Worth More Dead

Valium. I don’t remember the statement.
    Thiele suggested that Dennis Archer had planned to move into a mobile home the Archers owned when he returned from deployment in June 1980, but he couldn’t do that because Maria had sold it while he was gone. He asked her if it was true that there would be no “quarters allowance” from the navy if Archer didn’t move back with her because of the problems they were having over Roland Pitre. He pointed out that she had financial motivation to reconcile with her husband.
    Maria appeared not to understand what he was getting at. When Thiele asked her if she had—or would—derive any financial benefit from her husband’s death, Maria Archer said she couldn’t hear him. He repeated the question in a slightly louder voice. There was no way she could claim to be that deaf.
    Thiele asked specifically about the three insurance policies: $25,000 from Old Line of the South, $20,000 from Servicemen’s Life Insurance, $3,000 (a navy policy), and mortgage insurance on the Archer home, which had recently been sold for $72,000.
    Maria Archer barely acknowledged this information. Thiele then pointed out that all the money that might be coming to her was frozen because of litigation brought by Dennis Archer’s family. They were suing Maria in civil court through the Slayer’s Act (which denies insurance benefits or inheritance from wills or profits from writing about their crimes to someone who has caused the death of the benefactor).
    Thiele led Maria through the many meetings, phone calls, judo classes, and the countless hours that Maria had spent with Roland Pitre since her husband’s return. Still, she was adamant that she had merely been trying to help a man who was as dependent upon her as a baby.
    With her chin tilted up haughtily, Maria denied absolutely that she had wanted her husband dead.
    Now, two versions of the strange case had been told. It was almost Christmas, and outside the courtroom the first-floor lobby of the King County Courthouse held a towering, decorated fir tree, but there was no holiday spirit at all inside.
    Steven Guidry had said nothing during the trial. He had barely glanced up from the yellow legal sheet that he filled with scrawls during the long court sessions. Now it was his turn to tell of the events leading to the strange and fatal weekend in Oak Harbor, Washington, in July 1980.
    Guidry was neither timid nor cocky as he took the witness stand to be questioned by his lawyer, Richard Hansen. The second defendant recalled that he and Roland Pitre were best friends from their early teens until Pitre joined the Marines. And it was Steve Guidry, not Pitre, who first became interested in judo. The defendant said he joined the Jefferson Parish Junior Deputies (an organization the sheriff’s office sponsored to stop crime among juveniles) when he was 12 or 13. Steve took to the judo instruction with enthusiasm, and he persuaded Roland, who lived a few blocks away, to join, too. They both became adept in the martial art.
    After Pitre left for the Marines, Steve said he saw him four or five times over the years and that Pitre sent him postcards and letters from Japan. He didn’t know Pitre’s wife well, although he and his wife double-dated with the Pitres on one occasion. He didn’t feel that Pitre’s wife was well suited to him but didn’t explain why.
    Steve Guidry said that life wasn’t going so well for him in the late spring of 1980. He was working on a pipeline repairing gas detectors and mud-monitoring equipment, and he wasn’t contented with the work. The apartment he shared with his wife and son had a broken-down air conditioner, which in New Orleans in the summer made the rooms like ovens. His wife took their child and moved to her parents’home. Since Guidry didn’t get along well with them, he moved in with his mother and sisters.
    “I wanted to buy a house,” Guidry told the jury. “But I couldn’t see how I’d ever be able to pay for one, so I joined the Marines, thinking I’d learn a specialty and eventually be able to afford a house for us.”
    Guidry spent every day in late June and early July 1980 with Marine recruiters, taking tests, talking about the opportunities in the Marines. “My test results were so high that I qualified for every school they offered. I wanted electronics, but the only thing available in that field at the time was refrigeration school, and I didn’t really want that.”
    For the first time