American True Crime – A Fatal Backfire

Today’s American True Crime Story is about one of the world’s dumbest criminals – so dumb, in fact, that this story really won’t make sense until the end when I explain what was really going on the whole time.

Okay, let’s get into today’s story. At around 9 pm on Saturday, October 15, 1988, a 33-year-old woman named Cheryl Pitre grabbed a candy bar off the rack inside PJ’s Market. PJ’s Market was a little convenience store in the city of Port Orchard, Washington, and it was where Cheryl worked.

She was the cashier, and without ringing this candy bar up, Cheryl simply handed it across the counter to a female college student who had just come into the store to talk to Cheryl.

This student had temporarily moved right next door to PJ’s market, and after coming into the market and meeting Cheryl, they had immediately taken a liking to her. So, it became kind of like her routine to come into the market basically every night and just sit down and chat with Cheryl, sometimes for hours.

The student would talk about their day at school, their personal life, and tell Cheryl all of their problems and secrets. Cheryl really became this student’s confidante, and, believe it or not, this was an effect that Cheryl had on lots of people.

Cheryl was incredibly kind; she was empathetic, a great listener, and never acted like she was judging you. She never gossiped about people, and Cheryl had a very disarming sense of humor. It was very goofy; she was always cracking up at jokes that she had made, so people just felt at ease around Cheryl, and they typically left interactions with her in a good mood.

And on this night when the student had come into the market, they had told Cheryl that they actually had found an apartment in Port Orchard that they were going to be moving to. So, they were going to be leaving PJ’s where they were now, but the student had said that they really had no money, and so it was going to be a challenge to furnish this apartment. Heck, it was going to be a challenge just to buy groceries for this apartment.

And when Cheryl heard this, she first congratulated the student but then also said, “Well, hey, I’ll give you some of my own furniture because I don’t need it all.” And that will help you furnish the apartment.

Also, Cheryl had grabbed that chocolate bar off the rack and given it to the student for free as a sort of like, you know, “Here’s your first grocery as well.” The student was totally floored by Cheryl’s generosity and tried to tell her, “You know, keep your furniture and you can keep this chocolate or I’ll pay for it.”

But Cheryl insisted she was like, “Nope, tomorrow I will bring you furniture, and please take this candy bar.”

So, the student finally relented and thanked Cheryl profusely. And really, this behavior was so typical of Cheryl. She was a single mom raising a nine-year-old girl and a baby boy.

And so, she worked two jobs to make ends meet. On the weekends, she worked at PJ’s market, and then during the week, she worked at a Ford car dealership.

But despite being totally swamped basically all the time providing for her family, any spare time Cheryl had, she tried to give it to other people, whether that was helping a co-worker with a resume or baking some goodies for a sick friend at church. Cheryl was all about helping other people.

The area of Port Orchard where Cheryl lived was only about an hour away from the big city of Seattle. But to Cheryl, this part of Port Orchard felt much farther away than that. She lived in this tiny little blue single-story house that was tucked away in the woods, surrounded by all these tall trees.

The road to her house was very rural and winding, and so where she lived felt very isolated. It was a beautiful area, no doubt, but it was also kind of a bad neighborhood. In fact, a man had been shot and killed not far from Cheryl’s house just a year earlier. But this home was all she could afford, basically.

Cheryl was poor and had almost nothing of her own, but whatever she did have, she was far more likely to give away than keep for herself. Eventually, Cheryl would tell the college student that she really needed to get back to the other customers and kind of do her job and not just sit here and chat this whole time.

And so, the student said, “You know, thank you again for the candy and for the offer of the free furniture.” And then the student left the store.

At which point, Cheryl reached into her pocket and grabbed some change and dumped it in the register to pay for the candy bar. Even though Cheryl knew she very likely could have gotten away with simply giving out the candy and not paying for it, Cheryl was unfailingly honest, and so she knew she wanted to pay for the candy.

Cheryl would man the register until 11 pm that night, chatting with many more regulars who came in and out. And then at 11 pm, Cheryl locked the front door and then she checked the register to make sure it was all balanced, and all the cash was in there. And then by 11:15, she was calling her boss to report that her shift had gone fine, and that she was taking off for the night.

After Cheryl had left and locked the store behind her, she made her way out to her beat-up silver sedan car that was parked outside. And then she began the drive back home, knowing that she’d be right back to PJ’s the very next morning right when it opened at 7 am.

At the same time that Cheryl was wrapping up for the night and making her way home, her ex-husband, Roland Pitre, who lived on the other side of town, was very excited.

This was the night that Roland was going to win back Cheryl. Roland glanced at his watch and saw it was just past 11 pm, and so it was almost time. He imagined how happy Cheryl would be when he unveiled his big surprise. She would run to him, and he would hold her and tell her how much he loved her and how he had always loved her.

Roland hadn’t yet figured out how he was going to explain his big plan to win back his ex to his current girlfriend, but he figured he would just work that out later. The most important thing for Roland right now was showing Cheryl how wrong and stupid he had been and how much he needed her and how much she needed him. Also, he knew their kids would be totally thrilled if they got back together.

Roland was looking after their son and daughter that weekend, and he had seen firsthand that his daughter was clearly very upset about the fact that her parents were split up. Roland and Cheryl had a very complicated history, but Roland knew really their breakup was his fault.

They had met about 12 years earlier when Roland had been on leave from the military. At the time, Roland was a Marine sergeant and also a very accomplished Judo instructor. He was handsome and charismatic, with a charming Creole accent because he had grown up in a Cajun French family near New Orleans.

But despite how appealing Roland looked, he was actually kind of a terrible romantic partner.

Every woman he had ever been with, he had cheated on and then made up elaborate lies to cover it up. Regardless, Cheryl had fallen head over heels in love with Roland. Part of the reason that happened was because Cheryl was actually pretty insecure.

She had long auburn hair and beautiful blue eyes and this amazing personality. But to Cheryl, she felt like she was kind of plain-looking and she also felt like she was kind of chubby. She got the sense that men kind of did not find her all that attractive.

When she met Roland, she saw right away that the other women he had been with were these overtly glamorous and beautiful women. So, when she noticed Roland taking an interest in her, it was incredible. She felt so lucky.

So, Roland and Cheryl had gotten married, had their daughter together, and then basically right away, Roland had begun cheating on Cheryl. They ended up getting divorced eight years earlier in 1980. It was right around this point that Roland really just totally blew his life up.

The woman Roland was cheating on Cheryl with was also married. Roland came up with this plot to murder this woman’s husband. When Roland was on trial, the prosecutors couldn’t really untangle what his actual role was in the murder.

It was not clear if he really was the guy who did the killing or if he simply had kind of come up with the idea, and other people had done it. So ultimately, Roland was found guilty for his role in this murder, but he was only sentenced to six years in prison.

Strangely enough, it was actually during this time that Roland was in jail that he and Cheryl kind of came back to each other. While Roland was behind bars, he had this epiphany that Cheryl was the best thing that ever happened to him, and he totally screwed it up.

So, he began writing her letters telling her how much he loved her and how sorry he was for being unfaithful. He also began explaining that the charges he was found guilty of in connection to this murder were totally not true; that he had been screwed.

Cheryl eventually began writing back to Roland, telling him that she still loved him too. They actually would get remarried while Roland was in prison. When he got out of prison, he moved in with Cheryl and their daughter in Port Orchard, and they would have another baby together, their son.

Then Roland enrolled in nursing school. For a time, this family was back together, and everything was great. But eventually, Roland went back to his old ways and began cheating on Cheryl again. Before long, the couple had separated again and began living separately.

So, fast forward back to the night of October 15, 1988, and Roland is anxiously waiting to begin this big plan to win Cheryl back. He glances at his watch and sees it’s now 11:30 PM, which means it’s go time. So, Roland stands up really quickly and begins walking towards the front door of his house.

Suddenly, he feels so lightheaded that he actually falls back on the couch and passes out cold.

Roland had serious blood pressure issues, and sometimes if he stood up too quickly, it would make him feel really dizzy, and he would faint. So, that’s what happened.

At some point after he fainted, Roland kind of came to, but he was in such a fog mentally that instead of going out and doing this big plan to win Cheryl back, he just kind of wandered his way upstairs and climbed into bed with his girlfriend and fell asleep for the rest of the night.

Cheryl was due back at PJ’s Market the next morning at 7 AM; she was going to open the store and also drop off that furniture with the college student. But when the first customers, including that college student, arrived at PJ’s Market, they saw the door was locked and the lights were off inside.

Now all of these customers knew Cheryl really well, and they liked her. They knew she should have been there by that point; this was totally uncharacteristic of Cheryl to not be there on time. So, it wasn’t long before these patrons began calling Cheryl at her home, but Cheryl never picked up.

However, remember this is 1988, so people didn’t have cell phones; they used landlines. It was totally normal to periodically call someone and not have them pick up; it just meant they weren’t home.

Now at first, people in Port Orchard just kind of assumed that there must be a rational explanation for why Cheryl is not at work. Maybe there was a family emergency, maybe her car didn’t start. But there had to be some sort of reasonable reason for her absence.

That night, Cheryl didn’t show up at Roland and his girlfriend’s house to collect her daughter and son. Now Roland didn’t know that Cheryl had missed work all day that day, so he assumed Cheryl must just be running late. But by 6:30 PM that night, when still Cheryl had not arrived and she hadn’t called, Roland finally called Cheryl, but she didn’t answer.

So, Roland just left Cheryl this very upbeat message on her answering machine and then waited for her to call back.

Despite how cheerful this message was that Roland left, it kind of betrayed the way he actually felt. Roland was not happy that morning when he woke up and realized he had slept through the night and not done the big plan to win Cheryl back.

He felt so stupid; he had this chance to win her back, and he blew it. But over the next couple of hours, when Cheryl did not return Roland’s call, he went from being solely worried about how he blew this opportunity to win his ex-wife back to now just being concerned about his ex-wife. Where is she? What’s going on?

So late that night, Roland would actually call the police and report Cheryl missing. A deputy came out to Roland’s house to take down this report, and then Roland actually gave the deputy a spare key to Cheryl’s place. This deputy went to Cheryl’s house; it was totally quiet.

He knocked; there was no answer. He let himself inside using this spare key, and he found the home was totally in order. There was no sign of any disturbance whatsoever. The deputy eventually walked over to Cheryl’s answering machine, and he saw there was a blinking light, which meant there were messages that had not been played yet.

So, he hit play, and the first message was from Cheryl’s daughter, who was calling to say good night and I love you.

Then there were several messages from customers at PJ’s Market that were calling to ask, you know, why Cheryl was not at work and was she okay.

There was a message from Cheryl’s boss also asking, you know, what’s going on? Why aren’t you at work? And then there was that message from Roland, who had called when she had not come to pick up the kids.

And then the last message on the machine played, and when the deputy heard it, he knew something was terribly wrong. The last message was from a stranger who was calling Cheryl to say, “Hey, I found your purse floating in Lake Union, which is near Seattle.

I don’t know if your purse was stolen and dumped here or if you were here and you left it in the water or something. But I’d love to give the purse back to you.” The stranger left a phone number for Cheryl to call so she could come and pick up her purse.

Lake Union was only about an hour away from Port Orchard, where Cheryl lived. But there was just no real reason she would ever be around Lake Union. She never went on trips; she didn’t have the time or money, even for short ones like going to Lake Union an hour away.

Also, Cheryl’s entire life was in Port Orchard, and her life was her kids, her jobs, and the church. There was just no logical explanation for why Cheryl’s purse would be in Lake Union.

Regardless, detectives from Port Orchard, along with police from Seattle, linked up and went out to Lake Union, began looking for Cheryl’s car because maybe she did go out here, maybe she did lose her purse in the water, and maybe she’s still here.

But Lake Union is a very busy place with lots of people and businesses living right along the water’s edge and even more people living right on the water in houseboats. So, there were literally thousands and thousands of cars all over Lake Union.

Trying to find Cheryl’s nondescript silver sedan took some time. But on the night of October 19th, so three days after Cheryl had failed to show up at PJ’s Market for that 7 AM opening, police would find her car near Lake Union.

At first, it seemed like Cheryl must have just driven here and abandoned the car for some reason because there was no sign of a struggle inside or outside of the car. There was nothing strange about this car; it was just parked in a lot.

But when authorities went around to the back of the car, used a screwdriver to pop open the trunk, they realized right away that that could not have been what happened because Cheryl was in the trunk and she was deceased and very clearly had been beaten to death.

The investigation into Cheryl’s murder would take more than a decade. The police started with Roland because one, he was Cheryl’s ex-husband, and two, because Roland had previously been convicted for his role in a murder, even though the details of exactly what he did were never really clear.

But Roland had an alibi that was airtight; he had witnesses that could confirm he was nowhere near Lake Union or Cheryl on the night that she was killed. Roland was very cooperative with police after finding out what happened to his ex-wife. I mean, he was really bent out of shape.

So Roland very quickly signed paperwork to allow detectives to come into his home, search it, and search all of his things.

He also began regularly contacting the police to offer up any information he could think of that could be useful – including an odd story he told about this young man that was following Cheryl around in the few days before she died. He didn’t know much about it, but he knew there was something odd happening with this young man.

Now Roland didn’t really have much more information than this suggestion that somebody was following her around. So police were never really able to fully follow up on that lead.

But police did interview virtually everybody in Cheryl’s life, from her friends to her family, to her co-workers at the Ford dealership and PJ’s Market.

They talked to people at church who knew her, and nobody really popped up as being very suspicious. Basically, everyone said, “Look, you know Cheryl was this incredible person who everybody seemed to love. It makes no sense that somebody would want to harm her.”

But a year after Cheryl’s death, the police would get their first big break in this case. A newspaper journalist contacted the police to let them know that this random young man had contacted him and confessed to killing Cheryl and then hung up without giving his name or his location or how to get in touch with him again.

It was almost like this person had called just to get this huge secret off their chest somewhat anonymously.

The police convinced the journalist to actually write a story about the strange call he got to see if maybe they could flush out this young man who had just confessed.

And when this article ran in the newspaper, one of Cheryl’s old co-workers from the car dealership called the police to be like, “Hey, there was this young man who worked at this dealership with us and with Cheryl who was totally creepy and definitely had a thing for Cheryl.”

The co-worker said this guy’s name was Al B broughtsweller, and that he worked in the garage and he was known as a kind of odd guy with a short temper who totally creeped out all the women who worked at the dealership.

And this co-worker would tell police that before Cheryl died, she had been working with Albee on his resume, and while they had been working together, Alby had developed this weird fixation on Cheryl.

And when police began looking into Albi, they discovered he had quit his job at the dealership a day before Cheryl went missing and then a couple of days after he had quit.

So by this point, Cheryl has been found murdered. One of Cheryl’s colleagues said they saw Alby, and he had this really deep cut on his hand that he kept wrapped in a big bandage.

Detectives would also discover that Albie’s father lived right near PJ’s market, and Albi’s mother lived right near the area where Cheryl’s car had been found out near Lake Union.

And so suddenly Roland’s previously odd-seeming story about some random young man following Cheryl around before she was murdered made a lot of sense. It seemed like Al B was this strange young man Roland was talking about.

When detectives tracked Albie down, he was sullen and totally uncooperative. But eventually, the police got him to talk, and he would tell them that he had cut his hand fishing.

So police rounded up all these people, people Alby said he had been fishing with when he cut his hand, and in separate interviews, all of those people confirmed that Albie was telling the truth.

And also, police knew that even though circumstantially Albee looked really suspicious, there was not a single shred of actual evidence that tied him to Cheryl’s death.

And so pretty quickly, Alby was let go, and the police at that point kind of hit a dead end in this case. In fact, the case went totally cold at this point. And then one day in 2002, so 14 years after Cheryl was murdered, a man in prison got word out to police that he actually knew exactly who killed Cheryl.

He said the murderer’s name was Frederick J McKee, and that he was currently incarcerated for cooking meth. Now we don’t know exactly how this inmate knew Frederick was the killer, but this inmate who called police was cellmates with Frederick McKee. So very likely he overheard Frederick say something incriminating.

And so this inmate called the police. Police got a DNA sample from McKee, and they compared his sample to the skin cells that were found on the duct tape that had been used to bind Cheryl’s hands when she was killed. And unbelievably, it was a match. Frederick was the killer.

But as police dug deeper, they quickly realized that Frederick’s heinous actions of actually killing Cheryl were not the worst part of the story. The story of what really happened to Cheryl Petray was so insanely nonsensical that right away newspapers all over the country began to cover it.

It was converted into a true crime documentary, and even a famous author wrote a book about it. I mean, this story really was just totally sensational.

First, I’m going to give you the facts of what happened to Cheryl, and then I’m going to give you the absurd and tragic explanation for why these things happened to Cheryl.

Late on the night of October 15, 1988, the night that Cheryl disappeared, the meth cook Frederick J McKee ambushed Cheryl as she came home from PJ’s Market. We don’t know exactly where the ambush happened, but we think it happened right outside of Cheryl’s home.

And after he ambushed her, he forced her into her own trunk, bound her hands, and then began savagely beating her. Now, based on her injuries, Cheryl obviously put up a big fight, kicking and punching and trying her best to get out of the trunk.

But eventually, Frederick had taken the actual metal of the trunk and began slamming it down on Cheryl’s face. That allowed him to overpower her and eventually beat her to death. And then after she was dead, he shut the trunk with Cheryl inside of her car, and then he drove her car all the way out to Lake Union. And then he abandoned the car with Cheryl still inside of it and chucked her purse into the water.

But this terrible night was not supposed to go this way. Here’s what was going on in the background at the same time that Cheryl was closing up shop at PJ’s Market and beginning her trip back home.

Her ex-husband Roland, on the other side of town, was sitting in his house anxiously checking his watch, waiting for the right time to launch this big plan that was going to win Cheryl back. Roland’s big plan was that he was going to save Cheryl’s life.

He had hired his buddy Frederick J McKee, the meth cook who he had met in prison, and he had given Frederick a spare key to Cheryl’s house. McKee was instructed by Roland to sneak into Cheryl’s place before 11 pm, so before she came home from work. And then when she got home, McKee was supposed to jump out and ambush her, tie her up, and abduct her.

Roland had actually gone with McKee to a hardware store to purchase the rope and duct tape that McKee would use to tie Cheryl up. But when McKee actually got to the point in the plan where he was physically removing Cheryl from her home to go take her who knows where, that was when Roland was going to jump in and save the day. Roland had really thought about how this moment was going to go.

He was going to kick the front door in and jump inside and scream at McKee, “You can’t do this!” And then attack him with his Judo skills until McKee ran off scared.

At which point, Roland would cut Cheryl free, and she would grab onto him and say, “Oh my goodness, you saved me. I love you. I need you.” And then after this, Roland believed they would get back together, and they would live happily ever after.

However, on the night of October 15th at 11:30 when Roland looked at his watch and saw it was time to go save his ex-wife, he stood up so quickly from the couch because he was so excited to go do this thing that he had one of his low blood pressure episodes, and he fainted. And then when he came to a little while later, instead of going out the door to really at this point stop this abduction from happening, Roland just kind of trudged upstairs and went to sleep.

And this was a really big problem because Frederick J McKee, the meth cook, he was hired to actually abduct Cheryl. He was not aware that this was actually a setup for Roland to come in and save the day. McKee literally believed Roland wanted him to abduct his wife, and he didn’t ask any questions.

He just said, “Okay, I’ll do that.” And then when Roland didn’t show up, Frederick went through with the actual abduction of Cheryl. And during this abduction, things got out of hand, and Frederick wound up beating Cheryl to death.

Both Roland and McKee would be convicted for the murder of Cheryl Pitre. And by the time the cops had finally solved this cold case, Roland was actually already in prison for attempting to kidnap the son of another ex-wife in an effort to impress this ex-wife. It had not worked.

Roland was ultimately sentenced to 40 years in prison, which was on top of the 25 years he was already serving. And McKee would get 20 years.