Worth More Dead

beach. Then he started in again on how it was up to Guidry to shoot Dennis Archer.
    The jurors glanced from Steve Guidry to Maria Archer and back again. Everyone involved in this case was talking and talking a lot. Whom were they going to believe?
     
    Guidry testified that he never saw the Archer home and never saw Maria, but that he probably was the man walking near the truck that Jo Brock saw on Saturday afternoon. “Roland took me with him to borrow it because he said he needed it to move.”
    Guidry said that he had finally had enough of Roland Pitre’s constant pressure to shoot Dennis Archer. “I told Roland that I was leaving Monday morning. He said he couldn’t take me to the airport Sunday night, because he was having company, or Monday morning, because he had to work. We started to bicker. We got back to his apartment about 5:30 on Sunday afternoon and Pitre told me again to ‘wait in the van’ until his sister left. I told him I was going to leave that night, and I needed transportation to the airport or I’d hitchhike. I got my suitcase and said I wanted to leave before the sun went down. Finally, he tossed me the keys to the truck, and I left.”
    It was Guidry’s testimony that he drove out of Oak Harbor around seven. He took a wrong turn on his way to the airport, some 118 miles away, and ended up north of Oak Harbor in Anacortes instead of south heading for Seattle. Retracing his path, he finally headed in the right direction. He said he stopped once to go to the bathroom and ask directions and once to get something to eat.
    Guidry swore on the stand he had nothing to do with Dennis Archer’s murder and that he’d told Pitre the whole plan was ridiculous.
     
    The Archers’ children would probably have been the only witnesses anyone could believe for sure. Although they were nearly hysterical when the deputies responded to their mother’s phone call on the night of the murder, they had conveyed that their father had been shot and killed in his home by a “strange man.”
    According to the medical examiner and neighbors’ statements, the shooting had probably occurred around ten PM.
    At ten PM , Maria Archer, by her testimony, was with Roland Pitre. At ten PM , Roland Pitre, by his testimony, was in bed with Maria Archer in his apartment. At ten PM , Steven Guidry, by his testimony, was driving toward the Seattle-Tacoma Airport. The driving time between Oak Harbor and the airport, which is fifteen miles south of Seattle, is just over two hours if one adheres to the speed limit.
    Maria Archer left Roland Pitre’s apartment to return home at eleven PM . After her husband’s body was removed to await autopsy, Maria remained home for the rest of the night. She made one phone call at around 2:30 AM . That call was to her friend Lola Sanchez, who reported that Maria said, “Someone broke into our house and shot my husband. It must have happened just when I was talking to you on the phone from Roland’s apartment.”
    Roland Pitre spent most of the night driving by the death house, occasionally stopping and attempting to talk to Maria. Steven Guidry spent the night at the Sea-Tac airport awaiting the flight to New Orleans, which he boarded at seven on July 14.
    In short, if one believed all of the testimony given in the three-week-long trial, none of the principals could have shot Dennis Archer. Each pointed a finger at someone else. It was the sort of stuff that can boggle juries’ minds.
    Prosecutor David Thiele bluntly told the jury in his final arguments: “It is an either-or situation. There are only two possible murderers of Dennis Archer: Pitre or Guidry. Evidence has proved that the actual killing was done by Guidry.”
    Thiele reminded the jury of Pitre’s testimony that he and the victim’s wife were in his apartment making love at the time of the murder. “Roland Pitre would not have had time to go out and do the killing himself. Roland Pitre was not the triggerman. Steven Guidry was the triggerman, and Maria Archer was a participant in the plot.”
    Thiele pointed out a “fourfold” reason for Maria’s wanting her husband dead: “She wanted to rid herself of a husband she no longer loved or [even] liked.” Added to that, Archer’s death would clear the way, Thiele said, for Maria to marry Roland Pitre, give her financial gain in the amount of $120,000, and protect her from losing her children in a custody suit stemming from a divorce action.
    Gil Mullen, Maria’s