29 Beacon Rock

Exactly what happened that November day on Beacon Rock will probably never be known with certainty. Years later, Sue Peters developed a theory, one that at least fit with the physical facts of Janis’ death. Peters guessed that Randy and Jan walked to the top of the rock, keeping to the trail all the way, never once venturing outside the railings, despite Randy’s later insistent claims to the contrary.

Once at the top, in Peters’ scenario, Randy suggested to Jan that they duck under one of the railings so that Randy could find a scenic spot to take a picture of her. Then, when they were both far enough way from any passersby and likely concealed from view by the trees, Randy simply shoved Jan over the side—three hundred feed down to the rocks below.

What is known is that shortly after 11 A.M. on November 27, 1981, a wild-eyed, apparently crazed Randy Roth came sprinting down the trail, passing a small group of hikers. Then, while the hikers were peering at each other in mystification, Randy came running back toward them.

“My God, have you seen my wife?” he asked. “I think she might have fallen from the rock.” Randy told them that his wife had climbed under a railing “to take a picture” and that she had disappeared. He’d warned her not to, Randy said. The hikers, Steven and Shelly Anderson of Washougal, Washington, told Randy that they hadn’t seen anyone. The Andersons’ dog, normally a well-behaved, gentle pet, raised her hackles at Randy, growled at him and lunged in his direction. The Andersons were amazed at their normally friendly dog’s reaction to the stranger.

Randy wanted the Andersons and two others who were hiking with them to help him look for Jan. But Shelly Anderson didn’t trust him. “He was freaked out,” she said much later. “He was just—his eyes were crazy and he was freaked out.”

This encounter with the Andersons, which probably took place within minutes of Jan’s plunge over the side of the rock, was among the most significant pieces of evidence that Randy might have had something to do with Jan’s death. For one thing, Randy said nothing to the Andersons about actually having seen Jan fall—only that she had “disappeared” while going to “take a picture,” and that he thought she “might” have fallen. All of this was radically different than Randy’s later story to almost everyone else, in which he said he had watched helplessly as Jan “cartwheeled” over the side.

In Peters’ scenario, however, Randy’s speech and behavior take on a certain logic. In this concept, after shoving Jan over the side, Randy began to descend on the pathway and soon encountered the Andersons and their dog coming up from below. In Peters’ theory, Randy would have no way of knowing whether the Andersons, the closest witnesses, had seen anything incriminating. Randy could have been worried that, at the worst, the Andersons might have seen him actually shove Jan off the cliff, or at least be able to say exactly where she fell, which could have posed other problems for Randy’s later story.

So, Randy, after first passing the Andersons on his way down to the parking lot to report Jan’s fall, suddenly realized he needed to determine what, if anything, the Andersons had seen. If the Andersons gave Randy any indication that they had seen too much, Randy could begin his immediate escape; if they knew nothing, Randy could continue with his “accident” story.

That was why Randy, after first passing the Andersons, then raced back to ask them if they had “seen” his wife, in the process already proffering two potential alibis: she was going to take a picture and voluntarily ducked under the rail against his advice and “disappeared,” and he thought she “might” have fallen off.

Nothing in his initial statement to the Andersons indicates that Randy had any actual knowledge of what happened to Jan. But Randy was extremely agitated, probably at that point with fear of detection, which was likely why the Andersons’ dog was alerted. “His eyes were crazy,” Shelly Anderson remembered years later. “I mean, you could look through them. He scared me.”

The Andersons, however, told Randy they had seen nothing. At that point, Randy wanted to enlist the Andersons as possible witnesses on his behalf by his request that they help him look for her.

But the Andersons didn’t want to be anywhere near Randy, at least on the rock. Instead, they volunteered to walk back down to the bottom to summon help. Randy went back to the top. He said he would resume the search by himself.

Later, he was to claim he ran up and down Beacon rock four times in an effort to find a way to reach the place where he thought Jan had fallen—which location he shouldn’t have known if indeed Jan had simply “disappeared.”

Instead, it seems more probable, at least in Peters’ theory, that Randy went back to the top, looked for a spot on the trail that seemed dangerous, and then sat down nearby to wait for the authorities to tell them a more likely story.

Within a few minutes after the Andersons returned to the parking lot, Skamania County Deputy Sheriff Ed Powell arrived at the rock. A few minutes later, so did two volunteer members of an ambulance crew trained in search and rescue techniques. Powell sent the two ambulance people up the path to look for Randy. The ambulance people met Randy about halfway up.

Randy acted as if he was looking for someone who might have fallen over the cliff. He explained to the ambulance crew that he had seen Jan slip on some wet grass or leaves and then “cartwheel” over the side. That was the first time Randy was to say he had actually seen Jan go over, although the ambulance people didn’t know that. The ambulance crew sent Randy down to the parking lot to talk to Powell. The ambulance crew went up to the place where Randy said he had seen Jan fall. The crew couldn’t find the place immediately, based on Randy’s description.

After getting down, Randy told someone that he remembered there was a beer can near the spot where Jan fell, so that information was radioed to the ambulance crew higher up. They found the can and realized that a mountain rescuer would be needed. The spot was too steep for anybody else.

Soon an expert rescuer, a man named Bill Wylie, arrived. By that time the county’s undersheriff, a man named Ray Blaisdale, had arrived on the scene to coordinate the rescue effort. Blaisdale introduced Wylie to Randy, and asked Randy to take Wylie to the spot where Jan had gone over the edge. Wylie was a bit surprised to realize that the man Blaisdale had just introduced him to was the husband of the missing woman.

“He didn’t seem to be involved in the incident at the time,” Wylie remembered, foreshadowing words that were later used about Randy in connection with Cindy’s death. “He was calm and standing off to the side and, wasn’t presenting himself to be emotionally upset or pressing for information or anxious to get us to the top of the hill.”

This demeanor was in marked contrast to the “crazed” look first exhibited by Randy to the Andersons, although no one was then aware of that.

Near the top, Randy pointed out the place where he said he and Jan had gone off on the shortcut. Wylie and Randy, accompanied by several others, climbed the shortcut and went to the place where Randy said Jan had fallen.

“He showed me the section of the trail cut that he described as where she had gone over the edge,” Wylie said later. “He said that he was in the lead and that he was starting to go into the treed section, back into the treed section, and when he turned around, he saw her tumble over the edge, go over the edge.”

This statement—that Randy was in the lead, and that he turned around to see Jan fall—was also in contrast to Randy’s later descriptions of the incident. In those recountings, it would be Jan who was in the lead, with Randy following to provide her with “security” in case she slipped.

The place pointed out by Randy was relatively flat but bordered a fairly steep slope about ten by fifteen feet. The slope was covered with sparse grass and a few shrubs. Wylie guessed the slope area was about twenty-five to thirty degrees in inclination. Beyond that a sheer cliff dropped away for about three hundred feet.

Wylie wanted to know exactly where Jan had gone off the sloped area. Randy was vague, suggesting that it was somewhere in the middle of the lower edge of the sloping ten-foot area. He was very calm. As Wylie started to set up his equipment, Randy walked over to a tree near the edge and sat down. Wylie told someone to take Randy back down to the parking lot to keep him from getting involved in the rescue. “That’s often a problem,” Wylie said later. Relatives of accident victims, Wylie knew, tend to get emotionally involved in rescue efforts, sometimes dangerously so. Randy went back down the rock.

Neither Wylie or any of the others present could see any skid marks or other evidence that Jan had actually slipped down the slope Randy was indicating. There were no tufts of grass pulled out or broken branches that might have been expected as someone sliding headfirst might have grabbed on the way down.

Wylie looped his climbing rope around a tree, got into his harness, walked down the slope and then rappeled over the side. He got to the end of his rope, one hundred sixty-five feet, dropped to a small ledge, but saw no trace of Jan. Wylie thought he might try to climb a bit further down the rock to another ledge some distance below; maybe he would find Jan there.

But then, two Army air rescue helicopters from Portland, Oregon, arrived at the scene. Wylie was concerned that the backwash from the rotor blades might blow him off the ledge, so he hooked himself back onto his climbing rope and watched. The chopper was about one hundred fifty feet away from Wylie. In a few minutes, he saw a rescuer descend from the helicopter on a cable into a clump of trees about another one hundred fifty feet below him, and about the same distance to the right. Then Wylie saw a body basket being lowered to the rescuer in the trees, and Wylie knew that the air rescuer had found Jan Roth.

Wylie was puzzled; the place where Jan was found was much farther away from the place where Randy had indicated Jan had initially fallen. To wind up one hundred fifty feet to the side from the straight line down the cliff that Wylie had followed meant that Jan’s descent would have been perhaps as much as twenty or twenty-five degrees off line, a nearly impossible angle. Wylie knew that bodies bounced, but certainly not one hundred fifty feet. It was peculiar, he thought.

Down at the parking lot, Blaisdale was standing with Randy when the word came that Jan had been found. The rescuer asked that intravenous material be sent down on the cable. Blaisdale turned to Randy. “Evidently she is still alive,” Blaisdale told him.

Blaisdale thought Randy was happy to hear this. “I would say that he was pleased and somewhat relieved,” Blaisdale said later. Randy didn’t act at all like he was worried that the rescuers had found a living Jan who would be able to accuse Randy of shoving her off the cliff, Blaisdale thought later. But then a few minutes later, the rescuers reported that Jan was definitely dead. Blaisdale asked if he could speak to Randy privately and told him the news.

“Well, why did they ask for the IVs?” Randy asked. Blaisdale said he had no idea. Randy didn’t say anything but seemed upset. Later, Blaisdale was to wonder whether Randy thought the authorities were trying to trick him by saying Jan was dead when she really wasn’t. Randy walked away from Blaisdale to stand beside his own car, the station wagon, holding his head in his hands. Blaisdale thought Randy was crying, but he couldn’t see his face.

Finally Randy came back to Blaisdale’s car and told the undersheriff that he’d seen a lot of dead people in his life but never a loved one. And then Randy said something Blaisdale thought was a bit strange: “She didn’t smoke, she didn’t drink, and I loved her very much.” It was a weird sort of epitaph, Blaisdale thought.

The helicopter crew pulled Jan’s body back up the chopper in the basket attached to the cable, then flew off to a nearby farm to transfer the body to the ambulance. Randy told Blaisdale that he wanted to see the body. They drove over to the farm in Blaisdale’s car. On the way over, Randy again told Blaisdale: “She didn’t smoke, she didn’t drink, and I loved her very much.” Strange, Blaisdale thought. Couldn’t Randy think of anything more to say about his dead wife than that?

At the farm, one of the emergency medical technicians present at the ambulance suggested to Randy that he not view Jan’s body.

“In this particular situation,” the EMT said later, “sometimes it’s best to retain the memories, the good memories, rather than the trauma of viewing [her] as she was at that time.”

The EMT was trying to spare Randy’s feelings. “She [Jan] had some gross injuries to the head and face and there was quite a bit of hemorrhage [bleeding] that had occurred.” Jan was not a pretty sight.

But Randy was insistent on seeing her. “He was adamant,” the EMT recalled. A decade later, Peters and Mullinax wondered whether the reason Randy was so insistent on seeing Jan’s body was that he wanted to make sure Jan was really dead and that Blaisdale wasn’t playing some trick on him.

The EMT unzipped the body bag so that Randy could look. Blaisdale went first. “I stepped out back away from the ambulance and then he [Randy] stepped up and looked.…” Blaisdale remembered. Blaisdale asked Randy if it was his wife in the body bag. Randy said it was.

Blaisdale took Randy back to his own car. Then, for the third time Randy told Blaisdale that he’d seen a lot of dead people—while he was in military service, Randy added—but never a loved one. “She didn’t smoke, she didn’t drink,” Randy said once more. “That’s why I married her. I loved her very much.” Blaisdale didn’t know what to make of Randy’s thrice-stated remark, but it definitely seemed like an odd thing to say.

Imagine loving someone simply because they didn’t smoke and didn’t drink, Blaisdale thought. Imagine that.