ELABORATE SCHEME: Raymond Roth told his son in an e-mail not to let his “a–hole” wife dispose of their Massapequa house (above) before he allegedly faked his own death. (Dennis Clark)
The wife of a Long Island man who may have faked his own death to get his hands on life-insurance money now fears for her life following a a series of threatening texts after she revealed his alleged plot to the cops.
Evana Roth said at a press conference on Friday that she was contacted by her husband, Raymond, early this morning as police executed a search warrant at the couple’s Long Island home.
“It was like a terrible feeling, like a haunting threat,” Roth told The Post. “He seemed to appear as if he was under the influence of alcohol. He said he was in a bar. He said he was in North Carolina.”
The series of texts included cryptic messages.
“It didn’t work out as I thought it would. I did it for you,” Raymond Roth texted to his wife.
Despite saying he was in North Carolina, Roth led on that he was actually in Long Island and near the home he shares with his wife and son, Jonathan.
“The place looks a little crowded. I just drove by. Call me later,” Roth texted.
Roth also searched for answers from his wife.
“At least tell me why. What is going on?” Roth texted. “I just heard u [sic] have a press conference later. Be nice. Almost 15 years together.”
Evana Roth said the couple have only been married for 12 years.
“He doesn’t even know how long we’ve been married,” Roth said.
“I’m afraid he’s going to come after me because I’m the one who found out he is alive,” said Roth of her husband. “This is a terrible nightmare that I want to wake up from.
“Everything he had, had to be bigger and better than anyone else but he didn’t have the money to do it. Faking his death is a horrific thing. I just can’t believe he’d do something like that. It’s like a horrible movie.”
Roth said she changed the locks on the doors and will seek orders of protection from her husband and stepson Jonathan.
Evana Roth’s lawyer Lenard Leeds said, “She fears him. She fears that he is a substantial threat, and is in imminent danger, and we are going into Family Court today to get an order of protection.”
She said after the cops were alerted that he was alive, somehow her husband got the word and called the house.
“I got a strange call,” she said. “Raymond called me after his brother and I called the police.
“First I asked who it was and he hung up,” Roth said. “He called again and I said ‘who is this?'”
Roth said she heard him angrily say “you know who this is.”
“I just hung up the phone. I had nothing to say to him. I’m in fear of my life now.”
The Post reported today that Roth only learned her husband was alive after finding e-mails Raymond Roth had sent his son.
Roth, who was apparently also trying to get away from his wife, had nothing nice to say about her.
“DO NOT allow that a–hole to give the house away,’’ Raymond Roth, 47, of Massapequa, allegedly wrote to his 22-year-old son, referring to Evana the day before he supposedly vanished while swimming off Jones Beach.
Roth also threatened his wife by saying her actions would send their son to prison.
“Are you trying to send Jonathan to jail?” Roth texted to his wife.
He was so calculating, he even left his shorts, shirt, shoes and wallet — without his driver’s license — on the beach for her to find, Evana said.
Evana cried about discovering the e-mails on her stepson’s computer Wednesday, four days after her husband was believed to have drowned.
Evana said that up until she found the e-mails, she had thought everyone believed that her husband, an unemployed computer manager, was dead.
In the damning e-mails, Raymond also wrote to his son: “I need to get to the bank for cash for the trip.”
He adds: “about the jewelry we spoke of yesterday, you need to whisper in [a relative’s] ear about it and do not worry she will get it,” and, “tell [another relative] i handed you the papers — then you JUST noticed that there was an envelope with [his] name on it (the last Will and Testemnet [sic]) then hand it to him.”
In another e-mail Raymond sent to his son, he wrote, “you will need to help me get my car loaded. get your f–king ass out of bed you lazy bastard.’’
In a third, he adds, “there needs to be a way for me to find out how things are going. call me Sunday night at 8 PM at the resort.
“you cannot call from your phone,’’ the dad allegedly warned. “go to a pay phone or borrow your friends phone. you must call within 15 minutes of the determined call time in order to be sure i will be available.”
Evana said she immediately called Raymond’s brother when she saw the e-mails. He came over, and they called the cops.
He was stopped for speeding on I-95 in Santee, SC, yesterday morning and let go after telling cops there he had gotten in a fight with his wife and left.
Long Island cops said that they’ve since been in contact with him by phone and that he told them he was coming in to talk.
It was unclear whether charges will be filed against him or anyone else, they said.
Meanwhile, “he withdrew money from all my accounts,” his wife sobbed as she spoke in the office of her lawyer, Lenard Leeds.
“While I was crying and thinking he had drowned, he was vacationing in a resort and having a drink in the pool.”
Evana said her husband began acting suspiciously in January when “he increased his life-insurance policy.” She said she didn’t know who the beneficiary was.
“He tripled it,” she said. “He also did revise his will on Wednesday before the beach.”
She said he then recently began getting into trouble at his work at Level 3 Communications at 1 Penn Plaza in Herald Square.
He was demoted and promptly threatened to shoot the two supervisors who had bumped him, she said.
The threat led Nassau County cops to go to the family’s home to confiscate the licensed handgun Roth owned.
Roth was fired the day after the threats.
Level 3 declined to comment.
His wife said her hubby’s bizarre behavior continued.
He insisted on putting the house up for sale the next Wednesday.
He started packing up all his suits.
“I said, ‘You haven’t even put out a résumé, and you want to sell the house? You’ll need your suits for interviews,’ ” Evana said.
“He told me he didn’t need [the clothes] — he would go back to driving a truck,” she said.
“On the day he went to the beach, he told me he was going to his mother’s house,” she recalled.
“I said, ‘How long are you going to be? Are you going to be home for dinner?’ He said, ‘I’ll be home in an hour,’ ” she said.
A few hours later, the wife said, her stepson, Raymond’s son, Jonathan, called her.
“[He] said, ‘Dad went into the water and he didn’t come out,’ ” she recalled.
Her stepson swore his dad was missing and presumed drowned, she said.
“If these allegations are true, this is one of the most despicable acts I have ever seen,” Leeds said.
Police confirmed that Jonathan Roth called 911 to report his dad missing near the beach’s Field 6 in an area where there were no lifeguards. Jonathan could not be reached for comment.
A family neighbor said that he ran into Jonathan on Monday after his dad had been missing for two days and that the man told him, “My dad’s gone, my dad’s dead.”
“The son was not crying,” the neighbor recalled.
Additional reporting by Jim Hooker and Lorena Mongelli