has the most recognizable, sort of bow-legged walk I’ve ever seen.”

Akers called the police and told them he believed the robber was Randy.

Randy told Terri that he had committed the robbery, Terri later said. He gave her the money, which Terri used to terminate the pregnancy.

By the time the police got around to checking Randy out the following month, Randy was in basic training in San Diego. A Lynnwood police officer went to see Lizabeth, who said that Randy was in the military service and wasn’t expected home until Christmas. The police went away that time. But they would be back.