Cold Case Files - The Deadly Ex

Episode Date: April 19, 2022

A mother disappears and her voicemails lead detectives to the body. But the case goes cold until over a decade later when an informant discloses critical clues to turn the suspect into a convicted murderer. Check out our great sponsors! Shopify: Go to shopify.com/coldcase for a FREE 14 day trial AND get full access to Shopify’s entire suite of features! SimpliSafe: Go to simplisafe.com/coldcase to claim a free indoor security camera plus 20% off with Interactive Monitoring! Credit Karma: Head to creditkarma.com/loanoffers to see personalized offers! Progressive: Quote today at Progressive.com to try the Name Your Price® tool for yourself!

Before text messages, there was voicemail. And before that, there were answering machines. Little devices that plugged into a landline to answer your phone when you couldn't. No matter how you get your messages now, would they provide an accurate picture of your life? Cheryl Petrie had an answering machine and on October 16, 1988 it recorded several calls She never heard those messages though because on that same day Cheryl was murdered

From A&E this is Cold Case Files I'm Brooke and here's the unrivaled Bill Curtis with a classic case, the Deadly X. Cheryl, this is Marcella. It's 8.36. Are you supposed to open the store today? Bye. Cheryl, this is Betsy. It's 9 o'clock and I'm at the store. Could you get up here as soon as possible? Thanks.

On a Sunday morning, an answering machine belonging to Cheryl Petrie is lighting up. Hi, Cheryl. This is Betsy again. I need to know where you are and if you're all right. Thanks. At first, Cheryl's co-workers don't think anything is seriously wrong. By sundown, however, the mood has changed, and Cheryl's ex-husband Roland puts a call in to police. It's a dispatch of an ex-husband that was en route to an address to check it out because his ex-wife had not shown up to pick up the children

that he had had for visitation on the weekend. Ron Trogdon of the Kitsap County Sheriff's Office responds to the call. This is the house right here, 2120, where she lived at the time. Trogdon enters the empty house and notices Cheryl Petrie's answering machine, blinking with yet another message, this one from the big city an hour away across Puget Sound. There was a message from a fella who called from Seattle saying that he had found her wallet in a lake over there. Hello, Cheryl. If you're missing a purse, I think I found it.

And you got a bunch of credit cards and stuff in it, and I'll call you later. Apparently you're not home now. Goodbye. It's not good at all. The possibility of foul play was now there. According to her kids and according to Roland, she had no ties to Seattle.

She didn't really know anybody there, no reason to go there. Trogdon believes he might be looking at a murder and starts looking around for suspects. He begins with Cheryl's ex, Roland Petrie. We learned from doing the background that he had been involved in a murder for hire up in San Juan County in Washington State, up in the San Juan Islands,

where he had hired a fellow to kill a guy. Trogdon calls in Detective Jim Harris, who asks Roland to come down to the station for a little Q&A. We want to answer where he was, the last time he talked with Cheryl, the last time he knew of anyone talking to Cheryl, his itinerary for the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday around her disappearance. Roland claims he was in nearby Port Orchard most of the weekend and can prove it with witnesses and receipts.

Detectives get to work on Petrie's alibi, even as they keep a close eye out for his ex-wife. Seattle's Lake Union is an hour's drive from Cheryl's home, a place connected to her only by a missing purse found by two boaters. As they were mooring their boat down here, they just tied it up, and they saw her purse floating in the water,

and they had found some ID up on the shore here. In 1988, Hank Gruber is a Seattle detective, working with Kitsap County in their search for Cheryl. At first, they thought perhaps she was in the water, and they did have Seattle police divers go down and check the area in the bay near the shore here and so on without any success. Four days into the search, the detectives find Cheryl's car parked about a half mile from the lake.

So I ended up popping open the trunk while I was in the processing room, and of course Cheryl was in the trunk. Petrie's arms are bound behind her back, and several books cover her face. When the books are pushed to the side, the detectives discover why they were put there. It was shocking to everyone standing there. It's one of the worst beatings I've seen anyone receive. She was beaten very, very severely. Blood splatter covers the inside of the trunk, telling detectives Cheryl Petrie was alive when she went in, and was beaten to death as she lay there.

She was alive when she was put in the trunk, and it's one that you don't have to be an expert. No, in fact, we kind of even narrowed down what we felt that the tool was used. It was used to bludgeon her, but we never proved it. It was a speculation. But we had a speculation, and that was probably a tire iron, if I remember right. At autopsy, no semen is found, nor much else of evidentiary value.

Detectives focus on the books covering Cheryl's face and what that tells them about their killer. But every time the face is covered, without exception of the ones I've seen, it's been the boyfriend or the, you know, it's been somebody associated to the person. The rationale is simple. A killer who knows his victim often feels guilt and will cover rather than look at the face of his victim. Detectives head back across the waters of Puget Sound, intent on finding out more about their chief suspect, Cheryl's ex, Roland Petrie.

Love is blind. I guess that's all you can say. I was always amazed at how willingly blind she was. In the late 1980s, Eric Schilt was Cheryl Petrie's boss, as well as a friend. He knows that Cheryl married Roland, divorced him, and then remarried him when Petrie was in prison on a murder-for-hire scheme. She was quite sure that he was innocent of the crime that he had been convicted of,

which was accessory to murder on Whidbey Island, and I was equally sure that he had been convicted of, which was accessory to murder on Whidbey Island, and I was equally sure that he had guilt. We were very concerned about where that was going to lead. She was a very talented gal. She worked hard writing legislators and a parole board to get him an early release. Schultz tells police as soon as Roland was released, he expressed his gratitude by dumping Cheryl for another woman.

She then filed for divorce for the second time. He told her at the time when she left him, you will never date another man. I promise you. She was supposed to have a date a week after she got killed. And that Saturday night, she was a goner. He was in our home and he said you know Eric he said these cops they're dogging me they think I did it and so on and so forth I said well I'm going to tell you something Roland there's a lot of us that are going to owe you some big apologies if you can be found innocent and he just smiled and said, yeah.

From one of Cheryl's other friends, detectives also learn about a life insurance policy taken out just before Cheryl's death. Roland had told Cheryl they were separated this time, and he had told Cheryl that he was dying of Agent Orange disease and that they expected that he would die sometime in the next year. Roland explained to Cheryl that he was buying the policy so their kids could have money when he died. And then somewhere along the way to the insurance broker,

he convinced Cheryl that, well, you know, so this insurance company doesn't get suspicious. We also had them buy it out so we get insurance on you also. And Cheryl went along with this, and her friends and relatives are going crazy. And then three or four months go by, and Roland's not getting sick. You know, people are getting a little more suspicious, and that's about the time Cheryl comes up missing. Detectives have a boatload of motive,

but little in the way of opportunity. According to their timeline, Roland was alone for only two hours the day that Cheryl disappeared. Two hours is enough time to kill Cheryl, but not enough to kill her and drive her car to Seattle. It's impossible for him to have moved the body, so we had to have an accomplice.

Hank Gruber, however, can find no such accomplice. And his investigation into Roland Petrie grinds to a halt. The Seattle detective has no choice but to move on. His case, ticketed for the cold files, where it will stay for more than a decade until a daughter decides to learn the truth. As much as I believed it in my head, in my heart, I wanted it not to be true.

Hello, Mom, this is Yvonne. Just called to say goodnight and I love you and I hope you had a good night work. The voice belongs to 10-year-old Yvonne Petrie, saying goodnight to her mother Cheryl on October 15, 1988. So I love you, just want to say goodnight, and I'm glad I could talk to you today, and I'll see you tomorrow.

Love you. Bye. Things just seemed to be going well and just kind of all fitting into place. She seemed to be happy. I was happy for her. She was my world. Yvonne's world would come crashing down the next day when her mother disappeared and her father, Roland Petrie, was targeted as the chief suspect. Thirteen years, in 2001, Yvonne is 23 and wants to know if her father is really a killer. Yvonne Petrie was 10 years old when she lost her mother, and as an adult, she was determined to uncover the truth. Was it possible that the person responsible for when she lost her mother, and as an adult, she was determined to uncover the truth.

Was it possible that the person responsible for the murder of her mother was actually her father, Roland Petrie? I wanted it to be that he didn't do it. So as much as I believed it in my head, in my heart, I wanted it not to be true. So I think there was a part of me that always kind of held out for that to be the case. Yvonne was a young girl when her mother was murdered. And I believe that over many, many years she's had untold number of sleepless nights wondering

what really happened. This is 728, which is her wallet and some ID. This is from the magazines. Magazine, yeah, top of her. Dick Gagdon and Greg Mikesell are cold case detectives with the Seattle PD. They pick up Cheryl Petrie's case and begin to piece together bits of the past. They're all dead, aren't they? Just luck of the draw they haven't even a trunk or what. In 1988, this book covered Cheryl's face when she was found beaten and bloodied in the trunk of her own car. Detectives have a good idea who put it there.

I mean, this guy was just posing for money. Why work when I can get money through insurance settlements? In the summer of 2001, Roland Petrie is locked up for 30 years on an unrelated kidnapping charge, when cold case detectives get a call from one of Roland Petrie's

former cellmates. The confidential informant claims he knows the man Petrie hired to kill Cheryl, a fellow con named Fred McKee. He talked about the conversations that he had while he was in prison with Roland Petrie and Fred McKee. He had facts about her being strangled first, put in the trunk of the car, about her being transported around to Seattle from across Puget Sound, to Cheryl waking up, to her being beaten to death. He knew enough about the crime that it was either one of two things.

Either he spoke to the murderer or he was the murderer. And we knew he wasn't the murderer because we knew he was incarcerated at the time. So he had to have spoken to the person who did the crime. Cold case detectives believe their information is good. They track McKee to a prison on McNeil Island, Washington. These are ones you like to do. These are fun. This is a good old-fashioned gumshoe. Go down and talk to snitches, work with people in the prisons, play one against the other. On February 18, 2003, cold case detectives sit down in an interview room and play show and tell with Fred McKee.

We had a picture of the three students, as we call them, our in form at Roland and Fred, arm in arm, looks at a barbecue somewhere. I mean, Neil Island Prison back in the old days when the prisons ran the prison. But you think they're out in some park somewhere having a good time. He saw the three guys together, so we kind of put the thought in his mind,

geez, these guys aren't on a fishing expedition. They've got something here, you know? And you could tell he was scared. McKee might be scared, but he still isn't talking. Two days later, cold case detectives try their luck with Roland Petrie, who is two years into a 30-year prison stretch and not in the mood to talk. He more or less shut us down and said, I've got nothing to say to you. But we stressed those important facts.

He wasn't getting out. If this case goes to trial, his daughter's going to have to testify. His son's going to have to testify. The interview ends, and Mike Sell and Gagnon head back to Seattle. He had a lot of things to think about, about bringing his daughter back in, about what he'd done to his daughter, what he'd done to his son. Two weeks later, the phone rings. Roland wants to talk about Fred McKee, an old friend he calls Skip. During those times you met with Skip, what did you talk about specifically in reference to your plan with Cheryl?

I had him thinking that she was trying to take my children away and that I wanted her killed. I think he wanted to maybe go on the offense. The best defense is a good offense. The plan was for Skip to be at the house when Cheryl got home from work, and he was gonna be inside. That's why I gave him the keys. Roland admits that he offered Fred Skip McKee at least $5,000 to abduct and kill his ex-wife. Like many a hardened con, however,

Roland's story is self-serving. As she got home and walked in, I was going to be parked down. As I saw her walking in, I was going to run up and come through the door. And then I was going to say, this ain't going to happen, man. And what do you mean by this ain't going to happen? What were you trying to do by planning? Well, I'm going to figure that by the time that she walked in, I mean, he would have presented himself. And what would your part in it be then? Just to break it up. That's it. So you'd be saying, well, you'd be a conquering hero.

Did Skip know of your plan to do this? No. His plan was to tell Fred McKee to kill Cheryl, but all along he was going to be at the bottom of the driveway when Cheryl arrived home. He was just going to give Cheryl time to go in the front door, and then he was going to rush up, burst into the house, yell, you can't do this, and...

Fred would run off. Fred would run off. Roland claims he wanted to win Cheryl back with his heroic gesture. A funny thing happened, however, on the way to saving Cheryl. Lay down on the sofa. Got up too fast. Passed out. And I do that.

I have low blood pressure. Sometimes, you know, I can feel it coming on. I can get down right away. Did you at some point try to get up? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And passed out. Passed out cold. Roland says when he came to on his living room floor, he realized it was too late to save his ex. Fred McKee had already killed her and driven Cheryl's car to Seattle. For as much of a con as he's been all his life, he's had all these years to get the story ready.

This is the best he'd come up with. I mean, that was his C game. I wanted his A game, you know? It's ridiculous. Ridiculous, perhaps, but Roland's own story paints him as the master planner and Fred McKee as the muscle. The DA files first-degree murder charges against both men. One month later, Roland enters a guilty plea and must face his daughter in open court. I request that you sentence my father, Roland D. Petrie Jr., to the maximum sentence allowable under the law. I had so much to say and I think I was really able to get what I needed

to get off of my chest. You are a dangerous psychopath who cannot be a member of society because you kill those around you. And he had to stand there and listen to me and couldn't leave. During the investigation,

Yvonne learned that not only did her father kill her mother for insurance money, but that at one point not only did her father kill her mother for insurance money, but that at one point, he allegedly planned to kill her, too. The pain of knowing that you wanted me dead is so deep inside that when I think about it, my heart hurts. All I ever wanted to do was please you and have you love me the way I loved you. It's probably the most touching, most riveting sentencing I've been to in my career. And I mean, it's just, I didn't think that little girl had it in her, but boy, I'll tell you what, she rose to the occasion, you know? There's a lot of Cheryl in that girl.

And not, not, there's very little Roland, thank God. Roland Petrie is sentenced to 40 years in prison and will almost certainly spend the rest of his life behind bars. Seven months later, Fred McKee pleads guilty to second-degree murder and draws a term of 20 years. I'm often asked, you know, why investigate cold cases? People have moved on, people have forgotten. Anything that we can do, that any police department can do to bring answers, to end that chapter, to turn the page in their life, we need to do that. It's not like they just use their detective skills and write you off. They really care about you, and same with the prosecutor and everybody else. So I just wanted to take this opportunity to tell them thank you,

and just that it meant a lot. In 2005, at the age of 51, Roland Petrie was sentenced to 40 years. He's currently incarcerated in Washington State and is 66 years old. With 25 years left on his sentence, if he is released, he will be 91 years old. Cold Case Files, the podcast, is hosted by Brooke Giddings, produced by McKamey Lynn and Steve Delamater. Our associate producer is Julie McGruder. Our executive producer is Ted Butler. Our music was created by Blake Maples.

This podcast is distributed by Podcast One. The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and is hosted by Bill Curtis. Check out more cold case files at AETV.com or learn more about cases like this one by visiting the A&E Real Crime blog at AETV.com slash real crime.