Worth More Dead

to see if the outrageous plan Beth had outlined to Wright was really true.
    “We went all out on that,” Wright remembers. “If there was evidence of that kidnapping plan in her house, we were going to find it.”
    Armed with a search warrant, the detectives swarmed over both Beth Bixler’s house and Roland Pitre’s green Ford Econoline van with its handicap license plate. They particularly wanted to inspect the basement bathroom to see if there really was a hidden holding room there. There was.
    The thought that a human being was to have been held in the near coffin-sized space was sobering. Had Tim Nash not managed to escape from Roland and Beth, he would have been imprisoned in this impossibly small, airless room, so tiny, it would make anyone claustrophobic. Gagged, Tim’s voice would almost certainly have failed to carry through the walls that Roland had covered with thick insulation. Tied to a chair, his ability to hear shut off by earplugs, probably blindfolded, Tim’s confinement would have been torturous.
    The detectives took dozens of photos that would be exhibits at Pitre’s trial. The pictures showed Beth Bixler’s basement, the holding cell itself, the insulation, earphones, earplugs, a knife and rope, and numerous receipts from Costco, Home Depot, and Wal-Mart for the purchase of tools and the lumber used to build the silent chamber in Beth’s basement.
    The Bremerton detectives found that Roland hadn’t even bothered to remove the leftover pieces of lumber from his van. There they also found the family records that had once been in the stolen safe, in good shape because for years they’d been kept in a plastic bag. The duct tape, cue cards, and ammunition certainly dovetailed with Beth Bixler’s description of the kidnapping she said Roland had planned.
    If there had ever been any romantic connection between Roland Pitre and Beth Bixler—and detectives believed there had—there no longer was one. Now they were both in jail, and Roland evinced shock that Beth had betrayed him. He insisted that she didn’t know what she was talking about.
    Yes, he had originally deceived her when he told her that they were going to “kidnap” Tim and hold him for ransom. And yes, he had built a holding cell for Tim in the basement of Beth’s house. But that was all a false plot never meant to come to fruition
    “I never intended to go through with it,” he said. “I just wanted to scare my family. I just wanted to be around to foil the attempt so Della would feel the need to have me move back in the home to protect them.”
    He had wanted Della to understand the sense of loss that he felt when his marriage collapsed and he was banished to live alone.
    When detectives asked him about the theft of the safe, Roland finally admitted that he had taken it from Della’s house. “But I never received or cashed any insurance checks from that,” he claimed once more, not very convincingly.
    Trial dates for Roland Pitre were set and reset at the request of the defense for a delay.
    As he had done after he was arrested for the murder of Lieutenant Commander Dennis Archer on Whidbey Island thirteen years earlier, Roland Pitre apparently suffered a mental collapse and made a halfhearted suicide attempt in the Kitsap County Jail. Judge Karlynn Haberly asked for a mental evaluation by a psychologist from the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services. Dr. Gregg Gagliardi was appointed and met with Roland Pitre on April 8, 1993.
    This time, there was no “Targan,” the entity that Roland blamed for Archer’s death in 1980. When Gagliardi said that he would like to review reports of Pitre’s earlier breakdowns and his alleged stroke in 1991 and those of his outpatient counselor and the neurologist who verified the stroke’s effects to the Social Security Administration, Roland looked at him and said that he could not sign permission slips because he wasn’t Roland Pitre.
    “I’m Wade Pitre,” he said. “The records say I died when I was two, but I didn’t really die. I was in a coma, and I didn’t come out of it until 1988. You’ll have to ask Roland’s attorney to sign those permission slips for you.”
    Gagliardi stared at the man before him. Was he really looking at a dual personality, or was this a show put on just for him? He attempted to point out inconsistencies in Roland/Wade’s premise. “Wade” denied that he had ever been in the Marine Corps, even after Gagliardi pointed