Dead Woman's Son Testifies: Roth Told Him To Stop Crying

Rylie Baumgartner sobbed as he rode home from the hospital where his mother, a drowning victim, had just been pronounced dead. That is, until stepfather Randy Roth told him to stop crying, he testified.

" `There's no need to cry; it's over with,' " the 10-year-old Rylie said Roth told him. "But tears still fell down my face. I tried not to let him hear me."

The last of the prosecution's 116 witnesses were its youngest and potentially most damaging to Roth, who is being tried for first-degree murder in connection with Cynthia Baumgartner Roth's drowning last July. She was Roth's fourth wife and heavily insured.

Both Rylie and 12-year-old Tyson Baumgartner took the stand.

Rylie yesterday described his former stepfather much the same way as scores of other witnesses had - cold, calculating and uncaring. About a week after his mother's death, Rylie and his brother unsuccessfully tried to retrieve some of their belongings from Roth's Woodinville home.

Roth did not allow them to take their Nintendo games, he testified, and they could not find the Ken Griffey Jr. rookie baseball cards they kept on a shelf in their room. The cards are now valued at about $70 apiece and are expected to continue to appreciate.

Roth, as usual, sat motionless and stoic yesterday, scribbling notes. The courtroom was packed, mainly with Cynthia Roth's family and friends.

After three weeks of prosecution testimony, Roth's defense attorneys were to begin presenting their case today. As did prosecutors, the defense will begin with events surrounding the death of Roth's second wife, Janis Miranda Roth, in 1981. She died about eight months after their marriage when she fell off Beacon Rock in Skamania County while hiking with Roth.

The jury has already heard testimony that casts doubt on Roth's version of how Janis Roth died.

Meanwhile, Rylie Baumgartner told the jury yesterday that as he approached the raft that Randy Roth slowly brought to the beach at Lake Sammamish's Idylwood Park last July 23, he saw his mother, unconscious and her skin blue-tinted, lying face up in the raft.

Roth, Rylie testified, looked as if nothing was unusual and told Rylie and Tyson to get help without making a scene.

When Cynthia was taken to Bellevue's Overlake Hospital Medical Center, Roth simply motioned to the children to follow him and had them carry heavy bags of wet towels and clothes to the car, Rylie testified. Roth apparently said nothing to them about their mother's condition.

After leaving the hospital some hours later, Roth stopped at a video store and selected three comedies for the boys to watch. One that he had seen and recommended, testified Rylie, was "Weekend at Bernie's," a one-joke black comedy in which two men staying at a beach resort try to make people believe a dead man is actually alive.

Over strenuous objection by defense attorney George Cody, Judge Frank Sullivan allowed Rylie to testify that Roth once punished Tyson Baumgartner by forcing him to do calisthenics one winter night under the spray of a garden hose.

In other testimony, Lori Baker of Snohomish County revealed that in 1985 she was made the executor of Cynthia Baumgartner's will and the guardian of her children in the event of her death. The pact was made shortly after Cynthia's first husband died of cancer and long before she met Roth.

Baker testified that shortly after the drowning, she told Roth she needed to get into a safe-deposit box that Cynthia used to share with her but now held with him. It contained a copy of the will, along with investment papers and heirlooms, Baker said.

But Roth initially denied there was either a safe-deposit box or a will, Baker told the jury. When she finally got access to the box, while accompanied by bank officials, it was empty. The contents were never recovered.

Bank records indicate Roth gained access to the box two days after the drowning. Under cross-examination, a bank employee said Cynthia Roth had opened the box two previous times that year.

A copy of the will was filed with Snohomish County Probate Court and gave Baker custody of the children and access to some of Cynthia Roth's property.

Baker said Roth was angry about the arrangement and accused her of taking custody of the children for the Social Security checks to which their guardian would be entitled.

Among the spectators in the courtroom at the King County Courthouse yesterday was Ann Rule, a best-selling author who specializes in true-crime books. Rule said she is planning a project on Roth and the case.