Wells children left with rough road

By Ken Raymond Published: August 2, 2004
Amazing similarities link two deaths separated by more than a decade. A woman heartbroken by the 1988 slaying of her father reaches out to Rob Andrew's children.

TRINA Wells said she knows exactly how the children of murdered Oklahoma City advertising executive Rob Andrew feel.

Andrew used her 2 children in murder plot, evidence shows

Sixteen years ago, Wells was just like them.

On Aug. 26, 1988, Oklahoma City resident Jim Plantz -- Wells' father was ambushed and killed in a murder-for-insurance money plot that sent his wife, Marilyn, to the death chamber.

Ever since, Wells, 25, has lived with memories she's still trying to understand and a past that has never made much sense.

"That's one thing I really regret," Wells said recently. "I never had a childhood."

Wells said she fears Tricity and Parker Andrew, now 13 and 9, will face the same trauma.

Rob, Tricity, Parker and Brenda Andrew
"They've got a lot of heartache ahead of them," Wells said. "A lot of years of heartache. For me, I see a guy who looks like my dad, and I cry. I see a man and a little girl walking through the mall holding hands, and I cry."

Striking resemblences
Wells, then Trina Plantz, was 9 when her father died.

She's still piecing together what happened.

During the murder trial, prosecutors showed that Jim Plantz, 33, a press supervisor for The Oklahoman, returned home from work and found William Clifford Bryson and Clinton Eugene McKimble waiting for him.

The men, allegedly Marilyn Plantz's boyfriends, beat him with his son's baseball bats as he screamed his wife's name. They drove away with him, put him in his pickup and set him ablaze while still alive.

Wells and her brother, Chris, then 5, were asleep in a locked bedroom. Their mother stayed home, trying to get blood out of the carpet.

Arrests came a few days later. Marilyn Plantz and Bryson were convicted and executed. McKimble testified against them in exchange for a life sentence.

Wells said the prosecutors didn't get everything right -- she claims she was awake and saw the beating but she is amazed at the similarities between the two cases:

  • Rob Andrew was killed by his wife, Brenda, and her lover, James Pavatt. The murderers hoped to collect $800,000 in life insurance benefits.

    Prosecutors said Marilyn Plantz was after her husband's insurance benefits, totaling about $319,000.

  • Tricity and Parker Andrew were inside a bedroom at their mother's house when their father was shot to death in the garage.
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