If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood(8)

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 she watched as the attacker buried the rifle not far from the house.”