True Crime Campfire - For the Love of Money: The Crimes of Randy Roth, FINALE

Episode Date: December 26, 2025

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 SmithA Rose For Her Grave, Ann Rulehttps://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/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/?hl=enTwitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

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. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. In part two of the 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 is the finale of 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 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. Greg is my whole life. 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 1986, Randy was fishing again. Mary Jo Phillips was 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'd 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 his cute little boy. It was such an odd coincidence that soon all three of them just started smiling at each other. When Mary Jo 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 tried, and tested pick-me-up routines, and Mary Jo 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 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. Ew. It was dorky and kind of embarrassing, but it made Mary Jo 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, all gentlemanly courtesy with no pressure for sex. In July, Mary Jo 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 had a healthy life insurance policy, but maybe Mary Jo 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 Jo had to share a secret, something she'd been struggling with by herself. She'd been feeling 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 Jo definitely didn't want him to freak 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 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 who boy girl you dodged a bullet imagine how she must have felt later by the way like after all this came out in the press yeah his behavior is so obvious in hindsight like he's just a fake little man incapable of human emotion like if pinocchio was a short fully grown loser with a false sense of superiority yeah and you know the fact that he did the passive aggressive I'm going to to be an asshole until you leave me thing is amazing because we know who he is in his core he is a violent awful human being and yet too pussy to just break up with his girlfriend unbelievable yeah yeah with donna and mary joe gone the good ones invited randy and gregg to spend christmas with them and they um if you remember are the next door neighbors that randy befriended their daughter brittany was 13 years old and had a very obvious crush on her good-looking neighbor Randy, who was 31 by now. This isn't an especially unusual dynamic.

I mean, I had crushes on all kinds of teachers and neighbors and stuff when I was in junior high. 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 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. Ugh. In 1986, 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 them. Randy nodded. Seriously. I will. I will, he said. And then, kind of weirdly, I wouldn't ever touch Brittany. Who said anything about touching, Randy? Red flag, red flag. 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. 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 as soon as she started babysitting for Greg. She was either 13 or 14 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 was Brittany's stepdad, and Randy, Ben's supposed best friend, did his best to ruin their relationship, telling Britney she didn't have to do anything Ben said because he wasn't her real father. Oh, my God. 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, It was getting one over on those other men that made the whole thing exciting for him. I mean, that and the fact that he was a disgusting creep. Yeah, that part is key, obviously. Yeah, Randy's whole sexuality is based on impressing or, like, other men. Yeah, impressing other men was his, his M.O.

And it's like, man, the closet is glass, Randy. It's okay. 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 some kind of shallow self-aggrandizement. It's so pathetic, God. 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 18, which he had no intention of doing, of course. She developed some psychological problems. and her relationship with her parents was tumultuous, even by teenage girl standards. He dumped her as soon as he met 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 Baumgartner. Around the time Randy's brief marriage to Donna Clift was imploding,

Cindy's marriage to her husband Tom was also ending, although in a much sadder way. Tom Baumgartner was a couple years younger than Randy, and they'd actually gone to Meadowdale High School at the same. the same time, although as far as we know, they never interacted. Tom married pretty blonde Cindy in 1976, and they soon had two boys, Tyson and Riley. Tom had a good job with UPS, 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 29 years old, Tom was diagnosed with an advanced case of Hodgkins lymphoma. He was dead

within six months. God, I cannot even imagine with two kids. Oh, my Lord. So devastated, of course, a widow at 27 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 work at her church. 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 Lori to move in and help with the 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 Lori 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 Lori, too. 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. Lori's mom, Dottie said she was very lovely, very pretty, very happy, wherever she was,

laughter just entered the room. She was just life. 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 10 to 12-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 started at the concession stand in 1990, Randy, 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.

It's like as soon as he had Greg, he had no other moves. Like, where's Sir Randolph when you need him, right? Yeah, 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. Cindy fit Randy's primary criterion.

She was young, meaning she could be cheaply insured for large amounts of money. Plus, she had 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 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 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 gotten the escort, probably after he'd seen Cindy's so that he could use this line. Also, hello, negging. Like, 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 why he had to use Greg. He had no game. Like, this shit was crazy.

Oh, man. If he was trying to neg for real, he would just be like Colin Robinson from what we do in the shadows. Just dig dip shit. That'd be all the end. Yeah, exactly. He asked her out the next week, and Cindy said yes, and here we go again with the love-bombing, flowers, notes, sweet romantic gestures, blah, blah, blah. 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, 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. He lied, of course. 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. Of course, as we know, Jan had died at the bottom of a 300-foot cliff, life, almost certainly after being pushed by Randy. She wasn't Greg's mom, and Randy had been 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. 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. 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. That wasn't a problem. and Randy said, they could take care of that right down in Reno.

Her parents and her friend Lori tried their best to talk her out of it, but there was no swaying Cindy. She thought she'd met her Mr. 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 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 sissies.

Jim tried again, offering Randy an open invitation to come over for dinner with Cindy and the boys, but Randy brushed off the invite. Cindy and the boys came over a bunch, but Randy never set foot in his new in-laws house. And I know people have different levels of social competence, okay? And there's nothing wrong with being socially awkward or have. 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, you know, to be kind

and welcoming, and he would just that line about standing ramrod straight exactly like that. 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 usually climb more quickly than inflation. They paid $275,000 for the place in 1990, and today it's worth nearly $2 million. 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 policy that he'd made Cindy the beneficiary of. Maybe she could do the same for him. Cindy actually had life insurance already, a $15,000 policy with Tyson and Riley as the beneficiaries. But Randy told her that wasn't enough. So Cindy got a new $250,000 policy with Randy as the beneficiary and against her insurance agent's advice, replace the kids with 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 going to the basement. It does.

It's also very similar to season one's case. Oh, yeah, where 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. Save yourself. The mortgage and most of their monthly expenses were paid for by the survivor benefits Cindy's sons received. When Randy lowered the price of his old house and it sold, he made about 50 grand, but didn't put any of it into the new house. He'd been fired from Vitamilk Dairy for helping himself to their gasoline for his two vehicles and had a new mechanics job at 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 is the level of insecurity we're dealing with in Randy Roth. He was worried about competition from a dead man. 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. 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. Oh, bless her heart. Their bedroom had a king-size mauve 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 U.S. Marine, for God's sake, there were no frills in the core. I'm 100% certain 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 man? That would be his jam. But Randy didn't complain about the decor, at least at first.

just satisfied himself with the upstairs rec room, which he 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 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 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 1991 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 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 a toxic relationship, by the way, when they turn down their volume around their

partner. Randy didn't want her to dye her hair so she let her natural brown start growing 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 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 spoke less, 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 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 Mrs. Randy Roth. Dear God, there are Faberjé eggs less fragile than this man's masculinity. He's just pitiful. 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 Randi's,

Andy broke things off with Brittany 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 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 1991 she was thoroughly depressed. She took less care of herself in the house. She was always getting sick, the happy optimism of her. life had just been quenched. She was unhappy. As July rolled around and they got close to the one-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 23rd, 1991, the hottest day of the summer, the beach at Lake Sammamish State Park was still crowded as afternoon shifted into evening.

Cindy's two sons, Tyson and Riley, were 11 and 9 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. 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 boys 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, they saw their mom lying in the bottom of the raft. She was in about four inches of water, wet hair across her face, her eyes open and vacant, and her face in torso blue. She was utterly still. Go get the lifeguard and ask him for help. help, Randy calmly told Tyson, but don't make a commotion.

The lifeguard was a 19-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. 88, 88, 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 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 underwater, Randy said. She swallowed some water.

Between breaths, McFadden asked, How long was she under? Ten minutes, Randy said. A crowd had started to gather. One of them was a woman named Patty Schultz, who happened to be a paramedic, and McFadden gladly let someone more experienced take over. Randy squatted on his heels at Cindy's feet

and watched the scene impassively. Like McFadden, Patty asked questions between breaths. How long was she under? I don't know, Randy said. Was it five minutes? I don't know. Was it ten? Randy just shook 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, 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 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 at her leg. She was hanging on to the side of the raft, and then a boat 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.

The cops offered to drive Randy to the hospital where Cindy would be taken, but he insisted on taking his own truck. He walked over there with the rolled-up raft and 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. 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 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 Cindy to Overlake Hospital in Bellevue, doctors waiting for her there quizzed 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. 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 6.30 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 still hadn't taken. 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 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. He gave more details of the accident while they were in the water, with Cindy holding onto the side of the raft.

A wake from a passing boat about 50 to 100 yards away went by and the raft turned over on top of her. She coughed once and I hurried to right the raft which took about 30 seconds. She was already floating face down. And if you've noticed that Randy said the boat flipped for 30 seconds, but then remembered that he carried a few totes 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 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 enough water from a boat's wake to drown in 30 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 coupled with the other confusing aspects about Cindy's death, Randy's odd behavior was not doing him any favors. An investigation into Cindy's death had begun before he and the boys had even gotten home from the hospital. Because whatever had happened to Cindy had been out on the lake, the case went to the case. King County Major Crime Section instead of the city police, and specifically to Detective Sue Peters. She'd been having a cookout with her 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.

Randy, meanwhile, was trying to get 9-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. Jesus. 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 Bernies. 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. 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 one. That's what Weekend at Bernie's is about if you haven't seen it.

This guy dies and his two friends have to make him look alive for some reason. I forget why. But holy shit, what a choice right after you've just watched. your mother drown. Ugh. After Detective Peters got physical descriptions of Randy and Cindy, she thought it was plausible that he'd just held her underwater until she'd 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 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 Peters got a call from a woman saying she knew something about the woman who drowned. This was Stacey Reese, a receptionist at the car dealership with Randy worked. Stacey had started working there at the start of the year, and it hadn't taken long for Randy to be. move in on her. Soon, they were having regular lunch dates where Randy's favorite subject was complaining about his wife, Cindy. Well, his sort of wife.

He told Stacey 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 Stacey that the contract was just about up. He'd called Stacey a couple days after Cindy's death. She asked if he was all right and Randy said, why wouldn't I be?

He called Stacey a couple more times that night, the last time to ask her out. Just two days after his wife had died, remember. Jesus. Stacey was creeped out 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 Stacey 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, 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 a motive to the mix because the next call Detective Peters got was from Mary Jo Phillips, the one who got away. 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 learned that Mary Jo was uninsurable, whereupon he'd turned to ice. To a homicide detective, life insurance and spousal murder go together like peanut butter and

chocolate. And Randy sounded like someone who could kill. Mary Jo 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 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 have thought? It didn't take long to uncover the records pertaining to Randy's life. His military service had been real, if brief, and had not coincided with any military action in Vietnam.

He had a criminal record from petty thefts in the mid-70s with no jail time, and he'd been married four times, never for very long. When Peters got in touch with authorities down in Skamania 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. When she spoke with Cindy's best friend Lori, 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 Lori called him on the night of Cindy's death, Randy told her he'd given Cindy 20 minutes of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, something he hadn't mentioned before. When Jan had died, 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 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 is 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-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 10 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, 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, 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 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 keep him away from her. He told them he thought Dawn had moved to Utah or Colorado. They asked Randy if he'd take a polygraph test. He said he had no objection, 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 pay phone 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. Detective soon tracked down Randy's third wife, Donna Clift, who had not, in fact, left a 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, Tim Bracotto, Randy's one-time best friend. By now, the investigators were sure Randy had killed Cindy. To test the scenario of her drowning that Randy had described,

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 50 to 100 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 10 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, that its inflated bottom would stick 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 trapped under the raft for the 30 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 two, and every time the raft flipped, the contents of the totes scattered all over the water, with a bunch of them sinking. The totes had still been in the raft, wet but neatly packed, when Randy 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 Janice Roth would be included in the trial. And that seemed like a prerequisite for the conviction. So the detectives went to speak to Tim Bracado. Tim, Randy's one-time best friend, was still terrified of him. I know things

about the ban 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 like, I'll believe you be there. That's homicide investigator catnip is what you just said. They're going to be all over you. He told them that the Vietnam War had turned Randy into a brutal killer. The detective said, mm-mm, 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 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 Lori, who Cindy had stipulated as their guardian in her will. Randy hadn't known about the will until he'd raided 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. be. Lorry took a rented truck over to pick up the boys' things, bringing along a burly brother-in-law in one of Cindy's cousins just in case. Randy was chilly, but cordial at first. He 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 Griffey Jr. baseball cards that were his most prized possessions, with at least one of them being worth a few hundred dollars. Randy had stolen it. He wouldn't let them take Riley's piano, saying he was going to sell it to make the house payment. You can't sell it. It's community property, Lori said. Randy started getting mad.

You come in and you ruin my whole scenario, he yelled. He said he'd been counting on the boys' survivor benefits to pay the mortgage. He'd been planning to quit his job and look after the boys. Now it was Lori who would get to quit her job? She only wanted the boys for the money they'd bring her. Lori and her crew got out of there as fast as they could. On October 9th, the investigation team and the prosecutors decided to bite the bullet. They got a search warrant for Randy's house, which would be executed as Randy was arrested. Sue Peters and her partner went to see him at Bill Pierre Ford. You're under arrest for investigation of first-degree murder, Peter said.

Randy held his hands out in front of him for the handcuffs. That's not how we do it, Peter said, pushing him around. and pulling his arms back to cuff him in the back. I love that so much. 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 P. or 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 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 waistbasket, 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 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 hates telling Cindy where he goes. Randy hates Cindy's monthly thing and putting up 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. And by the 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 really even started. The judge ruled that Randy's actions with Jan, Donna No. 2, Mary Jo 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 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, 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 Rules Book arose for her grave, and either Anne or one of her friends was in there and heard Randy's sister Lisa say to 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. 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 was given a 51-year sentence and is still in there, aged 70,

but will be eligible for parole in 2029. Yikes. I can't imagine. he's a good candidate, but who knows? His brother Davy, also a murderer, was released in 2005 and died of cancer ten years later. Davy at least expressed some regret for his crime. Randy, which I'm sure will surprise no one, never has. So that was a wild one, right campers? 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

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