Randy Roth

Randy Roth (born December 26, 1954) is a convicted murderer and thief from Washington.

Randy Roth was born December 26, 1954, one of five children of Gordon and Lizabeth Roth.

The family moved from North Dakota to Washington in the late 50s.

Randy and his brother David, also a convicted murderer, later gave conflicting reports on the nature of their upbringing.

David claimed their father was abusive and their mother supportive.

Randy apparently bonded with his father more closely and remained in touch with him throughout his life while snubbing his mother, telling friends she was dead or mentally unstable.

The Roths were practicing Catholics, but they nonetheless divorced in 1971.

After graduating Meadowdale High School in 1973, Roth enlisted in the Marine Corps, wanting to emulate his movie hero Billy Jack.

Shortly before his deployment he robbed a service station where he had previously been employed, but he was not charged with the crime at that time.

Roth was disappointed at his time in the Marines as he ended up serving as a file clerk in Okinawa rather than the combat action he'd fantasized about.

After less than a year, he was discharged when his mother (who was living on welfare) wrote a letter to the service protesting that it was a hardship to have him gone and he was needed home to support her.

Upon returning home, he became engaged to a girl named Terri Kirkbride.

Her parents let Roth live in an empty house they were selling, but she broke off the relationship after finding another woman's purse in the house.

A few months later, her parents' home was robbed and she told police that Roth was responsible.

In addition, Kirkbride told them about the service station robbery two years earlier, which she said happened because she'd gotten pregnant and Roth needed money to get her an abortion.

Charges related to the previous stick-up were dropped, and Roth served only two weeks in jail.

Shortly after being released, Roth married the other woman he'd been seeing (Donna Sanchez).

In 1975, he was sentenced to one year for theft, then in 1992 was sentenced to 50 years for first degree murder.

At least two true crime books are based on Roth's crimes, A Rose for Her Grave by Ann Rule and Fatal Charm by Carlton Smith.

In 1977, David Roth was charged with the murder of a hitchhiking girl he picked up.

She gave birth to a son Gregg in 1978.

Shortly thereafter and without any explanation, he filed for divorce and obtained custody of Gregg.

Donna Sanchez retained visitation rights and periodically came to visit her son and former husband over the years.

The trial lasted from November 1979-March 1980 ending with a conviction and he served 26 years for the murder of Elizabeth Roberts.

Lizabeth Roth would later claim that her husband had been a strict, abusive parent who discouraged his sons from displaying any emotion and if they'd grown up lacking in empathy for other people, it was not her fault.

Friends of Randy Roth would also describe his extreme misogyny and dislike of women or anything feminine.

Only women who were submissive and did not challenge him met his approval.

According to former girlfriends, Randy had developed a reputation by high school of being a bully and a punk who enjoyed playing cruel pranks on others.

He was dominating and controlling of his girlfriends, and his male friends were only those who toadied to him.

He enjoyed fixing cars and driving them recklessly on country back roads.

In early 1981, Randy Roth met Janis Miranda, also a divorced single parent, and they married that March.

She had come from an impoverished upbringing in Texas, raised by a mother who labored to support her several children after their alcoholic father abandoned them.

Marrying a serviceman, she gave birth to a daughter Jalina while stationed in Germany, but the marriage ended in divorce and Janis took her infant child to the West Coast seeking to begin a new life.

Randy insisted on ample life insurance for his new wife as they were buying a house together and he told her he wanted to be able to pay the mortgage if the worst should come to pass.

Janis had been extremely excited about her new husband, but after a few months, her friends started to notice that she was acting very strange and wary of everything.

Shortly after the wedding, her Ford Pinto vanished and was later discovered in a field with its engine missing.

He was convicted of the 1991 murder of his fourth wife, Cynthia Baumgartner Roth, and he was suspected of murdering his second wife, Janis Roth, in 1981, but was never tried.

In both deaths, he was the only witness.

He claimed the activities that led to the deaths were the ideas of his deceased wives (“romantic” notions in both cases) and he had the bodies cremated as quickly as could be arranged.

He was also convicted of stealing in the form of defrauding insurers and the Social Security Administration.