Randy Roth

**Randy Roth** (born December 26, 1954) is an American murderer and thief from Washington. He was found guilty of the 1991 murder of his fourth wife, Cynthia Baumgartner Roth. Police thought he killed his second wife,  Janis Roth, in 1981 but he was never put on trial for that. He was also found guilty of stealing from the place he worked, from an insurance company, and from Social Security. He was sent to jail for first degree murder in 1992.

## Janis Roth
Janis Miranda married Roth in March 1981. They were both divorced and raising a child on their own. While they were dating Janis and Randy seemed to be a very happy couple. They seemed to be very much in love. After they got married, they were not like that anymore. Janis' friends saw that she did not seem as happy as she had before. Randy  made sure they had a large amount of  life insurance. He said he wanted to be able to pay the bills if something bad happened. The same day as the fall, Randy made sure Janis would cremated. The next day he made sure he would get paid the insurance money. What he did not do was tell Janis' family and friends that she was dead. He did not even tell her own daughter for a whole week.

## Cynthia Roth
Roth had been married three times by the time he met Cynthia Baumgartner in 1990. Baumgartner was also a single parent. Her husband had died of  Hodgkin's Disease in 1985. Randy Roth only told her about his own dead wife because she did not believe in divorce. He never told her that he had been divorced twice. Cynthia found out that Roth felt a need to control everything in her life. He did not want her doing anything on her own.

On July 23, 1991,  they took Cynthia's two sons on a day trip to a big lake called Lake Sammamish. This is the same lake where Ted Bundy had kidnapped two young women years before. It was hot when the Roths arrived and the beach was crowded. Randy and Cynthia left the boys to play in the swimming area while they paddled their  inflatable raft into deeper waters. Several hours later Randy Roth came back with Cynthia. She was either dead or dying from drowning. Lifeguards and paramedics tried to save her and take her to a hospital. She was dead when she got there. Randy Roth said that waves caused by a motorboat made the raft flip over and that Cynthia drowned because of that. They also found out that Randy Roth had called someone on the telephone. Those people got to the house before the police and took some of the stolen things out of the house.

The police had the raft that Randy said had flipped over. They took it back to the same place at the lake and tried to get a boat to make a wave big enough to make it flip over. They could not get the boat to flip over. They threw bags of things into the lake that Randy said he had got back out after he got Cynthia back in the raft. They found out that the things sank too fast for that to be true.

## Trial
Randy Roth's lawyer tried to stop the trial. When that did not work, he tried to get the judge to tell the other lawyers that they could not tell the jury about the other crimes Randy Roth did. That did not work either.

Randy's lawyer told the jury that he was just unlucky. The prosecutor said he was greedy and did not care about anyone but himself.

Over one hundred people got up and talked about Randy Roth. One of them told how he had taught Randy how to scuba dive and that he was a very good swimmer. Roth had told the police that he was not good at swimming. People who were at the lake said that when Randy came back with Cynthia that he was not in a hurry or very upset about his wife drowning. They also heard the poem that Cynthia wrote about how Randy did not love her.

Eight and a half hours after the trial ended, the jury came back and said he was guilty of murdering his wife and stealing.

## Aftermath
Beacon Rock, where Janis fell and died, was in a  place called Skamania County. They said if Randy Roth went to jail for more than fifty years they would not put him on trial for killing Janis. Trials cost much money and Skamania County did not want to use that money if Roth was going to be put in jail for more than 50 years already. The judge said Randy would go to jail for fifty-one years. Fifty years for killing Cynthia and one year for stealing. He will not be able to get parole until at least 2029. Two books were written about Randy Roth and the murder. These books were *A Rose for Her Grave* by Ann Rule and *Fatal Charm* by Carlton Smith.

## Other websites
*Profile of Roth by Radford University Department of Psychology (PDF)

## References