If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood(10)

“So I was sure to go home,” Randy said later.

It didn’t take too much longer for Randy to decide that he couldn’t take it anymore—no matter how much he loved Nikki, he couldn’t ignore that his marriage, which had started on tenuous grounds, was now falling apart.

Lara didn’t blame Randy for leaving his family, for leaving Shelly. No one did. Except Shelly.

He got airfare from his parents and left Washington—and Shelly—as fast as he could. “I needed a fresh start,” he said. Yet when Shelly called him at his parents’ house two weeks later and professed a genuine desire to repair their marriage, Randy agreed to let her and Nikki come stay with him and his family, albeit reluctantly. He missed his daughter, and cared more for her than whatever he felt for Shelly.

The reunion was short-lived, lasting just two weeks.

“Even my grandparents were disgusted by her behavior. She created such a furor there that I had no recourse but to file for divorce.”

Shelly retaliated immediately by buying everything in sight and sticking Randy with a growing bill. This put her ex further and further into debt. Shelly didn’t care. Randy sent her an income tax refund check that needed to be countersigned. Randy told Shelly that the money would get him caught up with the collectors who had been hounding him.

No such luck. Shelly double-crossed Randy and had another man forge his signature.

She cashed the government check and kept the money for herself.

And then suddenly Shelly simply dropped out of sight. Lara tried every number she had—friends, relatives. Anyone. She was worried about the baby.

“I kept calling Shelly,” Lara said. “She wouldn’t answer. And I was frantically trying to get ahold of her. Trying to see her and she wasn’t home or wouldn’t answer the phone. She just stopped being a mother. Shelly got a job as a waitress in a bar on Main Street in Vancouver and that seemed to be enough for her.”

This went on for some time. At one point, a relative in Battle Ground told Lara that she’d better come and get Nikki, for whom the relative was caring.

“Shelly’s gone.”

“Where?” Lara asked.

“I don’t know.”

“When is she coming back?”

“Don’t know that either.”



Shelly stayed gone. What she was doing and who she was with was a bit of a mystery, though frankly, Shelly being gone was a very good thing. Less drama. Less worrying. Less of everything that tied the stomachs of those around her into knots.

It would be almost a year before Shelly would return to collect her daughter from Lara. Shelly’s absence wasn’t even explained. She just popped back in and took Nikki. Lara’s love for Nikki was deep. She’d wanted to keep her—to have her declared abandoned by Shelly, to adopt her and raise her as her own.

Lara vowed she’d do whatever she could to stay close to her granddaughter.

In 1978, when Nikki was just three, her mother lovingly wrote about her feelings for her firstborn.

Shelly dotted her i’s and underscored exclamation points with hearts to emphasize her unbridled devotion. She wrote in verse how seeing Nikki’s face brightened up the drudgery of a long day.

“A face as darling as can be, her laughter . . . a bubbling brook . . . while her smile dimples her sweet little chin . . . All framed by her hair of gold . . . and those eyes—big and brown . . . sparkling with laughter.”

She tempered her love letter with a splash of cheerful reality too.

“. . . she’s in my jewelry box! My purse! My lipstick! Or pulling off some mischievous trick!”

Shelly concluded with a telling rhyme:

“Oh Nikki, though our tempers increase our love for her will not ever cease!”

For a time, Shelly perpetuated a kind of “you and me against the world” story line. She told Nikki that her daddy had abandoned them, that her paternal grandparents didn’t love her. She said all of that to her daughter with sad eyes and her arms wrapped around her, but added that it was fine because she loved Nikki so, so much.

Unsurprisingly, this turned out to be carefully curated fiction. Many years later, Nikki found a cache of letters from her dad and his side of the family, and discovered that her father’s family had sent birthday and Christmas gifts as she was growing up. Her mother had cut off the tags and put her own name on them.



Lara and Les were concerned that Shelly was leaving Nikki alone while she went out, so they went over to her apartment in Vancouver to check up on her. There they met Danny Long, who was living across the hall from Shelly. Lara knew Danny’s mother because she’d bowled at Tiger Lanes. Danny was thin, with longish dark hair and a pleasant smile. He said he had keys to his neighbor’s apartment.

“You must know my daughter pretty well if you have her keys,” Les said.

Danny mumbled something and let them in.

Shelly and Nikki weren’t there, but the Watsons did find a box full of things stolen from the cabin on Mount Hood, plus a full set of keys to their home, their cars, and, of course, the cabin. The keys had been missing from Lara’s purse for several weeks.

Not long after, Shelly and Danny moved into the house in Battle Ground that Grandma Anna had always promised would be her favorite grandchild’s. Soon Shelly had a second baby on the way. The couple married in a small wedding chapel near the courthouse in Vancouver on June 2, 1978. Shelly was on her second marriage by twenty-four. A couple of months later, in August 1978, Samantha was born. She was a beautiful baby—blonde, with big, expressive eyes.