41 Woodinville

Randy’s arrest happened so quickly almost no one in the shop noticed his departure. On the way out to the detectives’ car, Randy asked Mullinax to go back into the shop and get his clothes and contact lenses. Mullinax did that.

A few minutes later, driving toward the jail in downtown Seattle, Mullinax noticed that someone seemed to be following them in a pickup truck. The man was talking into a cellular telephone. Mullinax sped up and slowed down; he tried several other evasive maneuvers, but the man in the truck stayed with them. Mullinax was pretty sure the other car held a friend of Randy’s.

What was he up to? Was some sort of attempt to rescue Randy in the works? After all the talk Mullinax had heard about Randy’s Mission Impossible boasts, and his claims that he would never be jailed, the detective knew that nothing could be ruled out. Mullinax drove onto the freeway onramp, then pulled over to the side. The pursuing driver slowed down, stopped briefly, and then, apparently deciding that he had been detected, shot forward past Mullinax and into the freeway traffic. Mullinax, Peters and Randy then drove to the county jail without further incident, and on reflection, Mullinax thought he had a pretty good idea of the purpose of the unexpected shadowing.

Sure enough, no sooner had Peters and Mullinax booked Randy into the King County Jail than Mullinax was hearing from George Cody about Randy’s arrest. Randy had to have prepped someone to let Cody know just as soon as he was arrested, Mullinax thought; he had obviously expected it, never mind that “no news is good news.”

But Mullinax had no intention of calling Cody right away; instead, he and Peters started for Randy’s house in Woodinville, where Joe Lewis and Frank Kinney were waiting for them with a warrant to search Randy’s house.

But the unknown man in the pickup truck had no connection to Cody. Instead, Randy’s lawyer found out about his client’s arrest from the news media.

For weeks, the newspapers and television stations had been waiting for something to happen. After his press conference on August 9, the news media was sure something was up. Soon stories appeared about Randy and Janis and the events in Skamania County a decade earlier. In mid-August, the media helped goose the investigation a bit by reporting that police were still looking for witnesses to Cindy’s drowning. In the last week of August, the papers reported that the Skamania County authorities were thinking of reopening their investigation into Jan’s death, as well.

Now, on October 9, 1991, the police announced Randy’s arrest on a recorded news media information line—five minutes before Randy was actually in custody. A reporter from the Seattle Times had been tipped that the arrest was imminent and happened to call the information line just after nine A.M. The reporter immediately called George Cody and asked him to comment. “I’m surprised,” Cody told the reporter.

Much later, however, Cody said he really wasn’t surprised that Randy was arrested, only that the reporters knew about it before he did. The reporter told Cody about the police information line; Cody called the hotline and listened to the announcement himself.

Next, Cody called the police and was told that neither Peters nor Mullinax was available to take his call. He called the jail and was told no one named Randy Roth had been booked. Repeated calls yielded no information at all on Randy’s whereabouts. Cody figured the police were trying to keep Randy from talking to him; he knew that in the shock of arrest, criminal defendants often made admissions to police, and he wanted to get to Randy as quickly as he could.

“Screw this,” Cody told his secretary. “I’ll go down to the jail. The booking process may take them forever to get him in. If Randy calls, call me in the car, we can conference-call the thing.” As Cody was approaching downtown Seattle, Randy finally called. Cody told Randy he’d be there in twenty minutes and to say nothing to the police. Randy assured him that he wouldn’t.

A police search is one of the more dangerous activities the police can perform. In Randy’s case, the search wasn’t physically dangerous; by that time, Lewis and Kinney were certain the house was unoccupied. But searches also carry myriad potential legal pitfalls.

An improper search—one ineptly conducted, or one without adequate attention to procedural rules—can cause an otherwise solid criminal case to go right down the drain. As a result, the best police searches are performed with an elaborate, almost myopic attention to legal details.

Kinney and Lewis had indeed already determined that the house was unoccupied. They did so by knocking on the door and announcing themselves as police. When no one answered, they sat down on the front porch to wait for Peters and Mullinax and other police officers to arrive. Kinney watered Randy’s potted plants and Lewis played with Randy’s dog, Jackson.

About an hour after they booked Randy into the jail, Peters and Mullinax arrived at Randy’s house. Together with Lewis and Kinney, the four detectives approached the front door. Lewis had Randy’s door keys. He opened the door, calling out, “King County Police with a warrant,” and the four detectives fanned through the house to make sure no one was inside.

Unfortunately, no one bothered to knock on the door when it was unlocked. Over such a trivial omission—the law required police to “knock and announce” at the time of the presentation of the warrant, not an hour before—several days of courtroom wrangling were later to ensue, as lawyers for Randy and the prosecutor’s office haggled over whether the search was legal.

One of the most important steps in conducting a police search is the documentation of exactly where and when something is found, along with a specific description of the item seized. In Randy’s case, the detectives were searching for records relating to Randy’s marriages and insurance; clothing, footwear or towels that might have been in the sacks in the raft, which the detectives considered important for the accuracy of any new reenactments; and any tools or other articles Randy had reported stolen in his 1988 burglary.

After Joe Lewis videotaped each of the rooms, the detectives went into separate areas of the house to conduct the search. Lewis meanwhile maintained a log; as each detective discovered something of possible relevance, the item was brought to Lewis for listing before going into a bag with Lewis’ log number and the discovering detective’s initials on it. That way, the police could make sure of precisely where the item was found, by whom, and when.

Peters began in the family room, where she found miscellaneous papers, including newspaper articles about Cindy’s death, and books on Vietnam. A search of Randy’s desk yielded tax records, bank records and an address book. Peters went on to the kitchen and found more papers and telephone records.

Mullinax started in the master bedroom, where he found another article on Cindy’s death and Cindy’s wallet and checkbook. Mullinax found some pornographic material under the bed along with some condoms.

In a closet, Mullinax found two pairs of rubber flip-flop sandals, footwear that might have been in the sacks in the raft. Tyson and Rylie’s bedrooms were completely empty. In the bedroom occupied by Greg, Mullinax found the nail-studded baseball club that Randy used to impress the boys; in an upstairs recreation room, Mullinax found a collection of brand new Marine Corps patches, along with photo albums containing pictures of Janis, Jalina, Cindy, Greg and Lori.

Next the detectives turned their attention to the three-car garage. Mullinax located many of Cindy’s financial and tax records on a shelf. Another detective with professional experience as a car mechanic went through Randy’s tool box, listing most of the tools separately; it appeared that many of the tools were the same type and manufacturer that Randy had claimed were stolen in 1988.

Meanwhile, Peters found a four-drawer file cabinet in another corner of the garage which yielded still more papers, some going back to the marriage of Randy and Janis. In the back of the second drawer of the cabinet, Peters found a torn, four-page note that had been wadded into a ball. Peters unfolded the papers and noticed that it appeared to be a letter in Cindy’s handwriting. That will probably be worth looking at more closely, she thought, and dropped the wadded papers into the sack for later review.

By mid-afternoon, the detectives had completed the garage search and a search of Randy’s backyard storage shed. The shed yielded two chainsaws—apparently the same saws Randy reported taken in the 1988 burglary.

Next, Mullinax and Peters located a locked door leading to a crawl space beneath the house. Mullinax found the keys in the kitchen, and he and Peters bent down and made their way inside. The hidden area was crammed with cases of Ford Company motor oil and numerous Ford parts and tools, including an expensive jack. Mullinax and Peters felt sure the stuff had been stolen by Randy from Bill Pierre Ford. Peters and Mullinax removed all the items and stacked them on the floor of the garage. A call was made to Randy’s boss at Bill Pierre.

Just before seven P.M. Randy’s boss arrived and looked over the Ford items. The oil, tools and parts, he said, appeared to have come from his dealership. He made a list of all the items to compare them to the dealership’s inventory.

Back in the house, Peters removed Randy’s Marine wall shrine, including his “Iron Man” plaque. The relics of a past that never was, she thought, would do Randy precious little good where he was headed.

Just after eight P.M., the detectives returned to the courthouse with a truckload of items taken in the search, including scores of sacks crammed with papers and most of Randy’s tool collection. The detectives carted all the stuff into the police department evidence room and locked it up for the night. A closer examination, with Marilyn Brenneman in attendance, was set for the following day.