Worth More Dead

murder with Maria’s story. While she said she was in Pitre’s apartment, talking for two hours, someone stealthily entered her house, locked her children in the basement darkroom, and shot her husband.
    Sergeant Edwards asked Maria the most cogent question: “Do you think Roland Pitre had anything to do with it [Archer’s murder]?”
    She shook her head slowly. “Putting the pieces together, I asked myself, ‘Why did he come back? How could anybody do that?’ ”
    Edwards wasn’t sure what she meant. “Why did who come back?” he asked himself. Did she mean, “Why did Pitre come back from the East Coast? Or why did he come back to her?” But she was talking freely, so he didn’t interrupt her.
    Maria stated vehemently that she wanted only the truth. “I just want one thing. I pray to God. I don’t want to think he had anything to do with it. I’ve studied psychology. I thought he was all right.”
    Maria seemed absolutely baffled that this man who showed such love for her, for her children, for all children, who seemed such a good person, could possibly be responsible for the death of her husband. And yet—and yet, he still loved her so much. She realized that he never really stopped adoring her, never accepted that she had totally gone back to her husband.
    It was clear that she was painting herself as a woman who loved her husband, who had no reason to want him dead, and at the same time describing Roland Pitre as a besotted man who might well have done anything to win her back.

    Ron Edwards interviewed a number of people who verified that Roland Pitre and Maria had been—at least for several months—a flaming duo. Jo and Mick Brock,* who categorized themselves as good friends of Pitre’s and more casual friends of Maria’s, had some electrifying information. Jo Brock said that before Dennis Archer returned from deployment, Maria had discussed her affair with Pitre.
    “She said she loved Roland and she was afraid Dennis would keep her children if she divorced him. I told her to keep her family together and not consider Roland’s feelings.”
    Jo Brock recalled that Roland begged her to call Maria and arrange a meeting between him and his lost love in the Brock home on the first or second of July and that this was after Dennis Archer returned from sea. “I did that, and they talked awhile in the living room and then went upstairs to our bedroom to talk for a couple of hours. When they came down, Maria rushed out and we could tell that Roland had been crying.”
    Jo Brock said her husband had helped Roland move on or about July 1 and that Mick had been terribly upset afterward. “I finally got him to tell me what was wrong. He said Roland told him that he and a friend of his from back home [New Orleans] were going to kill Dennis Archer and make it look like an accident. We went to our chaplain and told him about what Roland had said. That was on July 5. My husband tried to talk Roland out of it. He didn’t know if he’d succeeded or not, but Roland thanked him for his concern.”
    Jo Brock recalled that she had seen Roland Pitre three times on Sunday, July 13, the day Dennis was murdered. Roland lived only a half-block from the Brocks. He was “quite hyper” that day. “He came over around three to three-thirty, and he sat in the kitchen juggling brightly colored balls. He had dressed up like a clown the day before and juggled for the kids, and he promised to teach them how and to have a party for them. Then he came back at six to six-thirty and asked if his sister could spend the evening with us—because Maria was coming to see him and he wanted to talk to her alone. We liked his sister, so we said, ‘Sure,’ and she came over that evening about eight and stayed until eleven-thirty.”
    “You said you saw Roland Pitre three times that Sunday?” Edwards prodded.
    “Yes. Roland came over again at twelve-thirty, and he was so hyper that his hair was literally standing on end. He said he thought something had happened at Maria’s because he saw police cars there. He wanted me or Mick to drive over there with him. I was afraid of him. I thought he might hurt me or Mick—or maybe that other person he’d talked about would—but Mick went with him.”
    Of course, something had happened at the Archer home.
    Roland Pitre seemed to have had a motive for murder as old as the history of man: jealousy. Despite his later insistence that he and Maria had become only platonic friends, he had