1882
Established in 1882.
about 0:04:31The story
He became a fine art appraiser with the San Francisco auction house Butterfield & Butterfield and married Renette Riella, a pharmacist about a year younger who served on the Nevada Board of Pharmacy and later led international tours. They married around 1987, had no children, and lived on the north shore of Lake Tahoe in Incline Village, Nevada, in a four-bedroom house described as a mountain retreat. He paid off the $500,000 house in late 1997.
On 31 May 1998 he attended a charity function at Incline High School, filled two five-gallon plastic jugs with petrol at an AM/PM station for a planned trip to Las Vegas, and collected Renette from Reno-Tahoe International Airport at about eleven that night after her twenty-five-hour journey. Instead of going home he turned off the Mount Rose Highway onto State Road 878, a short road to a scenic pullout on Slide Mountain, and said later that they had discussed his loneliness and her travelling.
Just after midnight their royal blue 1997 Ford F-150 went through the guardrail and fell about eight hundred feet, first a hundred feet and then another seven hundred. Renette, seat-belted in the passenger seat, was killed; the passenger airbag had been switched off.
He said the brakes had failed, that he wore no seat belt and that he was thrown through the open driver's window while smoking a cigar. He told a nurse he had been knocked out, then said he had not. At the scene he asked about his fanny pack and cigars. Investigators found no skid marks, brake fluid or tyre marks, and his clothes were clean apart from his backside; there was asphalt on one shoe and his Incline cap lay on the road. The guardrail had been hit straight on, and an accident reconstructionist concluded that he left the truck before it went over.
When police pretended a caretaker had overheard the argument, his story changed and he admitted it had been loud and heated. He volunteered that he did not cheat on his wife. A polygraph was inconclusive, and three months later he told Renette's brother Rick that he might have hit the accelerator instead of the brake.
The investigation took two years. He received $450,000 in life insurance and $275,000 for Renette's share of her family's ranch outside Manteca, California, and travelled widely. Her brothers Richard, John and James sued him for wrongful death in Washoe District Court.
Several women described his advances, one saying he grabbed her breast after she refused his hot tub invitation. His first wife, Rebecca Tillery, said she had feared for her life. A highway patrol mechanic found no mechanical failure, while the defence argued the crash was too dangerous to stage and that the guardrail was missing bolts. During closing arguments he called the female prosecutor a bitch.