Worth More Dead and Other True Cases Read online

  Of course, none of us sitting in that courtroom could know that then. All we knew was that the engrossing trial was certainly not a slam-dunk case for either side. Nevertheless, observers expected it all to be over before the holidays so that the lawyers, jurors, reporters, and the judge’s staff could enjoy Christmas and then move into the New Year and the next newsworthy case.

  The female defendant, Maria Elena Archer, was born in Oruro, Bolivia. She had three older sisters and a younger brother, and her wealthy family could well afford to send her to private schools in Bolivia. When she left Bolivia in 1966, Maria had already completed the equivalent of two years of college; she was as brilliant as she was beautiful. And beautiful she surely was.

  Maria went first to Ohio State University in Columbus, but the campus and the city were just too big and overwhelming for the 18-year-old, and she moved to Corvallis, Oregon, where she attended Oregon State University. Although even at trial some fourteen years later Maria still spoke with a lilting Hispanic accent, her grasp of languages was excellent. Indeed, she majored in languages, business administration, and psychology at Oregon State. She attended college there for almost three years, excelling in her studies and attracting the eye of more than a few male students.

  It was Dennis Archer who won her love after they met in class and began dating. Dennis was a handsome, solid young man about to graduate with a degree in electrical engineering, which would make him a sought-after candidate for a career in the navy. The husky American and the flowerlike girl from Bolivia made a storybook kind of couple when they married in Corvallis on December 27, 1969.

  Dennis’s first duty station took them to Pensacola, Florida, for four months. Home of the Blue Angels, the navy’s incredibly synchronized jet flying squad, Pensacola had charming old houses and white-sugar-sand beaches. They were lucky, too, when Dennis was assigned to a naval base in Corpus Christi, Texas. Again, they stayed just four months before another transfer.

  The first permanent home the Archers ever had was in Oak Harbor, Washington, where Dennis was a Navy Air Arm navigator.

  Oak Harbor and the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station became a true home base for the Archers. Their first child, a girl, Denise, was born there ten months later. Maria was saved the arduous chore of packing up, moving, settling in again every year or so, and the Archers remained in Oak Harbor for ten years, although Dennis was often away on deployment. Maria estimated later that Dennis’s duties kept him away from home for at least four of their ten and a half years of marriage. Service wives have to accept that. When they cannot, their marriages usually end in divorce.

  Dennis Archer rose rapidly through the ranks, and he was a lieutenant commander by the late spring of 1980. He and Maria purchased a home on North Fairwood Place in Oak Harbor, and she was involved in activities both as an officer’s wife and as a member of the community. On the witness stand, Maria recalled that her marriage was one where she literally worshipped her husband. She said she had always placed Dennis “on a pedestal.” That attitude may have been the last vestige of her Bolivian upbringing.

  She was totally devoted to her two children (a son was born a few years after Denise). Besides keeping an immaculate house, Maria loved to cook, to paint, and to study. She particularly enjoyed reading in the field of psychology, as she was fascinated by human behavior.

  Surprisingly for a woman who appeared so delicate, Maria Elena had always been interested in exercise and physical activity; she took Middle Eastern dancing lessons (belly dancing is the more familiar term) and followed those up with jazz, tap, hula, and folk dancing. She became so adept that she taught dance classes at the Katherine Johnson Dance Studios in Oak Harbor and at Skagit Valley Community College in Mount Vernon, Washington. She directed and planned a Spanish night at the officers club and sewed costumes for and performed in local pageants and drama groups.

  Like all service wives, she had to make a life for herself and her children, one that was not dependent on her husband. When Dennis was home, they were a regular family. But for much of the time she was basically a single mother.

  “I was alone so much,” she remembered. “I spent a lot of time doing things with my children; I like to help other people and to get involved in the community.”

  As idyllic as it sounded, things were not rosy in the Archer marriage. Their story is far from unique. Maria took much of the blame for the trouble, wondering if their relationship had faltered because she worshipped Dennis too much. “We weren’t on the same level. There was a lack of communication,” Maria said softly. “Dennis wasn’t willing to work out the marriage problems. His job was very important to him, and there was family pressure. We had counseling about four or five years ago, but I just couldn’t get close to him.”

  As Dennis Archer trained to leave on another deployment in November 1979, Maria prepared to be alone again. She and the children would be alone for Thanksgiving and for Christmas. She testified that she was never unfaithful to her husband, even during the long months while he was away. To forestall temptation in a life without sex she deliberately kept herself very busy.

  Maria explained that one of the activities that took up her time after the midsummer of 1979 were the judo classes that she—and the children—attended several times a week. The classes were very popular with service dependents in Oak Harbor. Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Roland Pitre’s instruction in self-defense and martial arts drew packed houses. His reputation was such that there were waiting lists for his classes.

  Maria recalled that she initially went to the judo classes because of her interest in sports. She said she also went because she was sometimes frightened at night when she was all alone in the house with the youngsters.

  Roland Pitre was the instructor, and Maria was only one of many judo students. Then something changed—gradually, subtly, at first. Maria said she wouldn’t deny that there was a strong physical attraction between herself and the Marine who taught the judo classes with such grace and strength.

  Roland Pitre didn’t talk much about his Cajun roots in Louisiana, but he still had a trace of the accent that was partly French and partly the melody of the bayous. He was not classically handsome; his chin was a little weak, and he had a small brush of a mustache, the same reddish color as his wavy hair. But he had a tautly muscled body and moved like a tiger. Although he wasn’t particularly well educated, Pitre was innately intelligent and had a quick mind. There was also a sense of danger about him, nothing overt, more like electricity in the air before a storm, the kind that makes the hair on your neck and arms stand on end.

  Maria Archer’s and Roland Pitre’s magnetic attraction to one another was stronger than her loyalty to Dennis or the fact that Roland too was married. He and his wife, Cheryl, were married in May 1976. By May 1980 they were headed for divorce. She had moved back to Pennsylvania with their 18-month-old daughter, Bébé, to stay with relatives while they tried to sort their marriage out. Whether Cheryl knew all the details of Roland’s womanizing is unknown. Probably she didn’t. He had been like catnip to females since he was in his teens. Usually, he managed to keep his various conquests apart so that they had no way to compare notes.

  Detectives one day winked as they said that besides his having well-toned abs and biceps, rumor said that Roland Pitre was exceptionally well-endowed and that that was one of his secrets in seducing the opposite sex.

  Maria never mentioned that, of course. Later, she recalled that she was attracted to him because he seemed “a good person” and he adored children, as she did. She had felt a little sorry for him. He told her he’d spent six or seven years in an orphanage as a youngster, that he’d come from a home torn by dissension. “His first judo instructor changed his life,” she once told an Island County detective. “That was the first person who showed him he could be good at something. And he wanted to help other kids.”

  What happened next was perhaps inevitable. Maria Archer never denied that after Dennis Archer went to sea, she and Roland Pit
re began a physical affair sometime in the latter part of 1979. According to Maria, the affair continued until late March or early April 1980. They made no effort to hide it, and the liaison was an open secret in the small town of Oak Harbor. The couple were often seen out together, and they even entertained together. Maria admitted to having serious doubts that she could continue in her marriage.

  Roland Pitre’s marriage blew sky-high, and his wife remained in Pennsylvania. Cheryl threatened to file for divorce, and he didn’t try very hard to dissuade her, although he did seem to be heartsick that he was separated from his daughter.

  Maria insisted that her relationship with Pitre had nothing to do with the breakup of his marriage. She said that it was already over by the time she and Roland began to sleep together.

  As for her own marriage, Maria had been torn. She wrote to Dennis and said, “If I can’t make you happy, I’m sorry, darling—but maybe we should try some other way.”

  Maria recalled that she was surprised by her husband’s answer: he wrote that their problems were largely his fault, that he expected her to do everything. She wrote back and said part of it was her fault. “He opened up for the first time.

  “He said he loved me very much, but he’d never contest a divorce. In late March or the first part of April 1980, I was planning to try my marriage again.”

  According to Maria, Roland Pitre took her resolution to attempt to mend her marriage with grace. “He said, ‘I’m just a good friend. I’ll always be your friend. I just want you to be happy.’ ”

  Dennis Archer was not due to return to Oak Harbor until June 1980. Still, Roland’s attitude toward her changed well before that. He seemed to accept her decision to end their affair but remained a constant in her life. They were no longer lovers, but he told her he considered her his closest friend. He would come to her house to babysit her children, and he was a great friend of the neighborhood children. She was busy sewing costumes for a town pageant and Roland even helped with that.

  The Marine from New Orleans, who was four years younger than Maria, had lost his wife, his child, and now his mistress, but according to Maria, he accepted all of it with equanimity. He had asked her to divorce her husband and marry him, he had told her he loved her, but that was all in the past. Now, she was only his good friend: “the best friend he’d ever had.”

  Roland still needed Maria’s advice. He wanted to gain custody of his daughter, Bébé. Maria pointed out that a little girl should be with her mother. He didn’t agree with her. Maria didn’t know Cheryl Pitre, but Roland was adamant that he would make a more reliable parent for his toddler daughter.

  In June, Dennis Archer returned home. “We were going to be a family again,” Maria testified sadly. “My husband always said, ‘You don’t have to tell me everything,’ but I thought I would—but I didn’t want to hurt him.” Dennis seemed to accept her confessions, and she said their last weeks together were good. “My husband had changed. We would talk until four AM. We were going to leave and go camping. I told Roland I could finally express my feelings to my husband.”

  Everything appeared to have come together flawlessly like the seamless ending of a romance novel. Maria’s husband appreciated and communicated with her now. She said he had forgiven her for her few months of infidelity. And her lover wasn’t the least bit upset that she had gone back to her husband. According to her astounding revelations, Pitre had moved smoothly into the position of her best friend. No one was jealous. No one had an axe to grind, or revenge to seek. All the ends were tied up neatly, too neatly for a skeptic to believe.

  His divorce papers filed, Roland Pitre traveled to the East Coast and returned with his 20-month-old daughter and his sister around the first of July. He moved them into a new apartment in Oak Harbor. He called Maria to see how things were going with her. She remembered that she wasn’t really that happy to hear from him. She told him a little sharply, “It’s none of your business. My life is my life.”

  Apparently, she no longer needed him as a best friend at that point, and after that, she said she didn’t care to see him at all. Maria was totally reconciled with Dennis. Or so it seemed.

  2

  It was 11:34 on Sunday night, July 13, 1980, when Maria Archer’s frantic phone call came into the Island County Sheriff’s Office in Coupeville, Washington, ten miles south of the Archer home. The dispatcher had to calm the female on the phone before he could understand what she was saying.

  “Someone has broken in and shot my husband!” she cried.

  The dispatcher was finally able to get the address, and he radioed the call to Deputy A. J. “Bud” Graves, who arrived at the residence in minutes. Graves found Maria and a neighbor waiting at the house on North Fairwood. She appeared very agitated, which was to be expected. She and the neighbor led Graves to an upstairs bedroom, where a man she identified as her husband, Dennis Archer, lay motionless.

  There was no question that Archer was dead; the front of his polo shirt was one giant splotch of crimson, and still-liquid blood stained the carpet beneath him. Still, Graves knelt next to the body, and felt in vain for a pulse. Whatever had happened had happened very recently. There was no rigor mortis, no lividity; the body was still faintly warm to his touch. Nevertheless, Archer was dead.

  Graves radioed for backup from Captain Robert E. Sharp, the head of Sheriff Richard Medina’s Criminal Investigation Unit. Detective Sergeant Ron Edwards was next up on the list to respond. Edwards was a ten-year veteran of the sheriff’s office, and he was about to become the investigator who would be principally responsible for probing into the baffling case.

  He quickly ordered deputies to cordon off the house and yard to prevent curious bystanders from contaminating any evidence that might be there.

  On the surface, the motive for Archer’s murder appeared to have been burglary: a stereo and other belongings of the family were stacked near the front door in the living room. Yet that was strange. The Archers, while comfortable, hardly seemed prime targets for a burglary. Nor did it seem prudent for a burglar to enter a home whose occupant, a husky, six-foot-tall 33-year-old naval officer was still awake. Far better to enter in the wee hours of the morning when the lights were out and the residents were sleeping.

  Trembling, Maria Archer told the investigators that she had been out during the evening. She had driven a friend of one of her children home after baking pizza for her family and the other youngster. She left her children with Dennis so that she could visit a woman friend, Lola Sanchez,* who was also a Latin-American navy wife. Maria said she had intended to stop for a few breakfast items at a convenience store on her way home shortly after eleven but had decided it was too late and she had driven straight home from Lola’s house.

  When she entered the house, the front door was unlocked, Maria said, but that wasn’t unusual. She called out, “Hi! I’m here,” expecting to hear her husband answer. Instead, she heard first silence, then her children screaming from somewhere in the basement.

  “They were screaming, ‘Mommy! Mommy! Daddy locked us in the closet!’ I wondered if my husband had gone out of his mind,” she told Edwards. “Nothing made sense. There was a board across the door to our darkroom, and I wrenched it off to get my children out. The kids said a man came in the house. I looked around, but I was afraid. I was trembling inside, but I’m strong, a mother. I thought maybe someone was in the house, and I had to protect my children. The receiver was off the hook, and I called my neighbor and said, ‘Please come right now.’ The kids were blubbering. I left them with my neighbor, and I went upstairs.”

  Maria Archer told the detective that she found her husband lying in the bedroom with his hand blocking the door. “His eyes were open. His mouth was open, and he was white. I knew he was dead. I kissed him and said, ‘Darling, we’ll always be together now. I’ll never leave you now.’ I moved his hand and shut the door.”

  Maria said she was most concerned about her children and that she’d put them to bed, trying to calm them as
they cried, “Daddy, where’s my daddy? Where did they take him?”

  Then she went downstairs and told her neighbor that Dennis was dead and that she must call the sheriff.

  It was a most puzzling case for the Island County investigators. If robbery was the motive, why wasn’t anything missing? Why did the supposed thief leave his loot still stacked in the living room? Had he been frightened off as Maria arrived home? A canvass of nearby homes by deputies elicited little information that might help. One neighbor thought she might have heard a shot approximately twenty minutes before Maria arrived home to find her husband’s body. Other nearby residents had neither heard nor seen anything.

  Dennis Archer had been a well-liked and respected neighbor; no one could fathom why he would have been a likely target for murder.

  The children, almost hysterical, could offer no help.

  Nor could Maria.

  *Some Names Have Been Changed. The First Time They Appear, They Are Marked With An Asterisk (*).

  3

  It was a long, long night for Captain Sharp, Sergeant Edwards, and the investigative team as they diagrammed the crime scene, gathered the lethal .357 bullets, vacuumed for fiber samples, and cut sections of carpet from beneath the body. Dusting for latent prints proved to be fruitless. They didn’t find any useful possibles. There were tire tracks in the front yard of the Archers’ home, but they were faint because the weather was hot and dry; there wasn’t any mud to hold a good impression. Still, they painstakingly took samples of dirt and grass from the yard, hoping they would later use them to match debris caught in the undercarriage of a suspect vehicle.