Worth More Dead

Bébé and André to Panther Lake at 7:30 and hadn’t returned until the next day. As he thought now about the contents of the safe, he recalled that there had been some of his own jewelry in a jewelry box inside it. He added seven items to the inventory that Della had made of twenty-five pieces of her jewelry. Not counting the sentimental value of family keepsakes, the loss of the contents of the safe—almost all of it Della’s property—was well over $10,000.
    As he often had, Roland Pitre submitted yet another insurance claim, this time for the stolen safe, to the American States Insurance Company. He soon received payment in the amount of only $1,715. The company said that the policy did not cover jewelry. The check didn’t begin to cover the value of Della’s rings and necklaces or the sentimental value of the family mementos she had lost.
    Two months later, on August 23, Roland went to the emergency room at Harrison Hospital to be treated for what he called “slashing cuts” he said he sustained when someone assaulted him. He wasn’t badly hurt. He told Greg Rawlins, a Bremerton policeman, and Gary Crane, a Mason County detective, that he had set up a meeting with “some people” he suspected of stealing his family’s safe by pretending he had drugs to trade for Della’s jewelry. He had packaged up some powdered sugar to make it look like cocaine.
    “I met these four males who were driving a yellow car. They showed me a bag with some of our things in it,” he said. “I grabbed the bag and pulled it inside my van. But then I was either shot or hit with a club or something…”
    Roland said he somehow managed to struggle free and drive himself to Harrison Hospital’s emergency room. He showed the investigators the bag he allegedly wrested from his mysterious attackers. He gave the police the bag of costume jewelry. They noted that it contained only the inexpensive pieces Della listed as missing.
    In February 1992, Roland Pitre allegedly suffered a stroke, although he seemed to have no lingering effects beyond what he termed “seizures.” These often occurred when he was in the Social Security Administration offices, filling out forms to apply for Supplemental Social Security benefits. He claimed to be 100 percent disabled. He was so convincing that he received payments of $600 a month for his disability. Among the perks resulting from his stroke were license plates that allowed him to park in spots reserved for the disabled.
    The once-powerful judo instructor and Marine Corps staff sergeant said he could no longer work as a CNA at the nursing home. Instead, he again enrolled as a full-time student at Olympic College, this time majoring in accounting.
    With his marriage to Della crumbling, Roland turned to religion, or seemed to. He began to attend the Church of Abundant Life, a fundamentalist congregation. He became so devout that he even went to Bible study classes at the home of Duane and Beth Bixler,* a couple he met in church.
    “Everyone in our group felt sorry for him,” Beth Bixler said. “He told us that he had been framed for murder and sent to prison for the death of his wife. And he was very unhappy in his current marriage.”
    Again, Roland Pitre had shaded the truth, combining his earlier crimes and rearranging them to make his story better. He had not been convicted of murdering his wife; Cheryl’s murder case was still open and unsolved. He sensed—correctly—that the facts about the murder of his mistress’s husband wouldn’t garner as much sympathy if he told them that that was why he went to prison. To the naive churchgoers, his troubles seemed overwhelming. The tears is his eyes appeared genuine, the grief of a martyr. The Bible study group soon spent as much time discussing Roland’s misfortunes and trying to help him as they did examining Bible passages. “We were supposed to support and pray for each other,” Beth Bixler explained, “and in that particular environment everyone showed compassion and sympathy.”
    No one in the congregation knew that Roland Pitre’s estranged wife, her children, and his own children lived in fear of what he might do next. He had always been able to morph from a seemingly meek man to a swaggering martial arts expert and then to a charismatic ladies’ man.
    By February 1993, Della Pitre could see clear to the center of who her husband really was. She found herself in the same position that Cheryl was in when Roland cheated with