If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood

by Gregg Olsen

  Hearing that, the Watsons were beside themselves. Shelly was only fifteen. She had to go to school. Lara immediately tried to get her enrolled in Annie Wright, a prestigious and expensive boarding school in Tacoma, but that was a no-go too.

  “They researched her,” Lara recalled later. “They turned her down flat.”

  While the Watsons made a good income, the truth was they’d have paid just about anything to get Shelly out of Battle Ground and into a classroom somewhere. Anywhere. Eventually, they found a spot for Shelly in Hoodsport, Washington, living with Lara’s parents, who quickly learned to walk on eggshells around the teenager. No one wanted to set Shelly off. There simply was no telling what she would do next. She was volatile, unpredictable. She had a mean streak that was sometimes hidden by a pretense of caring about someone or something. For instance, she’d volunteer to help Lara’s mother with the dishes, but would end up throwing the unwashed utensils, plates, and even pots and pans into the garbage. When she was in a more productive mood, she would wipe the plates “clean” with a cloth instead of washing them.

  Shelly said she loved kids and wanted to babysit for the neighbors. Even better, she loved babysitting so much, she said, she even volunteered to watch them for free. She seemed to enjoy being seen as a benevolent, caring girl. It was an affectation that didn’t last long. When the parents came home from a night out, they found their children in bed with clothes still on and tales of how Shelly had barricaded them in their rooms with heavy furniture.

  Shelly also turned on her grandparents after only a few weeks under their roof.

  “With all their grandchildren, my mom and dad never had a problem,” Lara said, looking back many years after Shelly returned to Battle Ground. “I found out later that my parents were so glad when school finally finished and they could send Shelly home.” Shelly had apparently also accused Lara’s father of abuse. “I learned that Shelly actually told the neighbors that her grandpa was messing with her. And they contacted my mother immediately.” It was baffling to Lara. “I don’t understand Shelly’s constant need to try to ruin people’s lives.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Lara Watson would sometimes brace herself at the sound of the phone’s grating ring, dreading another call about something Shelly had done, something new to test Lara’s resolve to make things work. Lara was capable. She was good with people. She had a bright spirit. But even without Shelly at home, the Watsons’ marriage was under unbearable strain. Certainly family businesses required constant attention, and Les was up for the challenge. It was probably what he was best at doing. Lara, for her part, was mired in the quicksand of raising five children, two of her own with Les and the three from his ex-wife, Sharon. The older children continued to wreak havoc on the household, though none to the degree that Shelly did. Chuck was mostly quiet—timid, even. Lara would have him sit on her lap while she read to him and listened to him pretend to read to her. Whenever he tried to speak, Shelly was right there answering for him. School was difficult for him too. For his part, Paul was a habitual liar, like his older sister. While Shelly controlled Paul, Paul, in turn, mimicked his sister and tried to control Chuck. It was as if all of the kids had coalesced into a mob, with Shelly as their ultimate leader.

  The queen bee.

  The one who always knew what was best.

  Just like Grandma Anna.

  Shelly was always a master of disruption and chaos. It was a foregone conclusion that adding her back in the mix after her exile from Battle Ground was not going to work out for anyone. Lara spent half of that summer on the phone trying to find a school that would enroll Shelly that fall. Every place she called turned her down. Lara was nearly at her wit’s end when she finally got a yes from St. Mary of the Valley in Beaverton, Oregon, about forty minutes south of Battle Ground. It might not have been as far away as Lara hoped, but it was the best of a very short list of options.

  She would later admit that she did hold back some about the challenges that would follow Shelly to boarding school, because she was so desperate. She also figured that a bunch of no-nonsense nuns would see right through Shelly’s most obvious manipulations and put a stop to them.

  After a few weeks, the sisters started calling to ask the Watsons if they could come and get Shelly for the weekend.

  “Friday nights we’d pick her up and take her with us and we go up to our mountain cabin and go skiing. I always tried to do it on weekends, though honestly it was hard. Every weekend I would just grit my teeth. It was so peaceful without her. Even the boys, who had big problems, were doing better.”

  It seemed like the more anyone did for Shelly, the more she’d take. If she didn’t get what she wanted, she’d pitch a fit.

  “The sisters didn’t want her back the next year,” Lara said. “They told me she had behavior problems.”

  The problems were familiar.

  According to the sisters, Shelly would often wake up in the middle of the night screaming. She stole another girl’s homework and destroyed it. She was caught stealing things from other girls. Shelly even resurrected an old favorite guerilla tactic: she put broken glass in a classmate’s shoe.

  Near the end of the school year, the sister administrator at St. Mary of the Valley told Les and Lara that they would not accept Shelly as a returning student.

  “We were willing to pay anything to keep her there,” Lara said. “No dice. The sisters stayed firm.”

  The summer, Shelly took a scorched earth approach to her life in Battle Ground. She spent her days telling Lara how much she hated her and how she wished Lara would curl up and die. Lara, weary of holding back, let Shelly know more than a few times that she was no prize either.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she asked. “You are never happy or appreciative about anything.”

  That was true. Lara didn’t need to look any further than her husband to see why. He gave Shelly everything she ever wanted. Despite all she’d done to him, literally smearing his name, Les treated Shelly like a little princess.

  Princess Shelly couldn’t stay in Battle Ground.

  Les Watson’s sister, Katie, was the next unwitting but well-meaning person to hurl a lifeline in the direction of the Watsons. Shelly had a way about her that could get people to take pity on her and side with her against the rest of the world. Her mother was murdered. Her dad was abusive. Her stepmom was mean to her. Katie offered to have Shelly stay with her for the summer after Shelly complained to her about how rotten her folks—especially Lara—were to her.

  Lara overheard some of the conversations. Shelly was never one to hide her feelings. She spoke loudly and in a manner that made certain everyone heard.

  “She was on the phone telling Katie how bad and how mean and how abusive I was,” Lara recalled. “How I wouldn’t let her have anything and that I didn’t buy her anything. [That] I called her bad names.”

  Shelly’s pity party was a complete success.

  The Watsons had a pickup and a camper, and they made plans to go to Disneyland that summer. The entire family packed up, put Shelly on a plane, and had a wonderful time without her.

  A few weeks later, Katie phoned and said Shelly had told her everything. She and her husband, Frank, had decided to have “the poor girl” stay with them for the school year in their home on the East Coast where Frank was a mining engineer and the president of a coal company.

  Lara couldn’t believe her good fortune. She knew Shelly had lied through her teeth about how things were in Battle Ground. That was fine with her.

  Oh Lord! she thought at the time. God is so good at answering my prayers!

  As it turned out, the East Coast was Shelly’s last stop on the high school education tour that had had her moving from school to school, family member to family member.

  “It was awful,” Lara said of the two years Shelly strained her relatives. In Lara’s opinion, “The problems that [Shelly] caused between Katie and Frank were so bad they ended up getting a divorce.”

  S
helly didn’t seem to mind any of that drama at all. She was moving on. She was not yet eighteen and she’d already met her future husband.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Every guy knows the moment when he meets the girl. The One. The one who spins him around like a top that turns so quickly it digs deep. Randy Rivardo first laid eyes on Shelly Watson in the summer of 1971, when she was seventeen. There was no denying she was a knockout, this new girl. Shelly caught the attention of a lot of local boys when she was staying with her aunt and uncle in Murrysville, Pennsylvania, and attending high school at Franklin Regional High. She and Randy started dating, and they went steady Shelly’s senior year. The two made a striking couple: Shelly with her red hair and flawless skin, and Randy with the dark eyes and hair of his Italian heritage. But it was a teenage romance, destined to be only a passing fancy and a happy memory. They went their separate ways after graduation in 1972, with Randy staying in Pennsylvania to earn money for college tuition, and Shelly eventually returning to Washington, where she took a job as a nurse’s aide at her father’s nursing home.

  Later that summer, however, Randy’s old flame called. Shelly not only missed him, but she also knew of an opportunity. Her father had a job offer for Randy.

  “Do you want to come out to Battle Ground?” she asked. “My dad will hire you as a maintenance man.”

  Randy wasn’t sure. It was a good offer, but it was completely out of the blue.

  Shelly sweetened the deal.

  “My dad will put you up in a rent-free apartment,” she said. “You can save up for school faster.”

  The idea intrigued him. The job only paid five dollars an hour, but after researching the cost of tuition at Clark College in Vancouver, Randy made up his mind. He drove out to Battle Ground and right into Shelly’s open arms.

  Open like a Venus flytrap, that is.

  Not long after he arrived, it grew clear that the Watson family had more in mind for Randy than being just a maintenance man. They wanted a husband for Shelly. Truth be told, by the time he’d pulled his car into Battle Ground, wedding plans were likely already in the works. It didn’t take long for the hook to be reeled in. Shelly told everyone how much she loved Randy. Les treated Randy like a long-lost son. Anything he needed, Les was right there to offer it, going above and beyond.

  However, Randy had an inkling that something else was afoot. Shelly’s father appeared too eager to pass his daughter off to another man.

  “They rushed this thing so much that Les picked out my best man because I didn’t have any friends or family in the area,” Randy recounted. “It was that quick.” Randy wasn’t a passive guy, but he kept his mouth shut. “I sat back and let it all happen.”

  None of Randy’s relatives or friends made it to the wedding.

  Later, a family member discovered the reason: Shelly never mailed them the invitations.

  Shelly and Randy, both nineteen, were married in February 1973 at the Methodist church in Vancouver. Shelly wore a long white dress with a high collar, deliberately echoing what actress Olivia Hussey wore in the 1968 film Romeo and Juliet. The groom wore a pink tuxedo that Shelly had selected for the occasion. A reception followed at the historic Summit Grove Lodge in nearby Ridgefield. Everyone agreed it was a lovely ceremony, a lifelong dream for Shelly. The couple was young but very much in love. At least Randy thought so.

  The couple honeymooned at the Watson cabin at Government Camp, Oregon—a place Shelly had loathed as a teenager—and afterward, they lived rent free in a forty-foot trailer owned by the Watsons. Shelly complained about its shabbiness, but Lara pointed out that it was only a starting point for her life with Randy. They really didn’t have the income for a house anyway.

  “But I don’t want to live in this trailer!” Shelly repeated over and over.

  Shortly after the wedding, Shelly started to complain of severe menstrual cramping and began to miss work at the nursing home. Her “troubles,” as she called them, came in a tsunami that lasted from the beginning to the end of the month. She’d go to work, leave, and then do it all over again. Finally, in what must have been a difficult decision for Les Watson, he fired his daughter.

  “Hard work and dependability were never two of her strong points,” Randy said later of his young bride.

  After that, Shelly went to work at another relative’s nursing home. But the pattern of serial absenteeism repeated there too, and she was terminated.

  “She would then revert back to her dad’s nursing home,” Randy said. “Like a ping-pong ball.”

  Eventually fired for good, a stay-at-home Shelly brought no benefits to the new household whatsoever. She didn’t cook. She didn’t clean. All she seemed to like to do was lie around and tell everyone in earshot what they should be doing, though she was never shy about telling others what she deserved, and how they should help her get whatever she wanted.

  She was a lot like Grandma Anna that way.

  Shelly had designs on a new car, so she did what she always did—she made a beeline for her daddy. It didn’t matter that she’d nearly cost him his reputation, or worse, by claiming to authorities that he had raped her. That appeared to be water long under the bridge. In reality, the Watsons were afraid of Shelly and what she might do. It was easier to give her everything she wanted, just to keep her happy and at bay. If Shelly wanted to go to the movies, or to a concert, or to an event somewhere out of town, they’d immediately fork over the cash.

  Of course, even the Watsons had their limits. As successful as Les’s businesses had been, he wasn’t made of money.

  With the demand for a new car, Shelly showed her dad and stepmom once more how far she’d go to get what she wanted.

  Shelly insisted on a VW Beetle.

  “Daddy, that’s the car I want! The car I have to have!”

  Les agreed and went to Vancouver to see what he could find. However, he didn’t come home with a VW. Instead, he returned to Battle Ground with what he thought was even better—a nearly brand-new pale-pink Buick convertible.

  Shelly’s eyes narrowed, and her face went ten shades darker than the new car. She stomped her feet. She pitched a fit so loud that the windows of the house rattled. She screamed at her father that he’d bought her a “horrible old maid’s car.”

  Les took a step back. Though he should have known better, he just didn’t expect that.

  Randy thought the car was nice, but he was unable to calm his wife down. Shelly couldn’t be consoled.

  What happened next sent everyone into a tailspin.

  That night, Shelly collapsed in a stupor, apparently having overdosed on sleeping pills and booze. When Randy couldn’t revive her, he called the Watsons in a panic and they immediately rushed her to Vancouver Memorial Hospital. Everyone was worried that she might not make it. The ER doctor on duty pumped her stomach and reported his findings to the family.

  “We found out she’d taken aspirin of all things,” Lara recalled many years later. “And only a small amount. There had been no sleeping pills.”

  One day after Randy returned from classes at Clark College, he found their trailer in complete shambles and his wife with a bloody face.

  He ran to her. “What happened?”

  “A man came in,” Shelly sobbed. “He came in [and] attacked me. Raped me.” She indicated some scratches on her face. “He took your rifle and ran outside.”

  Randy called the Clark County sheriff as well as his father-in-law. Both arrived within minutes of each other. Randy and Les stayed outside while the sheriff questioned Shelly in the trailer.

  A bit later, the sheriff emerged and with a grim expression said that Shelly’s wounds had been self-inflicted. There had been no intruder. He gave Les and Randy a look before telling them he wouldn’t file charges against Shelly.

  When the sheriff left, Shelly changed her story again.

  “She reverted back to claiming she was raped,” Randy said later. “She said she only gave up the story because the sheriff forced her to. She said s
he watched as the attacker buried the rifle not far from the house.”

  To prove her story, Shelly led her husband and father to the rifle.

  “Right here,” she told them. “That’s where he hid it.”

  Randy knew better than to believe this story. He suspected his father-in-law did too. Shelly’s stepmother did for sure.

  Shelly simply didn’t want to live in that trailer anymore. It wasn’t good enough. She was Les Watson’s daughter, for God’s sake. She deserved better.

  “She said it was too dangerous for her to live there,” Lara said, rolling her eyes years later. “Instead, she wanted to live in a cute little house in town.”

  Whatever Shelly wanted, she got. Shelly acted like she owned Battle Ground. She left unpaid bills at the gas station and the grocer. She bounced check after check. She grew such a tab over time that some business owners thought it necessary to strong-arm Randy into paying. He’d tell them never to let Shelly charge a penny again, and they’d agree. And then they’d always give in.

  Now Randy knew why Les had been so quick to welcome him into the family. It was more than handing off a daughter to be married; he’d been passing along a very big problem.

  When Shelly announced she was pregnant in the summer of 1974, everyone took a gulp of air.

  Maybe this would help?

  Randy’s parents announced they wanted to make the trip from Pennsylvania to Washington, bringing along baby gifts and the excitement that comes with the anticipation of a new addition to the family.

  Shelly, however, told Randy that she didn’t want his family to come. He brushed her off. They were coming and that was that. When the Rivardos finally arrived, she sequestered herself in her bedroom. She never once came out during the time they were there. It was embarrassing, but Randy put on a brave face and he and his family had a great time without her.

  That, in turn, made her even angrier.