23 Davy

By August of 1977, Davy Roth was in terrible shape. Unable to work, a tenth-grade dropout, isolated by his horrible complexion and his mouthful of rotting teeth, he was more dependent on Lizabeth than ever before, often cadging small amounts of cash from her so he could cruise the convenience stores for beer.

At six five and nearly 190 pounds, with his frightening face and missing teeth, with his receding hairline and his frequent drunkenness, Davy was virtually friendless except for his family. To them, Davy was just Davy—a sensitive, shy person when sober, who vented enormous amounts of pent-up aggression when he drank. Although he was only twenty years old, he looked far older, and therefore had little trouble buying alcohol.

Sometime in late July or August of 1977, as Lizabeth later told the story, Davy had injured his shoulder falling out of a tree. Lizabeth took him to a doctor, she said later, who prescribed Darvon for Davy. Davy began taking the Darvon, along with Lizabeth’s Valium, and combining both with beer.

Davy had two prized possessions. The first was his car, a 1963 Chevrolet Nova that Lizabeth bought for him to enable Davy to get out of the house. Davy was almost pathetically grateful to Lizabeth for this gift, and immediately began customizing the car by attacking it with cans of spray paint. By August of 1977, the car was most generously described as “multi-colored.” It was, of course, a beater, but Davy loved it because it was real evidence of his mother’s love. Inside the car, Davy posted a sign: “Ass Gas or Grass. Hardly anyone rides for free,” followed by a question mark.

Davy’s second prized possession was his .22 semiautomatic Marlin rifle, which he kept in the trunk of his car, along with a jar of shells given to him by Bob Hendershott, a friend of the Roth family who had once dated Darlene Roth. Bob was probably Davy’s closest acquaintance outside his family, and indeed, Lizabeth Roth was later to say that Davy considered Hendershott a virtual brother.

Randy and Donna, meanwhile, had moved back to Mountlake Terrace. Randy found work again at the fiberglass factory, this time working in the mold-making department, a step up. Randy and Donna had less frequent contact with Lizabeth, in part because of the increased presence of several motorcycle people around the family, and the obvious presence of drugs like marijuana and “speed.” Randy hated drugs.

Sometime around August 11, 1977, Davy drove to Silver Lake, a county park where many young people in Snohomish County gathered in the summer months to go swimming. Davy thought he might go swimming. As he was parking near the lake, Davy saw a young woman hitchhiking by the side of the road. The woman was tall, had dark hair, was somewhere in her twenties or early thirties, and was wearing a striped one-piece top and shorts made from blue jeans. Davy decided to try to pick the woman up. “She was not a bad looking girl,” Davy later told police.

The woman accepted the ride from Davy and told him she was on her way home to a trailer park south of the lake where she lived with two men. Davy asked her if she wanted to drink some beer with him. The woman agreed, so Davy drove to a market and bought a case of beer. Then he and the woman drove to a nearby high school—the school Davy had last attended before dropping out—and parked in a wooded area. Davy had already taken a considerable amount of Valium earlier. Now, the beer began eroding Davy’s inhibitions completely.

Davy asked the woman if she would remove her top and, Davy said later, the woman did. After some necking, Davy asked the woman if she “ever fooled around.” According to what Davy later told a psychiatrist, he had never had sex with a woman before.

“Yes, but not with somebody like you,” Davy later said the woman replied. “This made me mad,” Davy said. Davy drew back from her and the woman replaced her top. Davy asked the woman if she wanted a peacock feather. The woman said she did. Davy got out of the car and opened his trunk to get the feather. As he did so, his eyes fell on one of the rubber tie-down cords he kept in the trunk. At that point, Davy said later, he decided to kill the woman who had just rejected him.

Taking a handful of peacock feathers in one hand and hiding the rubber cord in the other, Davy approached the woman from the passenger side of the car and gave her the feathers. While the woman was looking at the feathers, Davy reached into the car with the rubber cord and pulled it tight around her neck. Davy pulled with all his considerable strength and the woman struggled to get free. Her face began to turn blue, then purple. Davy pulled as hard as he could for as long as he could. The woman urinated on the car seat. The rubber cord snapped. The woman seemed dead, but Davy wasn’t sure. He went back to the trunk, got another rubber cord and resumed strangling the woman. After a few more minutes, Davy decided the woman was finally dead. He opened the car door and dragged the woman’s body into the bushes. As he was getting ready to leave, Davy saw the woman move. He went back to the trunk and got his rifle. He returned to the woman and shot her seven times in the back of the head.

Afterward, Davy was beside himself with rage for his stupidity. Why had he killed the woman? He wasn’t exactly sure. He knew it was something to do with the fact that he had no friends, people thought he was ugly, no one seemed to like him. In rejecting him with the words she used, the woman had unthinkingly hit Davy at his sorest point.

Now Davy did a psychologically interesting thing. Reloading his rifle again and again, Davy pumped round after round into the car his mother had given him, eventually shooting out the rear window and filling the doors and fenders with holes. Nor was Davy finished. Finding a can of spray paint, Davy painted the roof of the car with some chilling words: “death To the one who enter.”

Next, Davy drove away, stopping to get still more beer, and later consuming all of his remaining Valium and Darvon in an attempt to kill himself. He failed. Hours later, Davy drove back to Lizabeth’s house, parked his car, and passed out for two days.

Two nights later, on Saturday, Davy was riding around, drunk as usual, in the eastern Snohomish County town of Gold Bar. A police officer stopped him for erratic driving. Someone had previously reported that a man was waving a rifle around at a park outside of the town. Searching the car, the officer found some marijuana and Davy’s rifle. He arrested Davy for possession of marijuana, and seized the rifle and ammunition for investigation of carrying a concealed weapon. The Gold Bar officer also impounded the car and took Davy off to jail.

The following day, Sunday, August 14, 1977, a husband-and-wife berry-picking team found the woman’s body. The Snohomish County Sheriff’s Department began an investigation, which was severely hampered by the fact that no one knew who the dead woman was. She had no identification with her.

On the following day, August 15, 1977, Lizabeth and Davy’s sisters and their boyfriends, along with Bob Hendershott, went to the Snohomish County Courthouse to bail Davy out on the marijuana and weapons charges. Lizabeth dropped Davy and Bob off at the place where Davy’s car was impounded. Lizabeth and the others went home. Davy and Bob got the car, stopped to buy some Thunderbird wine, and began drinking it as they were driving around. Hendershott couldn’t help but notice all the bullet holes and the missing rear window. Davy and Bob finished the wine, so they stopped to get some more. Hendershott went into a supermarket to get it.

As Hendershott got back in the car, Davy turned to him. “What would you do,” Davy asked, “if I told you I killed someone?” Hendershott later said he didn’t know what to make of Davy’s remark, so he tried to change the subject. But Davy persisted.

“Well,” said Hendershott, “I wouldn’t tell on you.” That was good, Davy told Hendershott, because he would kill again if he thought it would be necessary. Hendershott kept quiet.

Davy tried out a story on Hendershott. He’d just killed someone who had beaten him up while he was in high school, Davy said. He’d always promised the guy he would get even with him, and now he had.

But as Davy continued to talk to Hendershott, some of the enormity of what actually happened began to overwhelm him. Soon Davy was telling the real story: about the woman, about being rejected, the rubber cords, the rifle. Finally Davy told Hendershott he was worried that the body was soon going to be discovered. He hadn’t hidden it well enough, Davy said. Obviously, Davy hadn’t heard about the discovery on the previous day. Hendershott got the impression that Davy wanted him to help move the body. Hendershott finally told Davy to drop him off at a friend’s house. Davy warned him again to keep his mouth shut.

About an hour later, Davy returned to the place where he had dropped Hendershott off. “It’s gone,” he told Hendershott. Davy looked very shook up. Hendershott knew Davy was talking about the body. “It’s gone,” Davy said again.

The following day, Hendershott and Davy went over to Lizabeth’s house. Davy wanted Lizabeth to give him money to buy more Darvon and Valium. Hendershott later said he waited in the living room while Davy talked to Lizabeth in the kitchen.

“I could hear them talking about something,” Hendershott said later. “I couldn’t make out anything they were saying and then I heard Liz ask Davy if he was crazy. And Davy said no, pretty loud. And then they were just quietly mumbling in the kitchen again.”

“Could you tell what they were doing or what they were talking about?” Hendershott was asked.

“I couldn’t tell what they were talking about, I kind of figured they were talking about what Davy had done, and I heard them rustling a newspaper and I saw her go back in the kitchen like she was going to show Davy something. And she came out of the kitchen with the newspaper into the dining room and I said, ‘Let me see the paper.’ So she handed me the paper and it was opened up to … an article and it was about a woman’s body that had been found … and it said the apparent cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head.”

Lizabeth, it seemed to Hendershott, was scared for Davy. But at that point, Hendershott was scared for himself. He believed that Davy would kill him if he told the police what he knew.

Three days later, however, Bob Hendershott did talk, giving a lengthy statement to the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Department that was based on what Davy had told him. The county’s homicide detectives decided to arrest Davy for questioning in the murder. They also obtained search warrants for Lizabeth’s house and Davy’s car.

On August 30, 1977, the sheriff’s deputies went to Lizabeth Roth’s house and served the warrant. They also gave Lizabeth a subpoena to appear before the county’s inquiry judge to see what she might know about Davy and the murder. While searching the house, the deputies found numerous peacock feathers, but there was no sign of Davy. Asked by the deputies where Davy was, Lizabeth said she did not know. Asked where Davy’s car was, Lizabeth was also ignorant. A neighbor told the police that Davy and his brother had put a tow bar on the car and had taken the car away.

Who was Davy’s brother? the police asked. Randy Roth. That afternoon, another team of deputies went over to Randy’s house in Mountlake Terrace and found Davy’s multi-colored, shot-to-pieces Nova under a tarp on the side of Randy’s house. Randy made no objections as the police hauled the car away for a thorough search.

Where was Davy? No one knew, or if they did, no one was saying. But by this time, Davy was a thousand miles away in North Dakota, working on a relative’s farm, hoping the whole nightmare would blow over.