30 Aftermath

In later years, Jalina was to grow confused about the events that happened that day at Beacon Rock. She came to believe that she and Greg had accompanied Randy and Jan up the rock on the same day that Jan died, rather than five months before. In Jalina’s mind, as the years passed, the two events merged, so as Jalina remembered it, Randy and Jan had gone back to the rock after having climbed it with her and Greg once already earlier on the same day, the day after Thanksgiving.

The recollections of others present, however, show that Jalina confused the June trip with what she later heard about the November event. Jalina never was on the rock in November; instead, she stayed at Randy’s stepmother’s house to ride horses with Marcie Thompson, Randy’s fourteen-year-old stepsister, and the two youngest sons of Gordon and Sandy Roth, Randy’s half brothers.

A decade later, when Peters and Mullinax attempted to unravel the sequence of all these conflicting accounts—to determine the reliability of Jalina’s admittedly hazy memory, and thus, Randy’s credibility—Sandy Roth was dead. As a result, it came down to Randy’s word against his stepsister Marcie and his former stepdaughter, Jalina.

Just about everyone later agreed that Randy and Jan left by themselves to go to the rock about nine A.M. But while Randy was to say that going to Beacon Rock had been Jan’s spur-of-the-moment idea as they were driving, Marcie remembered Randy telling the kids—but apparently not Jalina—that he and Jan were going to Beacon Rock to spend some time alone with each other.

That suggested Randy had previously planned to push Jan off the rock, and of course, also sounded remarkably similar to what Randy was to say about the “romantic” excursion of his and Cindy’s in the raft almost ten years later, a parallel immediately noted in 1991 by Peters and Mullinax.

After Jan’s death and the recovery of her body, Randy’s whereabouts for much of the afternoon remain unclear. It appears that Randy left Beacon Rock by himself around two or three in the afternoon. Jan’s body was taken to a funeral home in nearby Camas, Washington, where a pathologist performed an autopsy, concluding that Jan had died from severe brain injuries from a skull fracture that occurred in the fall. The authorities listed the death as an accident.

Apparently Randy was at the funeral home, because he was given a receipt for expenses to be incurred in cremating Jan’s remains the following day, along with a death certificate.

Where Randy went next remains a mystery. Years later, Randy said he went to Sandy Roth’s house and immediately told her what had happened. Others said, however, that Sandy Roth was at work that day and couldn’t be located to be informed of the news. The discrepancy was important evidence on whether Randy was lying about the events surrounding Jan’s fall. If it could be proved that Randy was lying about this fact, what else might he be lying about?

“We went into the back room and had a discussion,” Randy remembered, “and I don’t remember specific details after that. She [Sandy] decided that we wouldn’t take the trouble to make a dinner there that night, that she would take us out for pizza.” But Marcie said Sandy Roth was never present for the pizza dinner and thus couldn’t have heard what happened next.

While waiting for the pizza, Marcie later remembered, Randy slid the receipt for Jan’s cremation expense across the table to show her. He didn’t say anything. Marcie looked at the receipt and didn’t understand what it was, or who it was referring to.

“I don’t know any Janis Roth,” she told Randy. Marcie was thinking of Jan as “Jan,” not “Janis.”

“Yes, you do,” Randy told her. “Think about it.”

It suddenly dawned on Marcie that Randy was using the paper as a sly way to tell her that Jan was dead. Marcie became very upset and left the table to go into the bathroom. Jalina got up and followed her, according to Marcie. Marcie said she didn’t say anything to Jalina about her mother. They then returned to the table and ate the pizza—“as if nothing had happened,” Marcie recalled.

After returning to Sandy Roth’s house in Washougal, Randy told Marcie that Jan had fallen while they were taking a shortcut, and that he had tried to grab Jan as she went over but missed. Then, Randy told Marcie, he’d run up and down the hill looking for Jan but wasn’t able to find her.

At this point, perhaps ten hours after Jan’s death, Randy’s version of the events had evolved significantly from his initial statement to the Andersons just after Jan had “disappeared.” It was a version Randy would stick with in the coming years, except for variations he would invent to later impress people such as Mary Jo Phillips.

In Randy’s version of the events that night, he and Sandy Roth together told Jalina that her mother was dead.

“She was obviously curious as to where her mother was,” Randy said later, “and I told her I’d talk to her later on, and Sandy and I both approached her in the living room. The other kids were sent down the hall, and we did talk to her and explained to her that she was involved in an accident and that she had been taken into [Camas]; that they had told me that she was dead.”

Jalina remembered it quite differently.

“When did you see Randy next?” Mullinax asked her years later.

“The next time I saw Randy,” she said, “it was late at night because I was waiting up for them [Randy and Jan] to come home. And I remember it being eleven o’clock because I was supposed to be in bed at ten. And he came home and I just remember he had on some jeans or something with a dark brown leather jacket.”

“What did he tell you?”

“When he came home he was crying and I said, ‘Why are you crying?’ And he said that he wanted to talk to me, and I said, ‘What about?’ He told me to come and sit in his lap, so I was sitting in his lap and he told me there had been an accident.

“I kept asking, ‘Where’s my mommy?’ And he said there had been an accident. And I said, ‘What kind of accident?’ and he told me she had fallen from the rock.…” Randy told her, Jalina said, that Jan was in a hospital in Washougal. Jalina was crying and Randy was hugging her.

Thus, in Jalina’s memory, there was no Sandy Roth present and there was certainly no mention of her mother being dead, contrary to Randy’s later story. In Jalina’s memory, she believed that her mother was still alive throughout the weekend and early into the following week.

The following day, as Jan’s body was being cremated, Randy got up early to make some telephone calls. The first call he made was to the insurance agent who had sold him the $100,000 life insurance policy on Jan. Randy had written the policy number on the back of the death certificate he’d been given the previous day, which later seemed to show he’d been well-prepared for Jan’s “accident.”

Agent Darrell Lundquist vividly remembered the event years later. Lundquist was still in bed when Randy called. Randy said he wanted to make a claim of the life insurance on his wife. Lundquist thought Randy wanted to cancel the policy and claim the money that had been spent on premiums—maybe thirty dollars. You can’t make a claim, Lundquist told Randy, unless somebody has died.

That’s just exactly what had happened, Randy told the agent: Jan was dead. Lundquist was amazed. No one had ever called him less than three weeks after an insurance policy had gone into effect to make a claim. How did it happen, Lundquist asked. Randy told him Jan had fallen off a cliff. When, Lundquist asked. Yesterday, Randy told him. Now Lundquist was bowled over. That certainly had never happened before, someone calling the day after his wife’s death—on a weekend yet, while he was still in bed—to make a claim. Well, said Lundquist, there was nothing to be done on a Saturday; Randy should come into the office on Monday, and Lundquist would begin processing the claim then. Randy agreed and hung up.

Next Randy called the pediatric clinic where Jan had worked before the marriage. Jan’s friend Shirley Lenz—the receptionist who had worried that Jan was rushing too fast into the marriage—answered the phone. Randy explained that he needed Jan’s Social Security number. Shirley Lenz said she didn’t know what the number might be. Well, said Randy, couldn’t Shirley look it up on Jan’s job records? The records were in the doctor’s private office, Shirley explained, and he wasn’t in yet. She told Randy to call back.

Randy called back a half-hour later. Shirley had Jan’s Social Security number but was puzzled. Why didn’t Randy just ask Jan for her number? Well, he couldn’t, Randy told her; Jan was sick, he said. Shirley thought that it was strange Jan was so sick she couldn’t even give Randy her own Social Security number. Randy told Shirley nothing about the fall.

An hour or so later, Randy, Jalina and Greg started back to Seattle. On the way out of Washougal, Jalina later remembered, she asked Randy if they could stop to see her mother in the hospital. No, Randy said; the doctors weren’t allowing Jan to have any visitors.

Back in Seattle, Randy stopped at Louise Mitchell’s house to see if Jan had any mail there waiting for her. Louise wasn’t there, and Randy said nothing to Louise’s children about Jan’s death and left no message for Louise to call him.

After getting home, however, Randy called Tim Brocato. “Jan is no longer with us,” Randy told him. Tim immediately concluded that Jan and Jalina had left Randy and Greg; after all, the marriage had badly deteriorated, as Randy’s apparent affair and Jan’s despondency just the weekend before indicated. “What do you mean?” Tim asked Randy.

“Just like I said,” Randy told him. “She’s no longer with us.”

“Did she go someplace?” Tim asked, still not getting it. Then Randy spelled it out for Tim: Jan was dead, d-e-a-d.

Tim was shocked. “Is there something I can do? Geez, I’m sorry,” he stammered.

No, said Randy. “That’s all I wanted to say,” Randy told Tim, and hung up.

Tim told Debbie what Randy had said. Then he decided to drive over to see Randy, to make sure he was okay. When he arrived, Randy was baking cookies for the kids. “Are you all right?” Tim asked.

“I told you not to come over here,” Randy told him, “and I meant it, I don’t want you here.” Tim left.

But by the following day, Randy was apparently feeling more sociable. He took Greg to the church attended by his neighbors, Ron and Nancy Aden, where Ron was the music director. After the service, Ron spotted Randy in the congregation and went up to shake his hand. Ron and Nancy had been trying for some time to get Randy and Jan involved with their church.

Ron shook Randy’s hand. “Where’s your better half?” he asked jovially. Randy looked straight back at Ron without blinking. “She’s dead,” he said.

Ron Aden couldn’t believe it. Here was Randy, completely serious but without a tear in his eye. He pulled Randy over to the side of the sanctuary and asked him what happened. Randy explained that he and Jan had been hiking and that Jan had fallen off a cliff. Ron called Nancy over, and arrangements were made to have someone stay with Randy and Greg while the Adens took relatives to the airport.

Then the Adens rushed back to the church to be with Randy and Greg once more. “We felt like he was really kind of reaching out for some help and we wanted to be helpful to him,” Nancy Aden said later. “We really felt sorry for what had happened.”

Meanwhile, Louise Mitchell had been anxious to talk to Jan to find out how the trip to Washougal had turned out. She called Randy and Jan’s house on Sunday, but no one answered. The fact that no one answered the telephone bothered Louise.

Skamania County Undersheriff Ray Blaisdale was by this time developing doubts about Randy Roth and what happened to his wife.

For openers, there was the strange angle of Jan’s fall. Blaisdale talked to the rescue workers, who told him they couldn’t understand how Jan had come to be so far away from the place where Randy said she had gone over the side.

Blaisdale talked to the rescue worker Bill Wylie, who told him that Randy had said he was in the lead, not Jan. Randy had told Blaisdale it was the other way around. Wylie was sure about what Randy had said, because he’d asked him several times. But Blaisdale was equally sure Randy had told him Jan was ahead.

To Blaisdale, that meant Randy might possibly be lying about the events on the rock. Blaisdale also kept remembering what Randy said about his dead wife: “She didn’t smoke, she didn’t drink, and I loved her very much.”

On Monday, November 30, 1981, as Randy met with insurance agent Darrell Lundquist to begin the process of filing his claim, Louise Mitchell called Randy and Jan’s house again. Still there was no answer.

Meanwhile, Blaisdale called the pediatric clinic, looking for information about Jan. Why did he want to know? Blaisdale was asked. Blaisdale told Shirley Lenz that Jan was dead, that she’d died in a fall on the previous Saturday. Shirley couldn’t believe it. Why hadn’t Randy told her about Jan’s death when he called asking for Jan’s Social Security number? Lenz told the others in the clinic about Blaisdale’s call. Everyone in the clinic got upset, Lenz later remembered, and there was quite a bit of discussion about Randy, and the suddenness of the marriage, and the death itself. People thought the circumstances were suspicious.

Next, Shirley called Louise Mitchell to see if Louise knew anything more about Jan’s death. Until that point, Louise had known nothing of the events of the weekend. She couldn’t believe it, either. She immediately called Randy at work at Vitamilk and had a conversation that was eerily similar to the one Lori Baker would have with Randy ten years later.

“What happened to Janis?” Louise demanded. “Is it true that she’s dead?”

“Yes,” Randy told her.

“Well, why didn’t you contact me?” Louise asked.

Randy didn’t answer.

Louise didn’t know what to say. Finally, she asked if Randy had contacted anyone in Jan’s family in Texas. No, Randy said. Why not? He didn’t have any of the telephone numbers of Jan’s family, Randy said. Louise thought it was more a matter of Randy just not wanting to do it. Louise said she would make the calls and hung up, fuming at Randy’s behavior.

Louise called Jan’s sister in Dallas and told her the bad news. Jan’s sister in turn called their mother, Billie Ray, and told her. Then Jan’s sister called Joe Miranda, Jan’s first husband, and left a message for him to call her.

That night, Billie Ray called Randy and asked what had happened to Jan. Randy explained. What about funeral arrangements? Billie asked. Randy told her there would be a memorial service for Jan on the following Saturday, December 5. Billie said she and Jan’s sister would fly up for the services. Meanwhile, Sandy and Marcie drove up from Washougal to be with Randy. Randy was getting a lot of attention at this point.

The following evening, Tuesday, December 1, Joe Miranda called Randy. Joe told Randy he intended to take custody of Jalina. Randy explained that he was perfectly happy to have Jalina continue to stay with him, but Joe wasn’t having any of it.

Well, Randy said, it doesn’t sound like I have any real choice in the matter, since you’ve got the legal right. Joe said he would be up to collect Jalina the following day, and hung up.

At this point, according to Jalina, Randy hung up the phone and told her that the call had been from the hospital and that the doctors had been unable to save Jan. “Your mother is dead,” Jalina remembered Randy telling her.

The next day, according to Jalina, Randy told her the rest of the news: she would be going back to Texas to live with her real father. Jalina didn’t want to go; she wanted to stay with Randy and Greg. But Randy explained that while he wanted to have Jalina with them, he didn’t have any choice in the matter, since Jalina’s real father had legal rights to her. But Randy promised he would try to get Jalina back. Jalina believed him.

Now, said Randy, they had to go see Jalina’s real father at a motel. He told Jalina to pack her clothes. Jalina packed, but Randy wouldn’t let her take any toys, or any of Jan’s things, for that matter. But Jalina managed to surreptitiously take a pair of shoes that belonged to Jan and slip them into her bundle.

Then Jalina, remembering what Jan had said to her before going to Washougal, went into the bedroom, pulled out the drawer, and removed the white envelope. She was looking in it as she left the bedroom and saw that it contained cash, some checks and some papers. But before she could look closer, Randy saw her.

What’s that, Jalina? he demanded. It’s something my mommy told me to get if something ever happened to her and I had to go live with my real daddy, Jalina said. Randy took the envelope from her and looked inside. “She was holding out on me,” Randy said, as if to himself. Then he told Jalina that he would take the money and use it to send her presents while she was in Texas with her real father. Jalina, who hadn’t seen her father since she was about two and barely remembered him, agreed.

Next, Randy told Jalina not to tell her real daddy where Randy and Greg lived. Jalina agreed to that, too.

About half an hour later, Randy and Jalina arrived at Joe Miranda’s motel. Joe was there with his new wife and his sister. Randy turned Jalina over to Joe and again said that he was willing to take Jalina if Joe didn’t want her. No chance, said Joe, and Randy left. Jalina would not see Randy again for another ten years; he never sent any presents. Besides a fading memory, the only thing of her mother Jalina would have would be a single pair of dancing shoes.