December 26, 2025 • 51 mins
In Part Two of this story last week, we learned how serial husband and waste of DNA Randy Roth seduced, married, and almost certainly murdered his second wife Jan for a life-insurance payout, and tried and failed to use the same scheme on wife number three, Donna Clift. And if you already hate Randy, that’s only going to get worse after the tragic conclusion to his story this week.
Sources:
Fatal Charm, Carlton Smith
A Rose For Her Grave, Ann Rule
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/shes-got-her-name-back-teenager-murdered-in-1977-finally-identified-with-new-dna-technique-and-genetic-genealogy/
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Sources:
Fatal Charm, Carlton Smith
A Rose For Her Grave, Ann Rule
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/shes-got-her-name-back-teenager-murdered-in-1977-finally-identified-with-new-dna-technique-and-genetic-genealogy/
Follow us, campers!
Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfire
https://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/
Facebook: True Crime Campfire
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/?hl=en
Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfire
Email: truecrimecampfirepod@gmail.com
MERCH! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, campers, grab your marshmallows and gather around the true
crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie and I'm Whitney,
and we're here to tell you a true story that
is way stranger than fiction or roasting murderers and marshmallows
around the true crime campfire.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
In part two of this story, last week, we learned
how serial husband and waste of DNA Randy Roth seduced, married,
and almost certainly murdered his second wife, jan for a
life insurance payout, and tried and failed to use the
same scheme on wife number three, Donna Clift. And if
you already hate Randy, that's only going to get worse
after the tragic conclusion to his story this week, this
(00:43):
is the finale for the Love of Money, the Crimes
of Randy Roth. Donna Clift, Randy's third wife, was now
out of his life, well almost. Not long after his
divorce from Donna, Randy and Ben Goodwin were in a
(01:05):
bar one night when one of Donna's friends recognized Randy.
She stopped dead, then slapped him dead in the face
and said, you child, abusing son of a bitch. Randy
burst into tears. He was like, nobody's more important in
my life than Greg.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Greg is my whole life.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Well, maybe you should stop torturing him. Then, By the way,
damn Donna's friend. Like, I don't condone slapping anybody, Okay,
I really don't. I prefer to carefully dismantle my enemies
with my devastating wit. But damn, you know Donna's girl
standing on business over here. By the spring of nineteen
eighty six, Randy was fishing again. Mary Joe Phillips was
(01:47):
separated from her husband and in the process of getting divorced.
She had five kids who split time between her and
their father, and one evening, she just dropped them off
at home after a trip to the beach and went
out to Albertson's grocery store to get food for dinner. It
seemed like every aisle she went into there was this
man shopping with this cute little boy. It was such
(02:09):
an odd coincidence that soon all three of them just
started smiling at each other. When Mary Joe was headed
out to the car, the little boy trotted after her
and said, hey, lady, would you please go out with
my dad? And little Greg gave her Randy Roth's phone number.
As we learned last week, this was one of Randy's
(02:29):
tried and tested pick me up routines, and Mary Joe
was a good mark. Not only did she have five
children of her own, she owned a daycare center. She
loved kids, and she was charmed by this cute single dad.
A week or two later, she called and she and
Randy made a date for dinner. He picked her up
in his truck, but before she got in, Randy whipped
(02:51):
out a camera to take a picture of her. I
want proof that I've had such a beautiful lady out
with me, he said. Ugh. It was dorky and kind
of embarrassing, but it made Mary Joe feel good too.
And next came the practiced routine we've already seen a
couple times, the flowers, the gifts, the endless sweet romantic gestures,
(03:16):
all gentlemanly courtesy with no pressure for sex. In July,
Mary Joe and her kids moved in with Randy, and
by the next month, Randy was dropping heavy hints about marriage.
Tell me your ring size, he said, And with them
getting ready to tie their families together, there was another
thing Randy thought they should take care of. He already
(03:36):
had a healthy life insurance policy, but maybe Mary Joe
should get one too. After all, they had six kids
between them. They would have to be taken care of,
you know, if something were to happen to either of them.
At this point, Mary Joe had to share a secret,
something she'd been struggling with by herself. She'd been feeling
(03:56):
sick and had recently been given a diagnosis. She had cancer.
It was in the very early stages and very treatable,
but right now she was pretty much uninsurable. Well, that
was okay, Randy said, and changed the subject. He didn't
seem upset and also didn't seem at all concerned about
the cancer. Mary Joe definitely didn't want him to freak
(04:19):
out and be scared, but it would have been nice
if he'd been at least a little bit worried. Within
just a couple of days, though, her warm relationship with
Randy chilled out as quickly as if he'd shoved her
into a meat locker. He barely spoke to her, and
he certainly didn't smile. She'd have dinner ready and laid
out for him when he got home from work, and
without a word, he'd ignore it and start putting something
(04:41):
together for himself, just as if she wasn't even there.
All talk about rings and marriage was completely gone. He
wasn't going to break up with her. He was just
going to passive aggressively make sure Mary jo knew that
Randy didn't want her in his house anymore. She got
the message and soon left and woo oh boy, girl,
you dodged a bullet. Imagine how she must have felt later,
(05:04):
by the way, like after all this came out in
the press.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Ugh, Yeah, his behavior is so obvious in hindsight, like
he's just a fake little man and capable of human emotion,
like if Pinocchio was a short, fully grown loser with
a false sense of superiority.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Yeah, and you know, the fact that he did the
passive aggressive I'm gonna be an asshole until you leave
me thing is amazing because we know who he is
in his core.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
He is a.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Violent, awful human being and yet too pussy to just
break up with his girlfriend. Unbelievable.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
With Donna and Mary Joe gone, the Good Ones invited
Randy and Greg to spend Christmas with them, and they,
if you remember, are the next door neighbors. That Randy
befriended their daughter. Brittany was thirteen years old and had
a very obvious crush on her good looking neighbor Randy,
who was thirty one by now. Isn't an especially unusual dynamic.
(06:02):
I mean, I had crushes on all kinds of teachers
and neighbors and stuff when I.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Was in junior high.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
And in most cases it's harmless because most people aren't psychopaths.
Randy preferred thin women. His mom, Elizabeth, was kind of zoftig,
and as we suggested last week, Randy's main physical criterion
was don't look like mommy. Scared of mommy. He teased
Brittany about her weight, so she went on a crash
(06:29):
diet that left her thin and weak. With her parents
worried she was anorexic, Randy was delighted. Piece of shit. God,
I hate this guy.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
In nineteen eighty six, Brittany Goodwin started babysitting for Greg
Ben and Marta. Goodwin knew Brittany was all mooney over Randy,
so they had a word with him, saying, this kid
is really developing a crush on you. We just wanted
you to be aware. Don't show her quite as much attention.
Hold back, we need your help on this. Randy nodded seriously.
I will, I will, he said, and then kind of weirdly,
(07:02):
I wouldn't ever touch Brittany who said anything about touching Randy.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Red flag, red flag.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Yeah, call the police right now. To understand what was
going on here, we have to explain how intertwined the
Goodwin's lives were with Randy's. By this point, he was
the best friend Ben had ever had. They were all
in and out of each other's houses all the time.
They had dinner together more often than not. He was family.
They trusted him. They shouldn't have. Randy seduced Brittany almost
(07:35):
as soon as she started babysitting for Greg. She was
either thirteen or fourteen at the time, which is really
a distinction without a difference. She was a child and
it was statutory rape. Whenever Randy had her babysit, Randy
would drive off and then either drive around or just
sit and wait until he knew Greg would be asleep,
then come back and park on a side street, slink
through the back door, and spend time with Brittany. Ben
(07:58):
was Britney's stepdad. Randy Ben's supposed best friend did his
best to ruin their relationship, telling Brittany she didn't have
to do anything Ben said because he wasn't her real father.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
The relationship went on for two years, making it one
of Randy's longest. As you might remember, he'd had another
long affair with Greg's previous babysitter too, a married woman.
In the way Randy thought of the world, both women
belonged to other men, and it was getting one over
on those other men that made the whole thing exciting
for him. I mean that in the fact that he
was a disgusting creep.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Yeah, that part is key, obviously.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
Yeah, Randy's whole sexuality is based on impressing or like
other men.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Impressing other men was his emma. And it's like, man,
the closet is glass, Randy, It's okay.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Just he just stoked his own ego, just all day,
every day. That was the only thing that gave him
any pleasure. I guess was just yeah, some kind of
shallow self aggrandizement.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
It's so pathetic, it really is. And women weren't people
to him, so the only other people in his mind
were men. Yeah, Randy promised Brittany he'd marry her as
soon as she turned eighteen, which he had no intention
of doing. Of course, she developed some psychological problems and
(09:21):
her relationship with her parents was tumultuous even by teenage
girl standards. He dumped her as soon as he had
a woman he thought might make him rich. She wouldn't
tell anyone about what happened until she was an adult.
The next woman Randy targeted was Cynthia bomb Gardner. Around
the time Randy's brief marriage to Donna Clift was imploding,
(09:41):
Cindy's marriage to her husband Tom was also ending, although
in a much sadder way. Tom bomb Gardner was a
couple years younger than Randy, and they'd actually gone to
Meddledale High School at the same time, although as far
as we know, they never interacted. Tom married pretty blonde
Cindy in nineteen seventy six, and they soon had two boys,
Tyson and Rightley. Tom had a good job with UPS,
(10:05):
and he had a membership to the Teamsters Union, which
came with good medical coverage and survivor benefits. Those became
important much sooner than anyone would have thought. When he
was just twenty nine years old, Tom was diagnosed with
an advanced case of Hodgkins lymphoma. He was dead within
six months.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
God, I cannot even imagine when two kids, Oh, my Lord,
so devastated. Of course, a widow at twenty seven years old,
Cindy tried to continue with her life. Tom's survivor benefits
and life insurance meant she didn't have to work and
could focus on raising the boys and doing occasional volunteer.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Work at her church.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Cindy was very religious, and by the time she eventually
started thinking about dating again, she'd decided on a rule
she wouldn't get involved with a divorced man. A man
would either have to never be married or, like her,
be widowed. But in the immediate aftermath of Tom's death,
Cindy had no interest in any of that. She asked
her friend Laurie to move in and help with the
(11:04):
boys so neither of them would have to live alone.
Unlike most people in this story, Tom's death had given
Cindy good reason to worry about the future, even as
young as she was. She had a will drawn up
that named Laurie as executor and as her preferred guardian
for Tyson and Riley if anything happened to Cindy, and
to make sure the boys would get to stay in
their own home, she willed the house to Laurie too.
(11:27):
She filed the will with the court then put it
away in a safe deposit box along with a few
precious things of Tom's that she wanted the boys to
have when they were older. The ladies lived like this
for five years. Cindy found joy again. Laurie's mom, Dotty,
said she was very lovely, very pretty, very happy wherever
she was. Laughter just entered the room. She was just life.
(11:52):
When the boys started Little League, Cindy helped out manning
the concession stand, and this was where she met Randy Roth.
Randy was a coach in the ten to twelve year
old league and took it all very seriously, yelling and
barking at the kids because it was extremely important that
these children hit, throw and catch balls correctly. When Cindy
(12:13):
started at the concession stand in nineteen ninety, Randy noticed
her right away, and he did what any red blooded
manly man would do when he wants to get to
know an attractive woman. He sent his kid over.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
It's like as soon as he had Greg he had
no other moves, like, where's sir Randolph when you need him?
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Right? All right, Greg, who must surely have been getting
sick of this sidekick act by now went to get
something at the concession stand, and then Randy showed up
to pay. He made small talk with Cindy for a while,
and within a few days had arranged to help with
the concessions the same nights she worked. One of the
main skills of predators like Randy is selecting their victims.
(12:54):
Cindy fit Randy's primary criterion. She was young, meaning she
could be cheaply insured for large amounts of money.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Plus she had.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Children who were already receiving hefty survivor benefits from their
dad's death and would get even more if something happened
to Cindy. And this is how he thinks about this,
these two children who lost their father, and that's a
plus for him. Just digest that for a second, like this.
That is a psychopath. Holy shit. And five years after
(13:26):
her husband's death, Cindy was lonely and kind of naive romantically.
Randy made kind of a red flaggy introduction of himself
to Cindy. I noticed you right from the beginning, he said,
but the way you look, the way you dress, I
figured you probably had money. I didn't feel worthy to
introduce myself. Okay, are we following the logic in Randy's
(13:47):
brain there money equals worth? But then I saw you
drive an Escort and I drive an Escort too, and
I figured anybody driving an Escort couldn't be rich. So
I felt like I could introduce myself. Good God. Randy
bought cars about as often as most of us buy
cartons of milk, selling the old ones on. He'd just
(14:07):
gotten the Escort, probably after he'd seen Cindy, so that
he could use this line.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Also, hello nagging like uh, I thought you were a
rich princess, but now that I know that you're a
poor piece of shit like me, we can date. This
is this is why he had to use Greg. He
had no game because shit is crazy. Man.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
If he was trying to nag for real, he would
just be like Colin Robinson from What We Do in
the Shadows is a dipshit. That'd be all he had.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
He asked her out the next week, and Cindy said yes,
And here we go again with the love bombing flowers. No,
it's sweet romantic gestures. Randy was so regimented at all
this by now that I'm certain he said exactly the
same things he'd used on previous women, sent the same notes,
probably bought his roses from the same florist. Of course,
(15:05):
Cindy didn't know she was being treated to a repeat performance.
She was swept off her feet. Most of their dates
involved their three boys. They all just fit together like
they were already a family. Randy kept quiet about his
two divorces and only mentioned the wife who gave him
a connection to Cindy's own experience. Jan Hey lied. Of course,
(15:26):
she actually died as I was holding her in my arms,
he said. She left me with a three year old boy,
and I've been alone ever since, looking for someone like you. Course,
as we know, Jan had died at the bottom of
a three hundred foot cliff, almost certainly after being pushed
by Randy. She wasn't Gregg's mom, and Randy had been
(15:48):
chasing after women for fun and profit constantly since her death.
Jan's death also allowed Randy to better fit what Cindy
was looking for. She would only get involved with someone
who was committed to the church.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Randy didn't give a single shit about religion, but thanks
to his crazy mom's religiosity, he was able to fake it.
He said he'd turned his back on religion after jan died,
but he'd been thinking about going back to church. Cindy
invited him to go with her. I think that's what
I've been looking for, Randy said.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Ugh.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
At the end of July, Randy asked Cindy to come
with him to a classic car show in Reno. Her
heart sank. That was an overnight trip. Was her new boyfriend,
the courteous Sir Randolph, just trying to get her in
the sack? After all? She told Randy she'd never go
on an overnight trip with a man who wasn't her husband. Well,
that wasn't a problem, Randy said. They could take care
(16:44):
of that right down in Reno. Her parents and her
friend Laurie tried their best to talk her out of it,
but there was no swaying Cindy. She thought she'd met
her mister Wright, someone who could understand the heartbreak she'd
been through because he'd been through it too. So they
drove down to Reno and got married. They'd been dating
maybe five weeks when they got back home. Cindy's parents
(17:08):
were determined to make the best of the situation and
welcome Randy into their family. They went over to Cindy's
house to meet him for the first time, and her dad, Jim,
tried to hug him. Randy just stood Ramrod straight, saying
nothing and showing no emotion. Emotions were for Cissy's Jim
tried again, offering Randy an open invitation to come over
for dinner with Cindy and the boys, but Randy brushed
(17:29):
off the invite. Cindy and the boys came over a bunch,
but Randy never set foot in his new in law's house.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
And I know people have different levels of social competence, okay,
and there's nothing wrong with being socially awkward or having
social anxiety or whatever. That is not what's going on here.
We know this, And I have to say, for me,
that's a red flag too, because my ex who I've
spoken about many times, was horrendously abusive, and he was
exactly the same with my family, and they really tried,
(17:57):
you know, to be kind and welcoming, and he would
just that line about standing Ramrod straight, exactly like that.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Randy and Cindy decided they needed a new house for
their new family, and they each put their current homes
on the market. Randy deliberately asked way too much for
his place in Misty Meadows, over double what he'd paid
for just six years ago. So Cindy's house sold first,
and it was her money that made the down payment
on their brand new home in Woodenville, a big place
with four bedrooms and a three car garage. Property prices
(18:27):
usually climb more quickly than inflation. They paid two hundred
and seventy five thousand dollars for the place in nineteen
ninety and today it's worth nearly two million dollars. And
of course they had the life insurance talk. If anything
should happen to either of them. Randy said they needed
to make sure the survivor wouldn't be in financial trouble
and maybe lose the house. He already had a big
(18:48):
policy that he'd made Cindy the beneficiary of. Maybe she
could do the same for him. Cindy actually had life
insurance already, one hundred and fifteen thousand dollars policy with
Tyson and Riley as the beneficiaries, but Randy told her
that wasn't enough. So Cindy got a new two hundred
and fifty thousand dollars policy with Randy as the beneficiary,
and against her insurance agent's advice, replaced the kids with
(19:11):
Randy on the smaller policy too. In today's money, Cindy's
life was now insured for almost a million dollars. This
does feel like a horror movie watching somebody go on
to the basement.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
It does.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
It's also very similar to Season one's case.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Oh Yeah, And you can see it creeping up and
all the steps that lead up to it, and you
just want to reach in and say no, no, yeah,
saying yourself.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
The mortgage and most of their monthly expenses were paid
for by the survivor benefits Cindy Suns received. When Randy
lowered the price of his old house and it sold,
he made about fifty grand, but didn't put any of
it into the new house. He'd been fired from Biden
Milk Dairy for helping himself to their gasoline for his
two vehicles, and had a new mc caanic's job at
(20:00):
Bill Pierre Ford. He blew most of his salary on cars, trucks,
motorcycles and ATVs. The family lived on Cindy's money. Randy
just bought toys for himself. Cindy had boxes of Tom's
things at her house, things she was saving for her kids.
Randy didn't want her to bring them to the new house,
so she kept them at her parents' place instead. This
(20:22):
is the level of insecurity we're dealing with in Randy Roth.
He was worried about competition from a dead man.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
And competition for a woman he didn't even want. I mean,
Cindy was just a potential payout for him. Just bizarre.
He's still that competitive. It's his brain man. Fascinating and horrifying.
(21:08):
Cindy set about decorating the new house, deciding on a
color scheme of mauve and blue. She had a blast
getting lots of new furniture, along with throw pillows, hanging baskets,
a display cabinet for her dolls.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Oh, bless her heart.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Their bedroom had a king sized mauv spread with a
flower pattern and ribbon edges. Cindy had a good eye.
The place looked like a magazine spread, all very pretty
and feminine, which was why Randy hated it. He hated
anything traditionally feminine, anything soft or frilly, or just nice.
He was a US Marine, for God's sake, there were
no frills in the core. I'm one hundred percent certain
(21:47):
Randy had zero interest in musical theater. But if somebody
ever managed to drag him along to My Fair Lady,
he'd love that song that goes why can't a woman
be more like a Matt? That would be his jam.
But Randy didn't complain about the decor, at least at first,
just satisfied himself with the upstairs wreck room, which he
(22:07):
decorated with all his military crap, all his fake military crap.
Every other place he'd lived, Randy had immediately started on
yard work. He was a competent landscaper and it was
a good way to increase the property value. But he
didn't do anything at the Woodinville house, which needed work.
With the yard all crab grass and no flowers or
shrubs at all. He complained about the yard but made
(22:29):
no effort to fix it for the same reason he
let Cindy do what she wanted with the decorating. He
wasn't planning to live here for long up until about Christmas,
and busy with the new house. Cindy had been happy,
but as nineteen ninety one rolled around. It was clear
to the people who cared about her that things were
not great, As Randy's previous wives had discovered. Once he
(22:52):
had a ring on Cindy's finger, his emotional range narrowed
to pretty much just irritation and nothing else. Cindy, always
bright and bubbly, was muted, a sure sign that somebody's
in a toxic relationship. By the way, when they turned
down their volume around their partner. Randy didn't want her
to dye her hair, so she let her natural brown
(23:13):
start going out. Randy wanted her to wear less makeup,
so she did. Randy was mad when he found out
how much her manicures cost. Cindy got around that one
by paying cash instead of by check, but she still
had to okay the color first with Randy. You know,
nothing too trampy, and just a reminder that it was
Cindy's money that got them their nice house and all
(23:35):
their nice things. She had every right to buy whatever
the hell she wanted, but Randy chose his victims carefully,
and Cindy was someone who believed in pleasing her husband.
People noticed that Cindy spokeless, and when she did she
usually looked to Randy first, as if for approval. She
wasn't allowed to join a health club. Randy was worried
(23:56):
she might meet men there. It was fine for him
to join. Of course, he did let her join the
YMCA for all female aerobics classes and walking groups, but
got furious when they sent her flyers addressed to Cindy
Roth instead of missus Randy Roth. Dear God, there are
faberge eggs less fragile than this man's masculinity. He's just pitiful.
(24:22):
Sometimes Cindy's car wouldn't start, and she was convinced Randy
had disabled it to make sure she stayed home. And
by the way, after Randy broke things off with Britney Goodwin,
she also reported that sometimes she couldn't get her car
to start if she was planning to go out and
meet friends, especially if she was meeting a boy. Oh
my god. Cindy wasn't the type of person to share
(24:45):
problems in her marriage, and she wasn't the type of
person who would see a therapist if she was sad,
But it seems clear that in nineteen ninety one she
was thoroughly depressed. She took less care of herself in
the house. She was always getting sick. The happy optimism
her life had just been quenched. She was unhappy. As
July rolled around and they got close to the one
(25:07):
year anniversary of their rushed Reno wedding, she and Randy
planned a return trip to Nevada in early August. Cindy
wouldn't live long enough to go there. On July twenty third,
nineteen ninety one, the hottest day of the summer, the
beach at Lake Samamish State Park was still crowded as
afternoon shifted into evening. Cindy's two sons, Tyson and Riley,
(25:29):
were eleven and nine years old, respectively. They sat on
the sand looking out across the water, which was crowded
with swimmers and farther out watercraft. They were looking for
their mom and Randy, who'd gone out paddling in Randy's
little gray inflatable raft, but they'd been gone longer than
the boys had expected.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
They spotted the raft, but only saw Randy, shirtless and
with sunglasses on, rowing his way through the other boats.
He didn't seem to be in a hurry. The boy
started walking towards the south end of the swimming area
where it looked like the raft would come ashore. Randy
was pulling the raft up to the beach. When they
got there, he ignored them. When the boys got closer,
(26:10):
they saw their mom lying in the bottom of the raft.
She was in about four inches of water, what hair
across her face, her eyes open and vacant, and her
face and torso blue. She was utterly still. Go get
the lifeguard and ask him for help, Randy calmly told Tyson,
but don't make a commotion. The lifeguard was a nineteen
(26:30):
year old kid, Michael McFadden, sitting in his elevated seat.
He wasn't sure what the boys calling up to him wanted,
but then he looked over and saw a blue tinged
body lying in the bottom of the raft by the
shore eight eighty eight. He yelled the emergency code and
jumped down and started sprinting over. Randy was standing nearby,
so calm and casual that McFadden just assumed he was
(26:52):
a bystander. Together they pulled Cindy out of the raft
and onto the sand. What happened, McFadden asked, just before
he started CPR she was under water. Randy said she
swallowed some water. Between breaths, mac Fadden asked how long
was she under? Ten minutes? Randy said A crowd had
started to gather. One of them was a woman named
(27:13):
Patty Schultz, who happened to be a paramedic, and mac
Fadden gladly let someone more experience take over. Randy squatted
on his heels at Cindy's feet and watched the scene impassively.
Like mac Fadden, Patty asked questions between breaths. How long
was she under? I don't know? Randy said? Was it
five minutes? I dunno? Was it ten? Randy just shook
(27:34):
his head. Sirens sounded and an ambulance pulled up in
the sand. More paramedics got out. They intubated Cindy and
injected a heart stimulant. A paramedic got out a defibrillator
and started trying to jumpstart her heart. Another lifeguard took
Tyson and Riley to the guard shack so they wouldn't
have to watch the paramedics work on their mom. Randy
(27:56):
meanwhile left the paramedics to their work and went back
down to the raft. He took three wet tote bags
of towels and clothes out, then spilled out all the
water from the bottom. He opened the air valves and
calmly started deflating the raft as the paramedics tried to
save his wife's life. Just a few feet away, a
cop who had just arrived told him to get out
of the way. I'm her husband, Randy said, calmly, you're
(28:17):
her husband, the cop said, astonished, Randy looked like the
least concerned person on the whole beach. The cop asked
what had happened, and Randy told him all in the
most matter of fact way. Well, we were paddling around
the lake. We were swimming around out there, and she
got a cramp in her leg. She was hanging on
to the side of the raft, and then a boat
(28:39):
went by and swamped us. That was when the raft
flipped over. I heard her choke like she swallowed some water.
I turned the raft over and found her floating face down.
I tried to get her back into the raft, and
I did, and then I just paddled in to get help.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
The cops offered to drive Randy to the hospital where
Cindy would be taken, but he insisted on taking his own.
He walked over there with the rolled up raft in
the totes and only now mentioned that he had two
kids somewhere on the beach. Before he could get in
the truck, a fire official asked him what had happened,
So Randy told the same story, or mostly the same story.
(29:15):
I turned over the raft and she was dead. He
said dead. The fire official said, well, unconscious. Randy said
dead unconscious? What's the difference. The lifeguard brought the two
boys over, and by now they were both sobbing. Randy
looked disgusted. Come on, boys, we're going to the hospital.
He said. Not one word of comfort, not so much
(29:39):
as a hug. Patty Schultz, the paramedic, decided she was
going to ride to the hospital with them, whether Randy
liked it or not, just to make sure the two
boys were okay. Randy answered her questions in monosyllables. He
didn't show anything other than irritation, some of which was
directed at the two boys in the back seat, who
struggled to hold in their grief. As the ambulance rushed
(30:02):
Cindy to Overlake Hospital in Bellevue, doctors waiting for her
there quized the paramedics about what had happened. Had Cindy
had a seizure. Was she diabetic? They just couldn't understand
how someone had managed to drown so close to an
inflatable raft, especially with someone there in the water to
help her. The paramedics didn't have any answers. Nobody did.
(30:24):
The whole situation made no sense at all. Cindy was
way past the point where she could be saved. She
was pronounced dead in the hospital just after six thirty
p m. A grief counselor went to inform Randy and
the boys. The boys wept, Randy ignored them. He looked
sullen and pissed off. Even though they were inside, he
(30:46):
still hadn't taken off his sunglasses. I couldn't save her,
he kept saying to nobody in particular. A detective came
in and asked Randy to write down what had happened.
He described the same scenario he had previously, with a
few extra wrinkles. You might remember from a couple weeks ago,
or maybe last week, that Randy had said it had
(31:08):
been the idea of Jan, his second wife, to hike
up Beacon Rock from where she'd fallen to her death.
Randy was always utterly unwilling to accept responsibility for anything
that went wrong. Now, he wrote, Cindy asked me to
row to the east side of the lake, where it
would be more romantic. I said, it looks like a
long way. She said, you're strong, you can do it.
(31:30):
He gave more details of the accident. While they were
in the water, with Cindy holding onto the side of
the raft, awake from a passing boat about fifty to
one hundred yards away went by, and the raft turned
over on top of her. She coughed once, and I
hurried to write the raft, which took about thirty seconds.
She was already floating face down. And if you've noticed that,
(31:51):
Randy said, the boat flipped for thirty seconds, but then
remembered that he carried a few tots out of it
when he landed on the beach, still full of towels
and clothes. Give yourself a Gold Detective Star. Randy only
got agitated when the police told him they were going
to impound the raft. They didn't have the right, he complained,
it was his. This was less than an hour after
(32:14):
Cindy had been pronounced dead. Plenty of people were immediately
suspicious of Randy, and that included the first detective to
read his statement, There'd been a ton of boats out
on the water. Why hadn't Randy waved or called for
help for many of them instead of slowly paddling his
dinky little raft to shore. Surely Cindy couldn't have swallowed
(32:34):
enough water from a boat's wake to drown in thirty seconds?
Was it even possible for a boat's wake to flip
over a raft like that? And then there was Randy himself,
his weird flat response and his total indifference to the
grief of Cindy's sons. People can react to grief and
shock in ways that seem really strange to others, but
(32:54):
coupled with the other confusing aspects about Cindy's death, Randy's
odd behavior was not doing an many favors. An investigation
into Cindy's death had begun before he and the boys
had he been gotten home from the hospital, because whatever
had happened to Cindy had been out on the lake.
The case went to the King County Major Crime Section
instead of the city police, and specifically to Detective Sue Peters.
(33:18):
She'd been having a cookout with their dad and some friends,
which she abandoned to drive to the nearest police station
and start making phone calls. After speaking to the officers
who'd already interviewed Randy, she was convinced Cindy's death needed
a thorough investigation.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
Randy, meanwhile, was trying to get nine year old Riley
to stop crying in the backseat of his truck. There's
no need to cry, he said, just be quiet. It's
over with. There's nothing to cry about.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Jesus.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
He took the boys for grimly silent burgers and fries
at Burger King, then stopped off to pick up three
movies to watch at home and try to cheer them up. Later,
Randy would act all astonished and hurt when people said
he'd been insensitive to the boys after Cindy's death. One
of the movies he picked up just hours after the
boys had seen their mother's dead body was Weekend at Bernie's.
(34:05):
Randy laughed all the way through it. He's such a
fucking loser. God, I can't stand this guy. Over the
next few days, he shoved everything Cindy had owned into
black garbage bags.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Randy Roth is a classic example of a psychopath's total
lack of understanding about human emotions. It did not even
occur to him that the kids might not want to
see a movie about a dead body being passed off
as a living when that's what Weekend at Bernie's is about.
If you haven't seen it, Skuy dies and his two
friends have to make him look alive for some reason.
(34:37):
I forget why, but holy shit, what a choice right
after you've just watched your mother drown ugh.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
After Detective Peter's got physical descriptions of Randy and Cindy,
she thought it was plausible that he'd just held her
underwater until she drowned. He was much stronger than Cindy,
and killing someone like that wouldn't necessarily leave marks on
either one of them. It was a more believable scenario
than Cindy, who was a good swimmer, being drowned by
a boat wake. The autopsy didn't show any signs of
(35:06):
a struggle. There was no blood or skin under Cindy's nails,
no bruising on the body. There were two small scratches
on the side of her neck, but that was it,
and it seemed likely that those had been made during
attempts to save Cindy's life. The body provided no evidence
to suggest that Cindy's death had been anything other than
an accidental drowning. About a week after Cindy's death, Sue
(35:28):
Peters got a call from a woman saying she knew
something about the woman who drowned. This was Stacy Reese,
a receptionist that the car dealership with Randy worked. Stacy
had started working there at the start of the year,
and it hadn't taken long for Randy to move in
on her. Soon they were having regular lunch dates where
Randy's favorite subject was complaining about his wife, Cindy, well,
(35:49):
his sort of wife. He told Stacy that they had
a one year marriage contract. Whatever the hell that was
supposed to mean. I mean, we know what it meant.
To Randy. He had no intention of staying with Cindy
any longer than he had to to ensure he got
a nice life insurance payment and access to the boys
survivors benefits. The day before Cindy drowned, Randy told Stacy
(36:09):
that the contract was just about up. He'd called Stacy
a couple days after Cindy's death. She asked if he
was all right, and Randy said, why wouldn't I be?
He called Stacy a couple more times that night, the
last time to ask her out just two days after
his wife had died. Remember Je, Stacy was creeped out
(36:29):
and turned him down. She couldn't shake the horrible suspicion
that Randy might have killed his wife just so he
could make a move for her. But what really started
the investigation moving at top speed was when Stacy told
Detective Peters that Randy had been married before, and that
a second wife had died in a hiking accident after
they'd only been married for about eight months. Two wives,
(36:50):
both of whom had been married to Randy Roth for
less than a year, both of whom died in apparent
accidents outdoors and with no witnesses. It was plenty suspicious,
and it didn't take long to add motive to the mix,
because the next call Detective Peter's got was from Mary
Joe Phillips, the one who got away.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Mary Joe was able to fill in a lot of
blanks in the growing picture of Randy's life. She told
Peters about Randy's three previous wives, jan who had died,
and the two Donnas Randy's first and third wives, and
she told her own story how Randy had come on
like a hurricane right up until he'd learned that Mary
Joe was uninsurable, whereupon he'd turned to ice to a
(37:29):
homicide detective. Life insurance and spousal murder go together like
peanut butter and chocolate, and Randy sounded like someone who
could kill Mary Joe shared some of his stories from Vietnam,
how he'd killed dozens of people and killed and mutilated
women and children. These stories were all lies, of course,
but they do tell us something about the image Randy
(37:49):
liked to project, and they also tell us that a
surprising number of people are okay with it if their
significant other admits to killing children. That's been one of
the interesting realizations of this case, hasn't it. Who'd thought
it didn't take long to uncover the records pertaining to
Randy's life. His military service had been real, if brief,
(38:10):
and had not coincided with any military action in Vietnam.
He had a criminal record from petty thefts in the
mid seventies with no jail time, and he'd been married
four times, never for very long. When Peters got in
touch with authorities down in Scamania County, where Beacon Rock was.
They made it clear they thought Randy had murdered his
second wife, Jan, they just hadn't been able to prove it.
(38:34):
When she spoke with Cindy's best friend Laurie, she learned
a couple of things. One was that Cindy and Randy's
marriage had rapidly disintegrated after their wedding, so much so
that Cindy was already thinking about divorce despite her strong
religious opposition to it. Another was that when Laurie called
him on the night of Cindy's death, Randy told her
he'd given Cindy twenty minutes of mouth to mouth resuscitation,
(38:56):
something he hadn't mentioned before. When Jan had Randy had
almost immediately given multiple conflicting accounts of what had happened.
Apparently he just couldn't help himself because he was doing
the same thing with Cindy's death. At Cindy's memorial service,
Randy either ignored or was flat out rude to anyone
who tried to talk to him. He left the urn
(39:18):
with Cindy's ashes in it on a table in the
chapel's waiting room and just walked out. The detectives brought
Randy in for a formal interview, and as his common
they didn't tell him just how much they already knew
about him. That way, they could ask him questions and
see what he chose to lie about or evade. Randy
told them about Cindy's death in his usual, matter of
(39:40):
fact way, and spoke about Jan's accident the same way.
Did anyone see the fall? One of the detectives asked.
Randy said he'd been about ten feet behind Jan when
she fell. They were living on Mount Lake Terrace at
the time and had gone down south for Thanksgiving. He
hadn't answered the question, so the detective asked it again.
Had anyone else seen the accident? As far as I know?
(40:04):
Randy said, they were right there. Who's they? Randy went quiet.
The interview was taking an uncomfortable turn, and we need
to remember all the way back to when we started
this story in part one, where Randy rushed down the
trail at Beacon Rock, all wild and wide eyed as
he surprised a group of hikers. Randy had in fact
(40:25):
been as surprised as they were. He hadn't thought anyone
was that close behind on the trail and had no
idea if they'd seen whatever had happened with jan now
eight years later. He must have wondered if somebody had
seen more than he knew. They hadn't, but it was
clear Randy was freaked out. When questioned about his other marriages,
Randy said his third one had been to a woman
(40:47):
named Dawn, whose last name he didn't know. Don't you
hate that when you don't know your wife's last name.
Her name was actually Donna, of course, and Randy's evasion
convinced the detectives that he was trying to caet keep
him away from her. He told them he thought down
had moved to Utah or Colorado. They asked Randy if
he'd take a polygraph test. He said he had no objection,
(41:10):
but he thought he should speak to an attorney first.
There wouldn't be any polygraph surprise, surprise. Within two minutes
of the interview ending, Randy was calling an attorney from
a payphone in the lobby of the King County Courthouse.
Randy was never as smart as he thought he was,
but he wasn't stupid. He knew he was in trouble.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
Detective soon tracked down Randy's third wife, Donna Cliff who
had not in fact left the state and was working
at a dry cleaners a couple miles away. They learned
about her brief marriage to Randy, which had quickly turned
terrifying when she'd refused to get life insurance she thought
Randy had tried to kill her. She also gave them
another lead to chase down Timbracado, Randy's one time best friend.
(41:53):
By now, the investigators were sure Randy had killed Cindy
to test the scenario of her drowning that Randy had described,
but they inflated his raft and towed it out to
the lake with two lifeguards playing the roles of Randy
and Cindy, and a detective driving his own powerboat to
create the waves that Randy said had flipped the raft
and drowned Cindy. He'd said the boat had been fifty
(42:14):
to one hundred yards away. The wake from that distance
barely even made the raft rock. The detective brought his
boat closer and closer until he was racing past barely
ten feet from the raft, throwing up nearly two feet
of wake. Still, the raft didn't flip. In fact, it
had been designed so that its inflated bottom would stick
(42:34):
to the water. The only way they could get it
to flip at all was when the lifeguards put all
their weight on one side, then reached across to pull
the far side up. The raft hadn't flipped when Cindy
was swimming, and even when the lifeguards did manage to
flip it, there was a big pocket of air trapped underneath.
There was no way someone would drown if they were
(42:55):
trapped under the raft for the thirty seconds Randy said
it had taken him to turn the raft back over.
And then there were the three totes of towels and
clothes that had been in the raft with them. The
detectives tested those too, and every time the raft flipped,
the contents of the toats scattered all over the water,
with a bunch of them sinking. The toats had still
been in the raft, wet but neatly packed when Randy
(43:17):
beached the raft. The investigators were certain Randy had killed Cindy,
but the prosecutor told them they didn't have enough yet.
There wasn't yet enough of a pattern in Randy's actions
to ensure that the death of janis Roth would be
included in the trial, and that seemed like a prerequisite
for the conviction, So the detectives went to speak to
Tim Bricado. Tim, Randy's one time best friend, was still
(43:39):
terrified of him. I know things about the band that
could come back that could cause harm to me and
my family, he told detectives. Yeah, man, that's really not
the kind of thing to say if you're trying to
make homicide investigators go away, like that's like, oh okay,
that's that's homicide investigator catnip is what you just said.
(44:01):
They're gonna be all over you. He told them that
the Vietnam War had turned Randy into a brutal killer.
The detective said, mm mmm, Randy hadn't served one day
in Vietnam. Tim was flabbergasted. The detectives could practically see
his conception of who Randy was shift from terrifying veteran
to run of the mill, bullshit artist. He told them
(44:22):
that just before jan had died, Randy had asked him
if he could ever kill his wife. Just after her death,
Randy had told him, don't ask me to tell you
something that you'll have to lie about. A couple of
weeks after Cindy's death, Tyson and Riley moved in with
Cindy's friend Laurie, who Cindy had stipulated as their guardian
and her will. Randy hadn't known about the will until
(44:44):
he'd rated Cindy's safe deposit box after her death, and
he was super pissed about it. He'd destroyed the will,
but the county already had a copy. Laurie took a
rented truck over to pick up the boy's things, bringing
along a burly brother in law, one of Cindy's cousins
in case. Randy was chilly but cordial at first. He
(45:04):
treated the boys things just like he treated Cindy's, just
cramming them into garbage bags, including their posters, which were ruined.
Riley had a collection of Ken Griffy junior baseball cards
that were his most prized possessions, with at least one
of them being worth a few hundred dollars. Randy had
stolen it.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
He wouldn't let them take Riley's pianos, saying he was
going to sell it to make the house payment. You
can't sell it, it's community property, Laurie said. Randy started
getting mad. You come in and you ruin my whole scenario.
He yelled. He said he'd been counting on the boy's
survivor benefits to pay the mortgage. He'd been planning to
quit his job and look after the boys. Now it
(45:44):
was Laurie who would get to quit her job. She
only wanted the boys for the money they'd bring her.
Laurie and her crew got out of there as fast
as they could. On October ninth, the investigation team and
the prosecutors decided to bite the bullet. They got a
cur warrant for Randy's house, which would be executed as
Randy was arrested. Sue Peters and her partner went to
(46:06):
see him at Bill Pierre Ford. You're under arrest for
investigation of first degree murder, Peters said. Randy held his
hands out in front of him for the handcuffs. That's
not how we do it, Peters said, pushing him around
and pulling his arms back to cuff him in the back.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
I love that, Sola.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
One of the first things they found at Randy's house
was a garage full of expensive auto parts and tools
that looked like they'd be more at home at Bill
Pierre Ford. They had Randy's boss come over to take
a look and yep, Randy'd been stealing anything that wasn't
nailed down almost since the day he started working there.
That was useful. It meant Randy was probably going to
(46:44):
stay in jail even if prosecutor decided to take some
time over formal murder charges. They found plenty of incriminating paperwork,
along with something that broke their hearts. Crumpled up and
thrown in a waste basket. They found a list that
Cindy had written of all the things Randy hated about her.
Randy hates Cindy's face makeup. Randy hates Cindy's blush. Randy
(47:07):
hates Cindy's lipstick. Randy hates Cindy's blonde hair. Randy hates
Cindy's ugly toes. They're the ugliest toes he's ever seen.
It went on and on for pages. Randy hates Cindy's pink,
feminine things in every room. Randy hate's telling Cindy where
he goes. Randy hates Sindy's monthly thing and putting up
(47:28):
with her each month. By the end of the note,
the writing was jagged and frantic. It had clearly been
written not long before Cindy's death, and she'd been incredibly unhappy,
just heart wrenching. Oh god.
Speaker 3 (47:44):
And by the.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Way, not for nothing. But Randy stopped working out while
he was in jail waiting for trial, and by the
time he showed up in the courtroom he looked like
a more insipid ned Flanders. So I don't know if
we want to be throwing stones about, looks Rando prick.
The next morning, Randy was formally charged with Cindy's murder.
The most important part of his trial happened before it
(48:07):
really even started. The judge ruled that Randy's actions with
jan Dona Number two, Mary, Joe Phillips, and finally Cindy
herself constituted a clear pattern of behavior that could be
properly introduced in court during Randy's trial. The quick courtships
and marriages, the pressuring for life insurance, and in two cases,
untimely and suspicious deaths. It all fit together, and with
(48:31):
all of that introduced, Randy's goose was cooked. It was
a circumstantial case, but the circumstances were compelling. Randy's defense
team made the only play they had. Randy wasn't a murderer.
He was just the world's unluckiest bridegroom. The rest of
the interests in the courtroom came from Randy's family. His mom, Elizabeth,
(48:52):
showed up in a slinky dress. Whenever Randy looked at her,
they glared at each other with obvious dislike. Randy's three
sisters were there too. One time they were in the
restroom doing their hair and makeup. One of our main
sources for this case was Anne Rule's book Arose for
her Grave, and either Anne or one of her friends
was in there and heard Randy's sister Lisa say to
(49:13):
a reporter, everybody feels so sorry for them, but you
know their troubles are over. Cindy's dead. It's Randy who
has to suffer for the rest of his life. H
ooh wow, what a family. Hopefully Randy will suffer for
the rest of his life. The jury found him guilty
of first degree murder and two counts of theft. He
(49:34):
was given a fifty one year sentence and is still
in there aged seventy, but will be eligible for parole
in twenty twenty nine. Yikes, I can't imagine he's a
good candidate. But who knows his brother Davy, also a murderer,
was released in two thousand and five and died of
cancer ten years later. Davy at least expressed some regret
(49:56):
for his crime Randy, which I'm sure will surprise one
never has. So that was a wild one.
Speaker 3 (50:04):
Write campers.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
You know we'll have another one for you next week,
but for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and
stay safe until we get together again around the True
Crime Campfire. And as always, we want to send a
grateful shout out to a few of our lovely Patreon supporters.
Thank you so much to Diane dutchy lover of true
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(50:26):
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(50:48):
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Slash True Crime Campfire
Hello, campers, grab your marshmallows and gather around the true
crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie and I'm Whitney,
and we're here to tell you a true story that
is way stranger than fiction or roasting murderers and marshmallows
around the true crime campfire.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
In part two of this story, last week, we learned
how serial husband and waste of DNA Randy Roth seduced, married,
and almost certainly murdered his second wife, jan for a
life insurance payout, and tried and failed to use the
same scheme on wife number three, Donna Clift. And if
you already hate Randy, that's only going to get worse
after the tragic conclusion to his story this week, this
(00:43):
is the finale for the Love of Money, the Crimes
of Randy Roth. Donna Clift, Randy's third wife, was now
out of his life, well almost. Not long after his
divorce from Donna, Randy and Ben Goodwin were in a
(01:05):
bar one night when one of Donna's friends recognized Randy.
She stopped dead, then slapped him dead in the face
and said, you child, abusing son of a bitch. Randy
burst into tears. He was like, nobody's more important in
my life than Greg.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Greg is my whole life.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Well, maybe you should stop torturing him. Then, By the way,
damn Donna's friend. Like, I don't condone slapping anybody, Okay,
I really don't. I prefer to carefully dismantle my enemies
with my devastating wit. But damn, you know Donna's girl
standing on business over here. By the spring of nineteen
eighty six, Randy was fishing again. Mary Joe Phillips was
(01:47):
separated from her husband and in the process of getting divorced.
She had five kids who split time between her and
their father, and one evening, she just dropped them off
at home after a trip to the beach and went
out to Albertson's grocery store to get food for dinner. It
seemed like every aisle she went into there was this
man shopping with this cute little boy. It was such
(02:09):
an odd coincidence that soon all three of them just
started smiling at each other. When Mary Joe was headed
out to the car, the little boy trotted after her
and said, hey, lady, would you please go out with
my dad? And little Greg gave her Randy Roth's phone number.
As we learned last week, this was one of Randy's
(02:29):
tried and tested pick me up routines, and Mary Joe
was a good mark. Not only did she have five
children of her own, she owned a daycare center. She
loved kids, and she was charmed by this cute single dad.
A week or two later, she called and she and
Randy made a date for dinner. He picked her up
in his truck, but before she got in, Randy whipped
(02:51):
out a camera to take a picture of her. I
want proof that I've had such a beautiful lady out
with me, he said. Ugh. It was dorky and kind
of embarrassing, but it made Mary Joe feel good too.
And next came the practiced routine we've already seen a
couple times, the flowers, the gifts, the endless sweet romantic gestures,
(03:16):
all gentlemanly courtesy with no pressure for sex. In July,
Mary Joe and her kids moved in with Randy, and
by the next month, Randy was dropping heavy hints about marriage.
Tell me your ring size, he said, And with them
getting ready to tie their families together, there was another
thing Randy thought they should take care of. He already
(03:36):
had a healthy life insurance policy, but maybe Mary Joe
should get one too. After all, they had six kids
between them. They would have to be taken care of,
you know, if something were to happen to either of them.
At this point, Mary Joe had to share a secret,
something she'd been struggling with by herself. She'd been feeling
(03:56):
sick and had recently been given a diagnosis. She had cancer.
It was in the very early stages and very treatable,
but right now she was pretty much uninsurable. Well, that
was okay, Randy said, and changed the subject. He didn't
seem upset and also didn't seem at all concerned about
the cancer. Mary Joe definitely didn't want him to freak
(04:19):
out and be scared, but it would have been nice
if he'd been at least a little bit worried. Within
just a couple of days, though, her warm relationship with
Randy chilled out as quickly as if he'd shoved her
into a meat locker. He barely spoke to her, and
he certainly didn't smile. She'd have dinner ready and laid
out for him when he got home from work, and
without a word, he'd ignore it and start putting something
(04:41):
together for himself, just as if she wasn't even there.
All talk about rings and marriage was completely gone. He
wasn't going to break up with her. He was just
going to passive aggressively make sure Mary jo knew that
Randy didn't want her in his house anymore. She got
the message and soon left and woo oh boy, girl,
you dodged a bullet. Imagine how she must have felt later,
(05:04):
by the way, like after all this came out in
the press.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Ugh, Yeah, his behavior is so obvious in hindsight, like
he's just a fake little man and capable of human emotion,
like if Pinocchio was a short, fully grown loser with
a false sense of superiority.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Yeah, and you know, the fact that he did the
passive aggressive I'm gonna be an asshole until you leave
me thing is amazing because we know who he is
in his core.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
He is a.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Violent, awful human being and yet too pussy to just
break up with his girlfriend. Unbelievable.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
With Donna and Mary Joe gone, the Good Ones invited
Randy and Greg to spend Christmas with them, and they,
if you remember, are the next door neighbors. That Randy
befriended their daughter. Brittany was thirteen years old and had
a very obvious crush on her good looking neighbor Randy,
who was thirty one by now. Isn't an especially unusual dynamic.
(06:02):
I mean, I had crushes on all kinds of teachers
and neighbors and stuff when I.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Was in junior high.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
And in most cases it's harmless because most people aren't psychopaths.
Randy preferred thin women. His mom, Elizabeth, was kind of zoftig,
and as we suggested last week, Randy's main physical criterion
was don't look like mommy. Scared of mommy. He teased
Brittany about her weight, so she went on a crash
(06:29):
diet that left her thin and weak. With her parents
worried she was anorexic, Randy was delighted. Piece of shit. God,
I hate this guy.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
In nineteen eighty six, Brittany Goodwin started babysitting for Greg
Ben and Marta. Goodwin knew Brittany was all mooney over Randy,
so they had a word with him, saying, this kid
is really developing a crush on you. We just wanted
you to be aware. Don't show her quite as much attention.
Hold back, we need your help on this. Randy nodded seriously.
I will, I will, he said, and then kind of weirdly,
(07:02):
I wouldn't ever touch Brittany who said anything about touching Randy.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Red flag, red flag.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Yeah, call the police right now. To understand what was
going on here, we have to explain how intertwined the
Goodwin's lives were with Randy's. By this point, he was
the best friend Ben had ever had. They were all
in and out of each other's houses all the time.
They had dinner together more often than not. He was family.
They trusted him. They shouldn't have. Randy seduced Brittany almost
(07:35):
as soon as she started babysitting for Greg. She was
either thirteen or fourteen at the time, which is really
a distinction without a difference. She was a child and
it was statutory rape. Whenever Randy had her babysit, Randy
would drive off and then either drive around or just
sit and wait until he knew Greg would be asleep,
then come back and park on a side street, slink
through the back door, and spend time with Brittany. Ben
(07:58):
was Britney's stepdad. Randy Ben's supposed best friend did his
best to ruin their relationship, telling Brittany she didn't have
to do anything Ben said because he wasn't her real father.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
The relationship went on for two years, making it one
of Randy's longest. As you might remember, he'd had another
long affair with Greg's previous babysitter too, a married woman.
In the way Randy thought of the world, both women
belonged to other men, and it was getting one over
on those other men that made the whole thing exciting
for him. I mean that in the fact that he
was a disgusting creep.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Yeah, that part is key, obviously.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
Yeah, Randy's whole sexuality is based on impressing or like
other men.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Impressing other men was his emma. And it's like, man,
the closet is glass, Randy, It's okay.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Just he just stoked his own ego, just all day,
every day. That was the only thing that gave him
any pleasure. I guess was just yeah, some kind of
shallow self aggrandizement.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
It's so pathetic, it really is. And women weren't people
to him, so the only other people in his mind
were men. Yeah, Randy promised Brittany he'd marry her as
soon as she turned eighteen, which he had no intention
of doing. Of course, she developed some psychological problems and
(09:21):
her relationship with her parents was tumultuous even by teenage
girl standards. He dumped her as soon as he had
a woman he thought might make him rich. She wouldn't
tell anyone about what happened until she was an adult.
The next woman Randy targeted was Cynthia bomb Gardner. Around
the time Randy's brief marriage to Donna Clift was imploding,
(09:41):
Cindy's marriage to her husband Tom was also ending, although
in a much sadder way. Tom bomb Gardner was a
couple years younger than Randy, and they'd actually gone to
Meddledale High School at the same time, although as far
as we know, they never interacted. Tom married pretty blonde
Cindy in nineteen seventy six, and they soon had two boys,
Tyson and Rightley. Tom had a good job with UPS,
(10:05):
and he had a membership to the Teamsters Union, which
came with good medical coverage and survivor benefits. Those became
important much sooner than anyone would have thought. When he
was just twenty nine years old, Tom was diagnosed with
an advanced case of Hodgkins lymphoma. He was dead within
six months.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
God, I cannot even imagine when two kids, Oh, my Lord,
so devastated. Of course, a widow at twenty seven years old,
Cindy tried to continue with her life. Tom's survivor benefits
and life insurance meant she didn't have to work and
could focus on raising the boys and doing occasional volunteer.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Work at her church.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Cindy was very religious, and by the time she eventually
started thinking about dating again, she'd decided on a rule
she wouldn't get involved with a divorced man. A man
would either have to never be married or, like her,
be widowed. But in the immediate aftermath of Tom's death,
Cindy had no interest in any of that. She asked
her friend Laurie to move in and help with the
(11:04):
boys so neither of them would have to live alone.
Unlike most people in this story, Tom's death had given
Cindy good reason to worry about the future, even as
young as she was. She had a will drawn up
that named Laurie as executor and as her preferred guardian
for Tyson and Riley if anything happened to Cindy, and
to make sure the boys would get to stay in
their own home, she willed the house to Laurie too.
(11:27):
She filed the will with the court then put it
away in a safe deposit box along with a few
precious things of Tom's that she wanted the boys to
have when they were older. The ladies lived like this
for five years. Cindy found joy again. Laurie's mom, Dotty,
said she was very lovely, very pretty, very happy wherever
she was. Laughter just entered the room. She was just life.
(11:52):
When the boys started Little League, Cindy helped out manning
the concession stand, and this was where she met Randy Roth.
Randy was a coach in the ten to twelve year
old league and took it all very seriously, yelling and
barking at the kids because it was extremely important that
these children hit, throw and catch balls correctly. When Cindy
(12:13):
started at the concession stand in nineteen ninety, Randy noticed
her right away, and he did what any red blooded
manly man would do when he wants to get to
know an attractive woman. He sent his kid over.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
It's like as soon as he had Greg he had
no other moves, like, where's sir Randolph when you need him?
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Right? All right, Greg, who must surely have been getting
sick of this sidekick act by now went to get
something at the concession stand, and then Randy showed up
to pay. He made small talk with Cindy for a while,
and within a few days had arranged to help with
the concessions the same nights she worked. One of the
main skills of predators like Randy is selecting their victims.
(12:54):
Cindy fit Randy's primary criterion. She was young, meaning she
could be cheaply insured for large amounts of money.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Plus she had.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Children who were already receiving hefty survivor benefits from their
dad's death and would get even more if something happened
to Cindy. And this is how he thinks about this,
these two children who lost their father, and that's a
plus for him. Just digest that for a second, like this.
That is a psychopath. Holy shit. And five years after
(13:26):
her husband's death, Cindy was lonely and kind of naive romantically.
Randy made kind of a red flaggy introduction of himself
to Cindy. I noticed you right from the beginning, he said,
but the way you look, the way you dress, I
figured you probably had money. I didn't feel worthy to
introduce myself. Okay, are we following the logic in Randy's
(13:47):
brain there money equals worth? But then I saw you
drive an Escort and I drive an Escort too, and
I figured anybody driving an Escort couldn't be rich. So
I felt like I could introduce myself. Good God. Randy
bought cars about as often as most of us buy
cartons of milk, selling the old ones on. He'd just
(14:07):
gotten the Escort, probably after he'd seen Cindy, so that
he could use this line.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Also, hello nagging like uh, I thought you were a
rich princess, but now that I know that you're a
poor piece of shit like me, we can date. This
is this is why he had to use Greg. He
had no game because shit is crazy. Man.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
If he was trying to nag for real, he would
just be like Colin Robinson from What We Do in
the Shadows is a dipshit. That'd be all he had.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
He asked her out the next week, and Cindy said yes,
And here we go again with the love bombing flowers. No,
it's sweet romantic gestures. Randy was so regimented at all
this by now that I'm certain he said exactly the
same things he'd used on previous women, sent the same notes,
probably bought his roses from the same florist. Of course,
(15:05):
Cindy didn't know she was being treated to a repeat performance.
She was swept off her feet. Most of their dates
involved their three boys. They all just fit together like
they were already a family. Randy kept quiet about his
two divorces and only mentioned the wife who gave him
a connection to Cindy's own experience. Jan Hey lied. Of course,
(15:26):
she actually died as I was holding her in my arms,
he said. She left me with a three year old boy,
and I've been alone ever since, looking for someone like you. Course,
as we know, Jan had died at the bottom of
a three hundred foot cliff, almost certainly after being pushed
by Randy. She wasn't Gregg's mom, and Randy had been
(15:48):
chasing after women for fun and profit constantly since her death.
Jan's death also allowed Randy to better fit what Cindy
was looking for. She would only get involved with someone
who was committed to the church.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Randy didn't give a single shit about religion, but thanks
to his crazy mom's religiosity, he was able to fake it.
He said he'd turned his back on religion after jan died,
but he'd been thinking about going back to church. Cindy
invited him to go with her. I think that's what
I've been looking for, Randy said.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Ugh.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
At the end of July, Randy asked Cindy to come
with him to a classic car show in Reno. Her
heart sank. That was an overnight trip. Was her new boyfriend,
the courteous Sir Randolph, just trying to get her in
the sack? After all? She told Randy she'd never go
on an overnight trip with a man who wasn't her husband. Well,
that wasn't a problem, Randy said. They could take care
(16:44):
of that right down in Reno. Her parents and her
friend Laurie tried their best to talk her out of it,
but there was no swaying Cindy. She thought she'd met
her mister Wright, someone who could understand the heartbreak she'd
been through because he'd been through it too. So they
drove down to Reno and got married. They'd been dating
maybe five weeks when they got back home. Cindy's parents
(17:08):
were determined to make the best of the situation and
welcome Randy into their family. They went over to Cindy's
house to meet him for the first time, and her dad, Jim,
tried to hug him. Randy just stood Ramrod straight, saying
nothing and showing no emotion. Emotions were for Cissy's Jim
tried again, offering Randy an open invitation to come over
for dinner with Cindy and the boys, but Randy brushed
(17:29):
off the invite. Cindy and the boys came over a bunch,
but Randy never set foot in his new in law's house.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
And I know people have different levels of social competence, okay,
and there's nothing wrong with being socially awkward or having
social anxiety or whatever. That is not what's going on here.
We know this, And I have to say, for me,
that's a red flag too, because my ex who I've
spoken about many times, was horrendously abusive, and he was
exactly the same with my family, and they really tried,
(17:57):
you know, to be kind and welcoming, and he would
just that line about standing Ramrod straight, exactly like that.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Randy and Cindy decided they needed a new house for
their new family, and they each put their current homes
on the market. Randy deliberately asked way too much for
his place in Misty Meadows, over double what he'd paid
for just six years ago. So Cindy's house sold first,
and it was her money that made the down payment
on their brand new home in Woodenville, a big place
with four bedrooms and a three car garage. Property prices
(18:27):
usually climb more quickly than inflation. They paid two hundred
and seventy five thousand dollars for the place in nineteen
ninety and today it's worth nearly two million dollars. And
of course they had the life insurance talk. If anything
should happen to either of them. Randy said they needed
to make sure the survivor wouldn't be in financial trouble
and maybe lose the house. He already had a big
(18:48):
policy that he'd made Cindy the beneficiary of. Maybe she
could do the same for him. Cindy actually had life
insurance already, one hundred and fifteen thousand dollars policy with
Tyson and Riley as the beneficiaries, but Randy told her
that wasn't enough. So Cindy got a new two hundred
and fifty thousand dollars policy with Randy as the beneficiary,
and against her insurance agent's advice, replaced the kids with
(19:11):
Randy on the smaller policy too. In today's money, Cindy's
life was now insured for almost a million dollars. This
does feel like a horror movie watching somebody go on
to the basement.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
It does.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
It's also very similar to Season one's case.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Oh Yeah, And you can see it creeping up and
all the steps that lead up to it, and you
just want to reach in and say no, no, yeah,
saying yourself.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
The mortgage and most of their monthly expenses were paid
for by the survivor benefits Cindy Suns received. When Randy
lowered the price of his old house and it sold,
he made about fifty grand, but didn't put any of
it into the new house. He'd been fired from Biden
Milk Dairy for helping himself to their gasoline for his
two vehicles, and had a new mc caanic's job at
(20:00):
Bill Pierre Ford. He blew most of his salary on cars, trucks,
motorcycles and ATVs. The family lived on Cindy's money. Randy
just bought toys for himself. Cindy had boxes of Tom's
things at her house, things she was saving for her kids.
Randy didn't want her to bring them to the new house,
so she kept them at her parents' place instead. This
(20:22):
is the level of insecurity we're dealing with in Randy Roth.
He was worried about competition from a dead man.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
And competition for a woman he didn't even want. I mean,
Cindy was just a potential payout for him. Just bizarre.
He's still that competitive. It's his brain man. Fascinating and horrifying.
(21:08):
Cindy set about decorating the new house, deciding on a
color scheme of mauve and blue. She had a blast
getting lots of new furniture, along with throw pillows, hanging baskets,
a display cabinet for her dolls.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Oh, bless her heart.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Their bedroom had a king sized mauv spread with a
flower pattern and ribbon edges. Cindy had a good eye.
The place looked like a magazine spread, all very pretty
and feminine, which was why Randy hated it. He hated
anything traditionally feminine, anything soft or frilly, or just nice.
He was a US Marine, for God's sake, there were
no frills in the core. I'm one hundred percent certain
(21:47):
Randy had zero interest in musical theater. But if somebody
ever managed to drag him along to My Fair Lady,
he'd love that song that goes why can't a woman
be more like a Matt? That would be his jam.
But Randy didn't complain about the decor, at least at first,
just satisfied himself with the upstairs wreck room, which he
(22:07):
decorated with all his military crap, all his fake military crap.
Every other place he'd lived, Randy had immediately started on
yard work. He was a competent landscaper and it was
a good way to increase the property value. But he
didn't do anything at the Woodinville house, which needed work.
With the yard all crab grass and no flowers or
shrubs at all. He complained about the yard but made
(22:29):
no effort to fix it for the same reason he
let Cindy do what she wanted with the decorating. He
wasn't planning to live here for long up until about Christmas,
and busy with the new house. Cindy had been happy,
but as nineteen ninety one rolled around. It was clear
to the people who cared about her that things were
not great, As Randy's previous wives had discovered. Once he
(22:52):
had a ring on Cindy's finger, his emotional range narrowed
to pretty much just irritation and nothing else. Cindy, always
bright and bubbly, was muted, a sure sign that somebody's
in a toxic relationship. By the way, when they turned
down their volume around their partner. Randy didn't want her
to dye her hair, so she let her natural brown
(23:13):
start going out. Randy wanted her to wear less makeup,
so she did. Randy was mad when he found out
how much her manicures cost. Cindy got around that one
by paying cash instead of by check, but she still
had to okay the color first with Randy. You know,
nothing too trampy, and just a reminder that it was
Cindy's money that got them their nice house and all
(23:35):
their nice things. She had every right to buy whatever
the hell she wanted, but Randy chose his victims carefully,
and Cindy was someone who believed in pleasing her husband.
People noticed that Cindy spokeless, and when she did she
usually looked to Randy first, as if for approval. She
wasn't allowed to join a health club. Randy was worried
(23:56):
she might meet men there. It was fine for him
to join. Of course, he did let her join the
YMCA for all female aerobics classes and walking groups, but
got furious when they sent her flyers addressed to Cindy
Roth instead of missus Randy Roth. Dear God, there are
faberge eggs less fragile than this man's masculinity. He's just pitiful.
(24:22):
Sometimes Cindy's car wouldn't start, and she was convinced Randy
had disabled it to make sure she stayed home. And
by the way, after Randy broke things off with Britney Goodwin,
she also reported that sometimes she couldn't get her car
to start if she was planning to go out and
meet friends, especially if she was meeting a boy. Oh
my god. Cindy wasn't the type of person to share
(24:45):
problems in her marriage, and she wasn't the type of
person who would see a therapist if she was sad,
But it seems clear that in nineteen ninety one she
was thoroughly depressed. She took less care of herself in
the house. She was always getting sick. The happy optimism
her life had just been quenched. She was unhappy. As
July rolled around and they got close to the one
(25:07):
year anniversary of their rushed Reno wedding, she and Randy
planned a return trip to Nevada in early August. Cindy
wouldn't live long enough to go there. On July twenty third,
nineteen ninety one, the hottest day of the summer, the
beach at Lake Samamish State Park was still crowded as
afternoon shifted into evening. Cindy's two sons, Tyson and Riley,
(25:29):
were eleven and nine years old, respectively. They sat on
the sand looking out across the water, which was crowded
with swimmers and farther out watercraft. They were looking for
their mom and Randy, who'd gone out paddling in Randy's
little gray inflatable raft, but they'd been gone longer than
the boys had expected.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
They spotted the raft, but only saw Randy, shirtless and
with sunglasses on, rowing his way through the other boats.
He didn't seem to be in a hurry. The boy
started walking towards the south end of the swimming area
where it looked like the raft would come ashore. Randy
was pulling the raft up to the beach. When they
got there, he ignored them. When the boys got closer,
(26:10):
they saw their mom lying in the bottom of the raft.
She was in about four inches of water, what hair
across her face, her eyes open and vacant, and her
face and torso blue. She was utterly still. Go get
the lifeguard and ask him for help, Randy calmly told Tyson,
but don't make a commotion. The lifeguard was a nineteen
(26:30):
year old kid, Michael McFadden, sitting in his elevated seat.
He wasn't sure what the boys calling up to him wanted,
but then he looked over and saw a blue tinged
body lying in the bottom of the raft by the
shore eight eighty eight. He yelled the emergency code and
jumped down and started sprinting over. Randy was standing nearby,
so calm and casual that McFadden just assumed he was
(26:52):
a bystander. Together they pulled Cindy out of the raft
and onto the sand. What happened, McFadden asked, just before
he started CPR she was under water. Randy said she
swallowed some water. Between breaths, mac Fadden asked how long
was she under? Ten minutes? Randy said A crowd had
started to gather. One of them was a woman named
(27:13):
Patty Schultz, who happened to be a paramedic, and mac
Fadden gladly let someone more experience take over. Randy squatted
on his heels at Cindy's feet and watched the scene impassively.
Like mac Fadden, Patty asked questions between breaths. How long
was she under? I don't know? Randy said? Was it
five minutes? I dunno? Was it ten? Randy just shook
(27:34):
his head. Sirens sounded and an ambulance pulled up in
the sand. More paramedics got out. They intubated Cindy and
injected a heart stimulant. A paramedic got out a defibrillator
and started trying to jumpstart her heart. Another lifeguard took
Tyson and Riley to the guard shack so they wouldn't
have to watch the paramedics work on their mom. Randy
(27:56):
meanwhile left the paramedics to their work and went back
down to the raft. He took three wet tote bags
of towels and clothes out, then spilled out all the
water from the bottom. He opened the air valves and
calmly started deflating the raft as the paramedics tried to
save his wife's life. Just a few feet away, a
cop who had just arrived told him to get out
of the way. I'm her husband, Randy said, calmly, you're
(28:17):
her husband, the cop said, astonished, Randy looked like the
least concerned person on the whole beach. The cop asked
what had happened, and Randy told him all in the
most matter of fact way. Well, we were paddling around
the lake. We were swimming around out there, and she
got a cramp in her leg. She was hanging on
to the side of the raft, and then a boat
(28:39):
went by and swamped us. That was when the raft
flipped over. I heard her choke like she swallowed some water.
I turned the raft over and found her floating face down.
I tried to get her back into the raft, and
I did, and then I just paddled in to get help.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
The cops offered to drive Randy to the hospital where
Cindy would be taken, but he insisted on taking his own.
He walked over there with the rolled up raft in
the totes and only now mentioned that he had two
kids somewhere on the beach. Before he could get in
the truck, a fire official asked him what had happened,
So Randy told the same story, or mostly the same story.
(29:15):
I turned over the raft and she was dead. He
said dead. The fire official said, well, unconscious. Randy said
dead unconscious? What's the difference. The lifeguard brought the two
boys over, and by now they were both sobbing. Randy
looked disgusted. Come on, boys, we're going to the hospital.
He said. Not one word of comfort, not so much
(29:39):
as a hug. Patty Schultz, the paramedic, decided she was
going to ride to the hospital with them, whether Randy
liked it or not, just to make sure the two
boys were okay. Randy answered her questions in monosyllables. He
didn't show anything other than irritation, some of which was
directed at the two boys in the back seat, who
struggled to hold in their grief. As the ambulance rushed
(30:02):
Cindy to Overlake Hospital in Bellevue, doctors waiting for her
there quized the paramedics about what had happened. Had Cindy
had a seizure. Was she diabetic? They just couldn't understand
how someone had managed to drown so close to an
inflatable raft, especially with someone there in the water to
help her. The paramedics didn't have any answers. Nobody did.
(30:24):
The whole situation made no sense at all. Cindy was
way past the point where she could be saved. She
was pronounced dead in the hospital just after six thirty
p m. A grief counselor went to inform Randy and
the boys. The boys wept, Randy ignored them. He looked
sullen and pissed off. Even though they were inside, he
(30:46):
still hadn't taken off his sunglasses. I couldn't save her,
he kept saying to nobody in particular. A detective came
in and asked Randy to write down what had happened.
He described the same scenario he had previously, with a
few extra wrinkles. You might remember from a couple weeks ago,
or maybe last week, that Randy had said it had
(31:08):
been the idea of Jan, his second wife, to hike
up Beacon Rock from where she'd fallen to her death.
Randy was always utterly unwilling to accept responsibility for anything
that went wrong. Now, he wrote, Cindy asked me to
row to the east side of the lake, where it
would be more romantic. I said, it looks like a
long way. She said, you're strong, you can do it.
(31:30):
He gave more details of the accident. While they were
in the water, with Cindy holding onto the side of
the raft, awake from a passing boat about fifty to
one hundred yards away went by, and the raft turned
over on top of her. She coughed once, and I
hurried to write the raft, which took about thirty seconds.
She was already floating face down. And if you've noticed that,
(31:51):
Randy said, the boat flipped for thirty seconds, but then
remembered that he carried a few tots out of it
when he landed on the beach, still full of towels
and clothes. Give yourself a Gold Detective Star. Randy only
got agitated when the police told him they were going
to impound the raft. They didn't have the right, he complained,
it was his. This was less than an hour after
(32:14):
Cindy had been pronounced dead. Plenty of people were immediately
suspicious of Randy, and that included the first detective to
read his statement, There'd been a ton of boats out
on the water. Why hadn't Randy waved or called for
help for many of them instead of slowly paddling his
dinky little raft to shore. Surely Cindy couldn't have swallowed
(32:34):
enough water from a boat's wake to drown in thirty seconds?
Was it even possible for a boat's wake to flip
over a raft like that? And then there was Randy himself,
his weird flat response and his total indifference to the
grief of Cindy's sons. People can react to grief and
shock in ways that seem really strange to others, but
(32:54):
coupled with the other confusing aspects about Cindy's death, Randy's
odd behavior was not doing an many favors. An investigation
into Cindy's death had begun before he and the boys
had he been gotten home from the hospital, because whatever
had happened to Cindy had been out on the lake.
The case went to the King County Major Crime Section
instead of the city police, and specifically to Detective Sue Peters.
(33:18):
She'd been having a cookout with their dad and some friends,
which she abandoned to drive to the nearest police station
and start making phone calls. After speaking to the officers
who'd already interviewed Randy, she was convinced Cindy's death needed
a thorough investigation.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
Randy, meanwhile, was trying to get nine year old Riley
to stop crying in the backseat of his truck. There's
no need to cry, he said, just be quiet. It's
over with. There's nothing to cry about.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Jesus.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
He took the boys for grimly silent burgers and fries
at Burger King, then stopped off to pick up three
movies to watch at home and try to cheer them up. Later,
Randy would act all astonished and hurt when people said
he'd been insensitive to the boys after Cindy's death. One
of the movies he picked up just hours after the
boys had seen their mother's dead body was Weekend at Bernie's.
(34:05):
Randy laughed all the way through it. He's such a
fucking loser. God, I can't stand this guy. Over the
next few days, he shoved everything Cindy had owned into
black garbage bags.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Randy Roth is a classic example of a psychopath's total
lack of understanding about human emotions. It did not even
occur to him that the kids might not want to
see a movie about a dead body being passed off
as a living when that's what Weekend at Bernie's is about.
If you haven't seen it, Skuy dies and his two
friends have to make him look alive for some reason.
(34:37):
I forget why, but holy shit, what a choice right
after you've just watched your mother drown ugh.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
After Detective Peter's got physical descriptions of Randy and Cindy,
she thought it was plausible that he'd just held her
underwater until she drowned. He was much stronger than Cindy,
and killing someone like that wouldn't necessarily leave marks on
either one of them. It was a more believable scenario
than Cindy, who was a good swimmer, being drowned by
a boat wake. The autopsy didn't show any signs of
(35:06):
a struggle. There was no blood or skin under Cindy's nails,
no bruising on the body. There were two small scratches
on the side of her neck, but that was it,
and it seemed likely that those had been made during
attempts to save Cindy's life. The body provided no evidence
to suggest that Cindy's death had been anything other than
an accidental drowning. About a week after Cindy's death, Sue
(35:28):
Peters got a call from a woman saying she knew
something about the woman who drowned. This was Stacy Reese,
a receptionist that the car dealership with Randy worked. Stacy
had started working there at the start of the year,
and it hadn't taken long for Randy to move in
on her. Soon they were having regular lunch dates where
Randy's favorite subject was complaining about his wife, Cindy, well,
(35:49):
his sort of wife. He told Stacy that they had
a one year marriage contract. Whatever the hell that was
supposed to mean. I mean, we know what it meant.
To Randy. He had no intention of staying with Cindy
any longer than he had to to ensure he got
a nice life insurance payment and access to the boys
survivors benefits. The day before Cindy drowned, Randy told Stacy
(36:09):
that the contract was just about up. He'd called Stacy
a couple days after Cindy's death. She asked if he
was all right, and Randy said, why wouldn't I be?
He called Stacy a couple more times that night, the
last time to ask her out just two days after
his wife had died. Remember Je, Stacy was creeped out
(36:29):
and turned him down. She couldn't shake the horrible suspicion
that Randy might have killed his wife just so he
could make a move for her. But what really started
the investigation moving at top speed was when Stacy told
Detective Peters that Randy had been married before, and that
a second wife had died in a hiking accident after
they'd only been married for about eight months. Two wives,
(36:50):
both of whom had been married to Randy Roth for
less than a year, both of whom died in apparent
accidents outdoors and with no witnesses. It was plenty suspicious,
and it didn't take long to add motive to the mix,
because the next call Detective Peter's got was from Mary
Joe Phillips, the one who got away.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Mary Joe was able to fill in a lot of
blanks in the growing picture of Randy's life. She told
Peters about Randy's three previous wives, jan who had died,
and the two Donnas Randy's first and third wives, and
she told her own story how Randy had come on
like a hurricane right up until he'd learned that Mary
Joe was uninsurable, whereupon he'd turned to ice to a
(37:29):
homicide detective. Life insurance and spousal murder go together like
peanut butter and chocolate, and Randy sounded like someone who
could kill Mary Joe shared some of his stories from Vietnam,
how he'd killed dozens of people and killed and mutilated
women and children. These stories were all lies, of course,
but they do tell us something about the image Randy
(37:49):
liked to project, and they also tell us that a
surprising number of people are okay with it if their
significant other admits to killing children. That's been one of
the interesting realizations of this case, hasn't it. Who'd thought
it didn't take long to uncover the records pertaining to
Randy's life. His military service had been real, if brief,
(38:10):
and had not coincided with any military action in Vietnam.
He had a criminal record from petty thefts in the
mid seventies with no jail time, and he'd been married
four times, never for very long. When Peters got in
touch with authorities down in Scamania County, where Beacon Rock was.
They made it clear they thought Randy had murdered his
second wife, Jan, they just hadn't been able to prove it.
(38:34):
When she spoke with Cindy's best friend Laurie, she learned
a couple of things. One was that Cindy and Randy's
marriage had rapidly disintegrated after their wedding, so much so
that Cindy was already thinking about divorce despite her strong
religious opposition to it. Another was that when Laurie called
him on the night of Cindy's death, Randy told her
he'd given Cindy twenty minutes of mouth to mouth resuscitation,
(38:56):
something he hadn't mentioned before. When Jan had Randy had
almost immediately given multiple conflicting accounts of what had happened.
Apparently he just couldn't help himself because he was doing
the same thing with Cindy's death. At Cindy's memorial service,
Randy either ignored or was flat out rude to anyone
who tried to talk to him. He left the urn
(39:18):
with Cindy's ashes in it on a table in the
chapel's waiting room and just walked out. The detectives brought
Randy in for a formal interview, and as his common
they didn't tell him just how much they already knew
about him. That way, they could ask him questions and
see what he chose to lie about or evade. Randy
told them about Cindy's death in his usual, matter of
(39:40):
fact way, and spoke about Jan's accident the same way.
Did anyone see the fall? One of the detectives asked.
Randy said he'd been about ten feet behind Jan when
she fell. They were living on Mount Lake Terrace at
the time and had gone down south for Thanksgiving. He
hadn't answered the question, so the detective asked it again.
Had anyone else seen the accident? As far as I know?
(40:04):
Randy said, they were right there. Who's they? Randy went quiet.
The interview was taking an uncomfortable turn, and we need
to remember all the way back to when we started
this story in part one, where Randy rushed down the
trail at Beacon Rock, all wild and wide eyed as
he surprised a group of hikers. Randy had in fact
(40:25):
been as surprised as they were. He hadn't thought anyone
was that close behind on the trail and had no
idea if they'd seen whatever had happened with jan now
eight years later. He must have wondered if somebody had
seen more than he knew. They hadn't, but it was
clear Randy was freaked out. When questioned about his other marriages,
Randy said his third one had been to a woman
(40:47):
named Dawn, whose last name he didn't know. Don't you
hate that when you don't know your wife's last name.
Her name was actually Donna, of course, and Randy's evasion
convinced the detectives that he was trying to caet keep
him away from her. He told them he thought down
had moved to Utah or Colorado. They asked Randy if
he'd take a polygraph test. He said he had no objection,
(41:10):
but he thought he should speak to an attorney first.
There wouldn't be any polygraph surprise, surprise. Within two minutes
of the interview ending, Randy was calling an attorney from
a payphone in the lobby of the King County Courthouse.
Randy was never as smart as he thought he was,
but he wasn't stupid. He knew he was in trouble.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
Detective soon tracked down Randy's third wife, Donna Cliff who
had not in fact left the state and was working
at a dry cleaners a couple miles away. They learned
about her brief marriage to Randy, which had quickly turned
terrifying when she'd refused to get life insurance she thought
Randy had tried to kill her. She also gave them
another lead to chase down Timbracado, Randy's one time best friend.
(41:53):
By now, the investigators were sure Randy had killed Cindy
to test the scenario of her drowning that Randy had described,
but they inflated his raft and towed it out to
the lake with two lifeguards playing the roles of Randy
and Cindy, and a detective driving his own powerboat to
create the waves that Randy said had flipped the raft
and drowned Cindy. He'd said the boat had been fifty
(42:14):
to one hundred yards away. The wake from that distance
barely even made the raft rock. The detective brought his
boat closer and closer until he was racing past barely
ten feet from the raft, throwing up nearly two feet
of wake. Still, the raft didn't flip. In fact, it
had been designed so that its inflated bottom would stick
(42:34):
to the water. The only way they could get it
to flip at all was when the lifeguards put all
their weight on one side, then reached across to pull
the far side up. The raft hadn't flipped when Cindy
was swimming, and even when the lifeguards did manage to
flip it, there was a big pocket of air trapped underneath.
There was no way someone would drown if they were
(42:55):
trapped under the raft for the thirty seconds Randy said
it had taken him to turn the raft back over.
And then there were the three totes of towels and
clothes that had been in the raft with them. The
detectives tested those too, and every time the raft flipped,
the contents of the toats scattered all over the water,
with a bunch of them sinking. The toats had still
been in the raft, wet but neatly packed when Randy
(43:17):
beached the raft. The investigators were certain Randy had killed Cindy,
but the prosecutor told them they didn't have enough yet.
There wasn't yet enough of a pattern in Randy's actions
to ensure that the death of janis Roth would be
included in the trial, and that seemed like a prerequisite
for the conviction, So the detectives went to speak to
Tim Bricado. Tim, Randy's one time best friend, was still
(43:39):
terrified of him. I know things about the band that
could come back that could cause harm to me and
my family, he told detectives. Yeah, man, that's really not
the kind of thing to say if you're trying to
make homicide investigators go away, like that's like, oh okay,
that's that's homicide investigator catnip is what you just said.
(44:01):
They're gonna be all over you. He told them that
the Vietnam War had turned Randy into a brutal killer.
The detective said, mm mmm, Randy hadn't served one day
in Vietnam. Tim was flabbergasted. The detectives could practically see
his conception of who Randy was shift from terrifying veteran
to run of the mill, bullshit artist. He told them
(44:22):
that just before jan had died, Randy had asked him
if he could ever kill his wife. Just after her death,
Randy had told him, don't ask me to tell you
something that you'll have to lie about. A couple of
weeks after Cindy's death, Tyson and Riley moved in with
Cindy's friend Laurie, who Cindy had stipulated as their guardian
and her will. Randy hadn't known about the will until
(44:44):
he'd rated Cindy's safe deposit box after her death, and
he was super pissed about it. He'd destroyed the will,
but the county already had a copy. Laurie took a
rented truck over to pick up the boy's things, bringing
along a burly brother in law, one of Cindy's cousins
in case. Randy was chilly but cordial at first. He
(45:04):
treated the boys things just like he treated Cindy's, just
cramming them into garbage bags, including their posters, which were ruined.
Riley had a collection of Ken Griffy junior baseball cards
that were his most prized possessions, with at least one
of them being worth a few hundred dollars. Randy had
stolen it.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
He wouldn't let them take Riley's pianos, saying he was
going to sell it to make the house payment. You
can't sell it, it's community property, Laurie said. Randy started
getting mad. You come in and you ruin my whole scenario.
He yelled. He said he'd been counting on the boy's
survivor benefits to pay the mortgage. He'd been planning to
quit his job and look after the boys. Now it
(45:44):
was Laurie who would get to quit her job. She
only wanted the boys for the money they'd bring her.
Laurie and her crew got out of there as fast
as they could. On October ninth, the investigation team and
the prosecutors decided to bite the bullet. They got a
cur warrant for Randy's house, which would be executed as
Randy was arrested. Sue Peters and her partner went to
(46:06):
see him at Bill Pierre Ford. You're under arrest for
investigation of first degree murder, Peters said. Randy held his
hands out in front of him for the handcuffs. That's
not how we do it, Peters said, pushing him around
and pulling his arms back to cuff him in the back.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
I love that, Sola.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
One of the first things they found at Randy's house
was a garage full of expensive auto parts and tools
that looked like they'd be more at home at Bill
Pierre Ford. They had Randy's boss come over to take
a look and yep, Randy'd been stealing anything that wasn't
nailed down almost since the day he started working there.
That was useful. It meant Randy was probably going to
(46:44):
stay in jail even if prosecutor decided to take some
time over formal murder charges. They found plenty of incriminating paperwork,
along with something that broke their hearts. Crumpled up and
thrown in a waste basket. They found a list that
Cindy had written of all the things Randy hated about her.
Randy hates Cindy's face makeup. Randy hates Cindy's blush. Randy
(47:07):
hates Cindy's lipstick. Randy hates Cindy's blonde hair. Randy hates
Cindy's ugly toes. They're the ugliest toes he's ever seen.
It went on and on for pages. Randy hates Cindy's pink,
feminine things in every room. Randy hate's telling Cindy where
he goes. Randy hates Sindy's monthly thing and putting up
(47:28):
with her each month. By the end of the note,
the writing was jagged and frantic. It had clearly been
written not long before Cindy's death, and she'd been incredibly unhappy,
just heart wrenching. Oh god.
Speaker 3 (47:44):
And by the.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Way, not for nothing. But Randy stopped working out while
he was in jail waiting for trial, and by the
time he showed up in the courtroom he looked like
a more insipid ned Flanders. So I don't know if
we want to be throwing stones about, looks Rando prick.
The next morning, Randy was formally charged with Cindy's murder.
The most important part of his trial happened before it
(48:07):
really even started. The judge ruled that Randy's actions with
jan Dona Number two, Mary, Joe Phillips, and finally Cindy
herself constituted a clear pattern of behavior that could be
properly introduced in court during Randy's trial. The quick courtships
and marriages, the pressuring for life insurance, and in two cases,
untimely and suspicious deaths. It all fit together, and with
(48:31):
all of that introduced, Randy's goose was cooked. It was
a circumstantial case, but the circumstances were compelling. Randy's defense
team made the only play they had. Randy wasn't a murderer.
He was just the world's unluckiest bridegroom. The rest of
the interests in the courtroom came from Randy's family. His mom, Elizabeth,
(48:52):
showed up in a slinky dress. Whenever Randy looked at her,
they glared at each other with obvious dislike. Randy's three
sisters were there too. One time they were in the
restroom doing their hair and makeup. One of our main
sources for this case was Anne Rule's book Arose for
her Grave, and either Anne or one of her friends
was in there and heard Randy's sister Lisa say to
(49:13):
a reporter, everybody feels so sorry for them, but you
know their troubles are over. Cindy's dead. It's Randy who
has to suffer for the rest of his life. H
ooh wow, what a family. Hopefully Randy will suffer for
the rest of his life. The jury found him guilty
of first degree murder and two counts of theft. He
(49:34):
was given a fifty one year sentence and is still
in there aged seventy, but will be eligible for parole
in twenty twenty nine. Yikes, I can't imagine he's a
good candidate. But who knows his brother Davy, also a murderer,
was released in two thousand and five and died of
cancer ten years later. Davy at least expressed some regret
(49:56):
for his crime Randy, which I'm sure will surprise one
never has. So that was a wild one.
Speaker 3 (50:04):
Write campers.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
You know we'll have another one for you next week,
but for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and
stay safe until we get together again around the True
Crime Campfire. And as always, we want to send a
grateful shout out to a few of our lovely Patreon supporters.
Thank you so much to Diane dutchy lover of true
crime stories, had great name, Claire, Marissa, and Erica. We
(50:26):
appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're
not yet a Patroon, you are missing out. Patrons of
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dollars in up categories, you get even more cool stuff
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