Did Divorce Case Turn Into Class on Murder? : Arrest of Teacher’s Aide, 2 Teens in Bloody Killing Shocks Quiet Community

From dreams to disappointments, the marriage of Wayne and Roberta Pearce had run its course. To their attorneys, it seemed a boilerplate divorce, free of the belligerence that can soil even the most precious marital memories.

But then Wayne Pearce was brutally slain. As the stocky construction supervisor marched to his pickup truck early one morning in January, two assailants wielding a kitchen knife and a hatchet attacked him in the parking lot outside his Cardiff apartment.

Shock gripped friends and relatives of the couple. The horror, however, didn’t end there.

Just days after the death, Roberta Pearce was arrested and charged with hatching a bizarre plot to murder her estranged husband. Prosecutors allege that Pearce, a popular teacher’s aide for students with learning disabilities at an Escondido high school, hired two 15-year-old boys to carry out the grisly crime, promising each a used car as payment.

Pearce’s defense attorney argues that the 41-year-old woman had nothing to do with the slaying. But law enforcement officers contend she solicited the murder of her husband of 14 years in an attempt to reap $200,000 in life insurance money and hold onto her Valley Center home, which the divorce threatened to steal away.

Wherever the truth lies, news of the murder and subsequent arrest of Pearce and the two teen-agers, who face a pretrial hearing Wednesday in San Diego Juvenile Court, rocked both the faculty and student body at Orange Glen High School, an institution that has received acclaim for its academic achievements.

Pearce was well liked by the students in her classroom. But the accusations against her have raised the specter that the fragile relationship between instructor and pupil could somehow deteriorate from efforts to educate to plotting a murder.

In the weeks before her husband’s death, Pearce played host at her rural home to a cadre of teen-agers, among them the two boys accused of the slaying. The homicide investigation has yielded allegations of drug and alcohol abuse by the half dozen or so adolescents, of a sexual liaison between Pearce and a youth not charged in the crime.

Could that milieu have turned children into killers?

Roberta met Wayne Pearce in Colorado. He seemed everything she wanted--a good-looking farm boy from Illinois, a college graduate working for a construction firm sinking air shafts for coal mines.

She, on the other hand, was a young woman with a past. A previous marriage had ended in a messy divorce, with the former husband taking custody of two children.

Her past didn’t stand in the way. Wayne and Roberta got married on Valentine’s Day, 1974, and settled in the Midwest, not far from his family’s farm.

But, when a friend in California offered Wayne a job with his construction company in northern San Diego County, the couple came out for a look. Like so many dreamers of the golden dream, they were hooked, and moved west.

Both quickly settled into the California life style.

Roberta, a blonde with long, dramatic fingernails, was a housewife for the first years, but later got a job as a teacher’s aide, garnering solid reviews and the respect of her peers. Wayne prospered in his new role as a construction supervisor, earning about $50,000 annually and never hurting for buddies.

His fat paycheck allowed the couple to eventually acquire all the trappings of the good life. They moved into a sprawling, tile-roofed house amid the fragrant orange groves of Valley Center, a home complete with satellite dish, neatly tended garden and a stunning view looking east to snow-capped mountains in winter.

$15,000 in Debts

The couple enjoyed tooling around in their vintage 1972 Corvette or hitching their travel trailer to Wayne’s truck and heading out to the desert to ride three-wheel cycles. Wayne purchased golf clubs and guns, Roberta bought fine clothes and pampered herself with manicures.

All that energetic consumption, of course, had its price. By the time they parted, the pair had more than $15,000 in debts on a dozen department store and bank credit cards, according to divorce documents. The monthly payments alone totalled $815.

Marital difficulties, meanwhile, began to crop up several years ago, friends and family say.

On Christmas eve 1986, Wayne was arrested after Roberta called sheriff’s deputies to report that her husband had come home drunk and slapped her. When a deputy arrived, a sobbing Roberta changed her mind, pleading with the law officer not to arrest her husband, a sheriff’s report said.

If Wayne goes to jail, Roberta told the deputy, he’ll be madder than ever when he gets out, and he’ll kill me. Leave him here. He’ll beat me, but he probably won’t kill me, she said.

The deputy took Wayne Pearce in, but he was later released without being charged.

As Wayne’s relatives tell it, however, Roberta caused many of the couple’s problems. They describe her as distant, a woman more intent on spending Wayne’s paycheck than cooking dinner, more centered on her small pet dog than her husband.

James Pearce, Wayne’s younger brother in Illinois, said that Wayne acknowledged having marital problems “four, five years ago or longer.” The headaches only seemed to compound as the years rolled on.

“He was back here this past summer, I think it was May,” the brother recalled. “Wayne said he needed to spend another year in California, but then he’d like to come back home. I asked him if Roberta would be coming, too. He said, ‘If I’m coming back, it’d be by myself.’ ”

Close to Collapse

Roberta, meanwhile, first perceived that the marriage was close to collapse only about a year ago, said William Fletcher, the Carlsbad attorney defending her against the murder charges.

“Wayne began to do things on his own, and the relationship at home cooled,” Fletcher said. “It took on more of a roommate relationship than a marriage.”

As her acquaintances tell it, Roberta was at a loss to understand why the marriage was breaking up, Fletcher said. But break up it did.

By Thanksgiving weekend, Wayne Pearce decided he’d had it. The tanned construction foreman told Roberta he wanted a divorce and left. By the time he returned for some belongings a few days later, she had hired an attorney and filed the necessary papers.

For Wayne, life after Roberta seemed a welcome change. He moved into a Cardiff apartment with two young women he knew, becoming romantically involved with one.

Charles Pearce, Wayne’s father, talked to his son by telephone from Illinois just a week before his death. Wayne expressed a joy the father had not seen for some time.

“Wayne said he had moved into that apartment with those two young gals,” he recalled. “I said, ‘Wayne, you’re 40 years old. You know right from wrong.’ He just said, ‘Dad, you don’t have a thing to worry about. I’m happier than I’ve ever been.’ ”

The divorce proceedings, meanwhile, continued apace, with only one major glitch--the house in Valley Center where Roberta still lived. Roberta wanted to keep the home, but Wayne was eager to sell it to ease the couple’s debts.

Despite that conflict, the divorce attorneys figured matters were moving along fine.

“This was not a crazy case,” said Maureen De St. Croix, Wayne’s attorney. “It wasn’t like one of those where people go nuts. It was one of those milder cases.”

But the split was not sitting well with Roberta Pearce.

One friend said Roberta felt paranoid about even leaving town for a few days, afraid Wayne would return and take everything.

“After she went to court, she felt the judge, Wayne’s attorney, even her own attorney were being unfair,” said the friend, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “She felt she was being taken to the cleaners, mainly because she was going to lose her home.”

Moreover, Roberta did not learn that Wayne was living with another woman until a court hearing in early January, Fletcher said.

Chasm of Loneliness

While Wayne was quickly forging a new life, Roberta was left at home by herself. There were few close friends to help fill the days in the big white house.

But that chasm of loneliness was soon filled. In early January, Roberta learned that a troubled, 16-year-old girl she had befriended at school was virtually living on the streets. She invited the youngster to move in.

Before long, friends of the girl started coming by to hang out. Neighbors grumbled when the teen-agers took to rolling out Pearce’s cycles and roaring up and down the dusty country roads until dusk.

Fletcher, her attorney, agreed that the teacher’s aide occasionally let the students get out of hand. But he insists that Pearce did not allow illegal activities such as drug use to take place while she was present.

Often, he said, Roberta would ask the teen-agers to leave when they grew too unruly. Other times, she would simply seek refuge in her bedroom.

“Mrs. Pearce probably did not put her foot down forcefully enough and kick their butts out,” Fletcher said. “I think it was a combination of things. She felt sorry for (the young woman staying there), who had no other refuge. The other factor that bears on it is that, yes, she was lonely.”

Prosecutors, however, describe a more sinister environment. They contend the teen-agers dabbled in drugs at the home. Moreover, a court document filed by the prosecution says one of the boys, a tall and handsome 15-year-old youth, told investigators he and the teacher’s aide had slept together.

Out of those surroundings, prosecutors allege, plans for a murder emerged.

It was not yet 6 a.m. when Wayne Pearce left his upstairs apartment and headed into the cold morning air on Tuesday, Jan. 31. He was nearly to his pickup truck when two assailants swept out of the predawn gloom and attacked with kitchen knife and hatchet.

A muscular man from years of sports and hard work, Pearce tried to ward off the assault, shielding himself with his hands. The attackers kept at him, blow after blow.

Pearce slumped into a fetal ball, a ghastly mess of blood. His assailants fled in a small pickup.

Despite dozens of gaping gashes and wounds, Pearce stumbled to an elevator and up to his apartment, the knife still embedded in him. The horrified roommates called police, and a Life Flight helicopter rushed Pearce to Palomar Medical Center. By about 7:30 a.m., he was dead.

Within hours, homicide investigators began getting anonymous calls, all of them pointing toward the Valley Center home of Roberta Pearce.

While the estranged wife prepared to bury her husband, detectives interviewed many of the teen-agers who had frequented Pearce’s house during the month. By Friday, investigators had heard enough. They obtained a search warrant for the home.

Detectives collected 17 different items, among them two cars, hairs, fibers, fingerprints and blood-stained materials. Authorities said they also discovered that the knife used to kill Wayne Pearce matched a set in his wife’s kitchen.

Implicated by Statements

Roberta Pearce was arrested a short time later. Investigators also issued arrest warrants for two 15-year-old Orange Glen High School students, Anthony Pilato and Isaac Hill, who had been missing from school since the slaying. Within days, the pair were arrested and charged with murder after authorities said each confessed to the crime.

Court documents outline statements from several teen-agers implicating Pearce in the crime. In particular, an affidavit highlights allegations made by the 16-year-old girl Roberta Pearce brought home.

According to the document, the girl told detectives she heard Pearce discuss the murder plot on at least five occasions at the Valley Center house with Pilato and Hill.

When she got up the morning of the slaying, the girl discovered the two boys wearing only towels while their blood-soaked clothing churned in the washing machine, the affidavit said.

The girl helped Pearce scrub up blood that remained in the showers and the bathroom, it alleges. Later, Pilato told her that Roberta had promised to give him the orange Corvette as payment, according to the document. Hill would get another of the couple’s cars.

On March 24, authorities added to Pearce’s woes, charging that she had first asked another pair of youths to kill her husband. Those teen-agers refused the request, so she turned to Pilato and Hill, prosecutors allege.

Fletcher, Pearce’s attorney, argues that Pearce “never discussed the killing of her husband with any of these kids, and she never offered them money or a car.”

With the case clearly headed for a showdown between Pearce and several of the teen-agers, Fletcher said he expects to put his client on the stand.

“Whether or not some of the juveniles perceived her loneliness and took advantage of it and her delicate situation during the divorce, that’s something we’ll have to explore,” he said.

Orange Glen High School seems a place for scholars and athletes, not murder suspects.

Little more than a year ago, the academic eminence of the 2,100-student school was recognized by the Reagan Administration, which named it one of the top 100 high schools in the country. In 1986, it was tabbed as one of the 30 best high schools in the state.

But the slaying and subsequent arrests put the campus into a tailspin.

“It left the student body and staff with a ‘what’s next?’ attitude,” Principal Ed Brand said. “There was kind of a numbness around campus the first few weeks.”

Brand noted that Escondido has “always been perceived as a nice, quiet little community. To have this kind of thing happen is bizarre.”

“I think 99.9% of the kids are real good kids,” Brand said. “Most of them know the difference between right and wrong. But there can always be a few bad apples. And I think drugs and alcohol can make them like Jekyll and Hyde.”

Many of the teen-agers at the high school knew Tony Pilato. The star running back last fall on the school’s freshman football team, Pilato seemed to have a bright future in sports. Teachers say he was at best an average student, but seemed a nice youth, not the type to land in a thicket of trouble.

“It’s really a shock to all of us,” said Richard Disney, freshman football coach. “It’s one of those things where I can’t believe he was charged with what he was charged with.”

A Troubled Past

Hill had a more troubled past. Authorities say he was arrested for burglary in 1987 and auto theft last year, serving nearly a month at Juvenile Hall for the latter crime. He experienced a wide array of problems at school, among them tardiness, poor attendance and fighting.

Although Pearce could eventually face the death penalty if convicted, the two teen-agers cannot be tried as adults because they were not yet 16. The maximum sentence is incarceration in a California Youth Authority prison until they reach age 25. Attorneys representing the two boys declined to discuss the case.

Like many familiar with the episode, Disney finds it hard to fathom.

“I’ve been coaching and teaching here for 33 years, and I’ve never had anything like this happen,” he said. “This is a family-oriented town, it’s a church-oriented town. There’s more churches than bars. It’s a pretty solid community, morally solid.”

Perhaps so. But prosecutors say such episodes are all too real, and may be little more than a sign of the times.

“A lot of these kids have a fatalistic view,” said Carlos Armour, a deputy district attorney handling the juvenile case. “They live for the moment. They really don’t look to next week, next month, what adulthood might have in store for them.”