Worth More Dead

candidate for early parole.
    Still, true sociopaths often make model prisoners, giving corrections officers little trouble. They learn that the way out is not to fight the system but to respond to those who are temporarily in control with charm and an earnest mask. No one could be more cooperative than Roland Pitre.
    During his time on McNeil Island, he obtained his Associate of Arts degree from Centralia Community College and his B.A. degree from Evergreen State College through correspondence and prison courses.
     
    Back east, Cheryl Pitre had never really stopped loving her ex-husband, and she wanted very much to believe his letters protesting his innocence in Dennis Archer’s murder. Perhaps even more compelling, Roland wrote of his tremendous regret that he had been unfaithful to her. His reasoning made more and more sense to her because he was telling her what she needed to hear. He had always been extremely persuasive, and he was very attractive to women. When he first proposed to her in the seventies, Cheryl was both grateful and baffled. She was not a beautiful woman, and she knew he had dated many gorgeous women in the past. She had thick chestnut hair and lovely blue eyes but was a little plump and somewhat plain. Where Maria Archer was tiny and slender, Cheryl was large-breasted and big-boned. Her confidence had been severely shaken when she learned that Roland was cheating on her with Maria.
    But now he was back in her life, telling her all the things she thought she would never hear. Cheryl took into account that he was in prison, where there were no women for him to cheat with. Still, he truly seemed to have come to appreciate her letters and her renewed loyalty to him. He wrote that he wanted to start over, to be a father to Bébé, who lived with Cheryl. If only, he wrote, he wasn’t stuck in prison for years.
    It worked. They remarried in December 1981 while Roland was still in prison.
    Cheryl made up her mind that she would do everything possible to help him achieve an early parole. She longed to be with him again. He explained that his only chance to get out before he was an old man was to have someone to come home to, someone with a solid reputation who had a house where he could move in. Someone who would arrange to have a job waiting for him, too.
    Cheryl promised Roland that she would be that person for him. As she had before, she accepted him on faith. Just how much Cheryl knew about Roland’s life each time she married him may never be known. He was—and always had been—a man with an astounding gift of gab, and he was also a man with many secrets. He was a chameleon, changing his demeanor and attitude to suit whatever situation he was in. He always had many male friends and—this much Cheryl knew—any number of women who had loved him.
    Roland usually told women that he suffered through an abusive childhood, but that may very well be only one of the lies he told to draw people to him and gain their sympathy. He was born in Donaldsville, Louisiana, on October 30, 1952, and was named after his father; he was Roland Augustin Pitre Jr. He was built exactly like his father, thin but tough as steel cable, with ropelike muscles.
    Aside from his longtime friendship with Steve Guidry, Pitre’s early childhood in the New Orleans area is murky. He was born the third of six children, the second of five to survive. His parents, Roland Pitre Sr. and Emily Gros Pitre, apparently had a successful marriage that lasted until death parted them. There were five boys—Roland Jr., Danny, Michael, Rodney, and Wade—and one girl, Sherry. Tragically, Wade died at the age of 2. Roland’s father, 28 when Roland was born, was a truck driver with the Teamsters Local 207 in New Orleans and a Marine Corps veteran of World War II. His mother worked as a waitress. Both Roland’s parents were Cajun French, part of a large population that lived the rich culture handed down by their ancestors in Louisiana, enjoying zydeco music, spicy gumbo and crawfish cuisine, and folklore and ghost stories. They often spoke Cajun French in their home.
    Roland would always have a trace of a French accent, although his bonds to Louisiana and his family were not particularly close. He attended St. Rita’s parochial school through the eighth grade, then went on to East Jefferson High School in Metairie, Louisiana. He dropped out of school in the eleventh grade.
    Like his father before him, Roland enlisted in the Marine Corps when