Worth More Dead

the aggressor. She regularly came to his house, complaining about how miserable she was in her marriage, and they had commiserated with each other.
    Roland said he was taken aback when Beth approached him and asked him to kill her husband, promising him a share of his $200,000 insurance policy.
    “I told her immediately that I did not kill people,” he protested, seeming to be appalled at the very thought of it.
    But Beth had persisted in her demands that either Roland or someone he could hire would murder her husband. It was at that point, Roland said, that he realized that Beth might be just the kind of person who could help him create a false danger for his family. He thought he might be able to use her to work out a scenario that wouldn’t truly be a menace to Della and the kids but one in which he could appear to be their savior.
    Yes, he had told Beth Bixler a tall story of how Tim would be kidnapped and held for ransom. But her own “greed” took over, he recalled, and she came up with ideas on how they could accomplish the kidnapping.
    “The holding room, the cards, and most of the other ideas were all hers,” Roland said quietly. “I just went along with several of her suggestions so she wouldn’t guess my true intentions of pretending to rescue my family until the last minute.”
    Roland Pitre swore he never meant for the plan to go beyond frightening Tim. He assured the investigators that all he planned was for someone to get into the house, frighten Tim into believing he was about to be abducted, and then leave. At that point, Roland would come back home, and his family would realize they needed him to take care of them. His marriage would resume, and they would all live happily ever after.
    But he knew that he couldn’t do it himself. If he went into the house, Tim would recognize him. Beth was afraid to go in alone, so she found some young guy Roland did not know to pretend to be a kidnapper. It was she, he insisted, who said they needed a gun. “I asked her to please just get a BB or a pellet gun,” he sighed. “Without my knowledge, she borrowed a .44 caliber gun from some coworker.”
    He added that Beth was having a sexual relationship with that man.
    On March 21, Roland said, he and Beth picked up a young man at the Handy Mart on Marine Drive. Then she called Tim and flirted with him, luring him to the Pancake House. When they saw Tim riding by on his scooter, Roland drove to Della’s house.
    Yes, he parked in the back and provided them with a key and the alarm system code, but he only waited in the car. Beth got out of his van, carrying the two bags of items she thought she needed, and the stranger carried the rifle case.
    Roland said he took the young man aside to be sure he understood that no one was to be hurt. All he was supposed to do was frighten Tim, then leave. “No harm was to come to him; I told him that.”
    Beth and the other man came running out of the house a short time later, and Roland drove off with them. He left the stranger at the Handy Mart, and then Beth took over the driving and dropped Roland at his house.
    As far as the theft of the safe holding Della’s possessions, jewelry, and the family’s documents, Roland admitted to that. But that had happened two years ago. He and Bud Halser had taken the safe to retaliate against Della for trying to divorce him a year before, sneakily filing papers when he was far away visiting in Louisiana. Insurance? Of course not, he said. He never even thought of insurance on the safe.
    Roland maintained that Della was the one who filed the insurance claims and that the money received from the company was deposited in her personal bank account. After he managed to recover the jewelry, he said, he attempted to report that to the insurance company, but they weren’t interested. “They told me the matter was closed and wasn’t worth pursuing.”
    Roland’s great and good friend, Bud Halser, presently in prison, was not charged in Tim’s kidnapping attempt, but he was charged in the theft of the safe in 1991. As tight as the two men had been for years, Halser’s lawyer nevertheless set out immediately with motions to sever his case from Pitre’s. Evidence showed that Halser’s girlfriend was involved in the kidnapping plot, too. She placed several phone calls to Bébé, who was babysitting for Beth Bixler, in an effort to give Roland a backup alibi.
    It was a matter of whom to believe, Beth Bixler or Roland Pitre. Their