Worth More Dead

apartment. Bobbi would also serve as an alibi for Roland, swearing that he had been home all evening.
    Bébé would be sitting for Beth’s children so her father could be sure she wasn’t in the house with Tim.
    Beth told Doug Wright that she was the female who called Tim. “On the way to the house, we stopped at the R and H Market on Kitsap Way. I disguised my voice and called Tim and coaxed him to come to the Pancake House.”
    After Roland and Beth were sure Tim had left his home, they went to Della Pitre’s house, parked in the back, and entered the house through the garage. “Roland still had a key to the door. He turned off the alarm system and then unscrewed the lightbulbs over the stairs and in Tim’s room.”
    Beth said that when Tim returned, the alarm had temporarily activated, which spooked her, but Tim quickly turned it off.
    “I was in a state of shock at this point,” she said. “When the light didn’t go on over the stairs, he walked up anyway. When he reached the landing, Roland pointed the gun at him and said, ‘Shut the fuck up!’ ”
    Everything had started to collapse. She said Tim began to scream wildly, and someone in the apartment yelled and asked what was the matter. Beth said she and Roland ran to the bottom of the stairs and then ran from the house. “Roland was driving like a maniac when we left, and he was telling me I had to get rid of our masks and the gun, just dump them somewhere.
    “We didn’t notice that we’d left those bags behind until we were driving away in the car. Roland asked me where they were, and I told him they were still in the house, and he said, ‘We’re fucked!’ ”
    It certainly seemed that they were. After they managed to lure Tim away from the house and were able to enter without a problem, nothing went as Roland planned. They weren’t even able to accomplish the kidnapping, much less go forward with his foolproof plan to keep Tim tied up in Beth’s basement until his grandparents came up with the $250,000 ransom.
    What would he have done with Tim at that point if Roland’s scenario had worked? The answer was obvious: Roland could never have let Tim go free. Tim surely would have figured out who was holding him captive, even if the amateurish soundproof prison actually blocked out all sound and Roland and Beth managed to change their voices enough to fool him when they checked on him. Tim would have become a major threat. Any reasonable person would deduce that Tim Nash—alive—could and probably would report Roland Pitre to the police.
    Tim Nash, like others less lucky, would have been worth more dead to Roland Pitre.

19
    At 4:10 PM on March 24, Superior Court Judge Karen B. Conoley issued an arrest warrant for Pitre, not for kidnapping or conspiracy—which were still under intense investigation—but for burglary stemming from the theft on July 13, 1991, of the family safe, which was still missing. That would be enough to take him off the street and give his family a measure of relief that he would not be sneaking back into their house. Just to be sure, Della Roslyn obtained a restraining order that barred Roland from any contact whatsoever with his terrified family.
    Tim had believed his stepfather had wanted to kill him for a long time, and the rest of the Pitre family, including his daughter and estranged wife, were deathly afraid of Roland. The charges were soon amended to include the attempted kidnapping and burglary. Christian Casad, Chief Criminal Deputy Prosecuting Attorney for Kitsap County, and Deputy Prosecutor Brian Moran were assigned to handle the State’s case. Steve Sherman was appointed to represent Roland Pitre.
    Held on $500,000 bail, Roland said he was shocked that anyone could possibly deduce that he would hurt his family. He said that he suffered from such terrible feelings of loneliness and loss after Della asked him to move out and told him she was going ahead with a divorce that he had come up with all the reasons he could to go back to what had been his home. Why would Della have allowed him to keep his key to the garage if she didn’t still need him? He said he tried to find small repairs to make and took his laundry there, making any excuse he could to stay close to her and his children.
    As far as his having a sexual relationship with Beth Bixler, he laughed that off. He told detectives that he never considered sleeping with Beth and had no romantic feelings toward her. It was she, he insisted, who was