Worth More Dead

but she continued to say the things she had held back for so many years.
    “You are a dangerous psychopath who cannot be a member of society, because you kill those around you…to attempt to fulfill your monetary greed,” Bébé said, tears beginning to flow. She had sensed that her mother was never coming back. “I remember feeling this horrible rush on Saturday; I just knew…I think intuitively I just always had faith he would be brought to justice.”
    She told her father that she had learned of his plans to kill her, too, so he could collect on the insurance policies he held on her life. “The pain of knowing that you wanted me dead is so deep inside that when I think about it, my heart hurts. All I ever wanted to do was please you and have you love me the way I loved you.
    “What’s so sad is, I really thought I could get you to stop killing people, lying, stealing, and hurting people. For so many years, I wore this pain on my shoulders…. You have given me a lifetime of fear.”
    André, 16, didn’t even remember his mother. At least Bébé had that to hold on to. He said he recalled only a punitive, angry father. He, too, turned to face the shrunken man in the red coveralls. “I came to you as a kid looking for comfort,” he told Roland Pitre, as others in the courtroom fought to hold back tears. “Instead, you beat me. I came for guidance; instead, you terrorized me.”
    Della, Roland’s second wife, told him what she hoped for his future: “You have used and abused people all your life. I will never forgive you. Or myself, for bringing you into our home. I wish you loneliness and pain the rest of your life, and even that is too good. I wish you were dead.”
    Undeterred, Roland Pitre chose to address the Court and those gathered there. He seemed to still believe that he could explain and temper the harshness of what he had done. He had always been able to use words effectively. He had taken the Alford Plea, he said, only to spare his family the ugliness of a trial. He recalled some nostalgic times with Cheryl, whom he claimed he had loved, and spoke of happy memories with Bébé and André. He apologized to his children and his ex-wife for the pain, fear, and embarrassment they had endured because of his actions.
    “I’m a different person from the one you last saw,” he explained. “May the Lord smile on you and grant you peace.”
    How different? In what way? The question begs an answer. Only a few months before, Roland Pitre had told Gregg Mixsell and Richard Gagnon the same old tired story of his wish to be a knight on a white horse who would ride in and save André and Bébé’s mother, his wife who had done the best she could for him. But he had forgotten to rescue her.
    He will have many years to ponder the new Roland Pitre. Perhaps he has seen the error of his ways, although it seems unlikely.
    Judge Kallas sentenced him to forty years in prison. And those forty years will not even begin until he has completed serving the twelve years he still owes the state for his unsuccessful attempt to kidnap Tim Nash.
    In fifty-two years, Roland Pitre will be 104 years old.
    Seven months after Pitre was sentenced to life in prison, in October 2004, Frederick McKee stopped protesting that he had no guilty knowledge of Cheryl Pitre’s murder and pled guilty to second-degree murder. On November 19, 2004, Judge Robert Alsdorf of King County Superior Court sentenced him to twenty years in prison, four more years than the sixteen-year sentence the prosecutors recommended. He will be well into his seventies when he comes up for parole consideration.

    Roland Pitre’s closest friend in the Marine Corps in the early seventies shakes his head in disbelief when he remembers Roland as he was then. He was a rascal and a chronic liar, yes, but there were also many periods when Pitre sailed smoothly, using all of his considerable intelligence to turn what he dreamed of into reality. He maintained a successful career in the service for a dozen years, moving up through the ranks. His onetime Marine buddy, now a successful, middle-aged businessman, says he was absolutely astounded to learn that the man he knew as Pete had gone to prison not once—but twice—on murder charges.
    “You know, he could have been anything he wanted and done anything he set his mind to. I guess the one thing that surprised me is that his criminal career was so shot-through with mistakes and missteps.”
    In the end, it was a