32 The Big Spender

It took awhile, but by early in 1982, the Skamania County authorities decided not to file any charges against Randy in connection with Jan’s death. The way Blaisdale explained it later, he totaled up all the reasons to be suspicious about Randy, and all the reasons to believe him. When he added up the pluses and minuses, it just didn’t seem to be a clear-cut case. Blaisdale discussed the matter with the Skamania County prosecutor, who looked over the case, too. The prosecutor concluded that it would be a difficult case to win, and suggested that Blaisdale drop the matter and go on to more pressing business.

That cleared the way for the insurance company to release the $100,000 in life insurance proceeds to Randy. The check came in April of 1982, and suddenly, after a decade of money problems, Randy was rich. The first thing he did was buy a new house. Randy put down $40,000 on a brand new, three-bed-room house in a new subdivision northeast of Seattle. He bought a new truck—Tim Brocato saw him pull $10,000 in cash out of his pocket—and he bought motorcycles for himself and for Tim. In June, he invited the Adens and their children to go with him and Greg to Disneyland for a week, with Randy picking up the entire tab. Later Randy bought two chain-saws, one for him and one for Tim, so they could cut wood in their off-hours and sell it for money. Randy landscaped his new house and bought toys for Greg. Later, when Tim and Debbie ran into money problems, Randy loaned them $4,000.

Tim was still uneasy about Randy. He was convinced in his own mind that Randy had killed Jan. But he was afraid to tell anyone—except Debbie—in case word got back to Randy. Tim thought Randy might kill him too if he became a threat.

Once, Randy pestered Tim for weeks to go snowmobiling with him. Tim kept making excuses. He didn’t want to go anywhere isolated with Randy, in case he met with some sort of “accident,” like Jan. But finally Tim agreed to go on the snowmobiling trip. He didn’t want Randy to think he was afraid of him, even if he was. But before leaving, Tim told Debbie: “If I don’t come back, it was no accident.”

But as Tim kept trying to distance himself from Randy, Randy redoubled his efforts to maintain some form of control over him. Soon Tim saw Randy’s generosity with the motorcycle, the chain saw and the $4,000 loan as Randy’s way of trying to buy Tim’s loyalty. At one point, in fact, Randy sent a letter to Tim, telling Tim that he didn’t want “anything” to come between them. Tim was pretty sure he knew what “anything” was. But still Tim said nothing about his suspicions to anyone else, other than Debbie.

Randy, meanwhile, was working fewer hours at Vitamilk. His tax records later showed his wage income dropped by almost half in 1983, down to $16,951 from a high of $33,100 in 1981. Randy later said that his hours were reduced at Vitamilk because of layoffs at the firm. Randy, of course, also had the remains of his $100,000 payoff to fall back on. The following year, 1984, Randy’s wage income was back up to $29,000.

In the middle of 1984, Randy decided to sell his house and buy another one in a better neighborhood. The new house cost around $90,000. Randy took the $40,000 equity out of the house he’d bought in 1982 and put it down on the new home.

But in deciding to buy the new house, Randy left Tim and Debbie in a bad financial fix. For some months, Tim and Debbie had been having a hard time paying all their bills. They wanted to buy a new mobile home to live in, and Randy had agreed to buy their existing mobile home and told them not to worry about making the payments on the old one, that he would take care of them when he bought the place.

But when Randy bought the $90,000 house instead, suddenly Tim and Debbie were left with a lot of overdue payments. In late 1984, Tim and Debbie filed for bankruptcy and listed the $4,000 loan from Randy as a debt. That meant Randy wouldn’t get his money back. Randy was furious.

“If you think you’re going to get away with this, you’re crazy,” Randy told Tim. For once, Tim got his back up with Randy.

“You caused it,” he retorted. But Randy was insistent that Tim pay him back. He began leaving threatening notes at Tim’s trailer demanding payment.

As January 1985 arrived, Tim broke down and decided to discuss the situation with Randy. Tim told Randy he just didn’t have the money to pay him right then, and that if Randy would be patient he would try to pay him back later. But in the meantime, Tim told Randy, he was really hurting financially.

This seemed to make Randy feel better. Tim later recalled how Randy liked to feel superior to him, and Tim’s move to file bankruptcy let Randy assert this superiority. Randy told Tim he’d try to think of something Tim could do for Randy to make money. Then, Tim said later, Randy came up with a new idea: Tim should burgle his own house and turn the claim into his homeowners insurance company. “‘It’s easy to get money that way,’” Tim later said Randy told him.

Tim thought it over and decided to do it.

“We went out in the backyard,” Tim later recalled. “He said he would break in the back door. He said I should hit the window.”

Tim smacked the window, but it wouldn’t break. Also, it made a lot of noise. Tim started getting worried all over again. Randy was disgusted.

“So he just pushed the door in and, it was really a cheap door, and the frame was really bad,” Tim remembered. Thus, Randy broke into Tim’s mobile home while Tim watched. Tim never did break his own window.

Randy and Tim went through the house, picking up a radio, a music box, a VCR, and a few other things that Randy and Tim knew a burglar would probably go for. Tim chose the items. Then Randy and Tim drove over to Randy’s new house and deposited the loot. Tim drove home and told Debbie what the plan was.

That night, Tim went to a social function at the fire department where he worked as a volunteer and got drunk. Debbie was at work and the kids were at a babysitter’s. Tim came home early in the morning and called the police to report that his house had been burgled. A few days later, Tim went over to Randy’s house, and together they filled out the claim forms. Tim didn’t know what to write, so Randy made some suggestions.

“‘Tools’ is always a good thing to put down,” Randy told Tim. So Tim declared that some expensive tools that he had never really owned had been stolen. He signed the form. A month or so later, got a check for about $2,800 in the mail from the insurance company.

Later, this fraud became Tim’s darkest secret.

When Peters and Mullinax finally caught up with him in 1981, it had been this crime that made Tim so reluctant initially to cooperate. But finally, after some serious soul-searching, Tim realized that his problem with having committed a felony fraud was minor in comparison to the likelihood that Randy had committed murder. Tim knew that if he told the police what he believed about Randy and Jan, the story of the fake burglary would inevitably come out. That, Tim thought, would probably cost him his by now full-time, paid job with the fire department.

But what was more important, his job or the chance that Randy might have murdered twice, and if he got away with it, that he might do it again? And Tim believed that one reason why Randy had encouraged him to rob himself was because Randy was desperate to get something on Tim to hold over him to keep him quiet. As a result, when Tim finally told the story of the fake burglary to Peters and Mullinax, he felt a huge burden lift off his shoulders.