by Ann Rule
She said Ron had called her that afternoon, but he hadn't been at school then; he had been at his cardiologist's office.
"Then you called Ron back that evening of the fifteenth?"
Katie stumbled a bit over her words. She recalled getting home between ten and eleven, but she hadn't checked her message machine.
"I was negligent to do that," she said. "He had left a message that Ronda had decided to stay and for me not to come down. I'd promised the kids I'd be down, so I quick got on the phone and Ronda answered. She told me they weren't gonna get a divorce--she didn't want a divorce--so I just told her: 'Work--just work on your marriage,' and I wasn't gonna interfere, and to try to get some sleep."
Katie said that Ronda had called her back within minutes and asked her to talk to Ron. She hadn't wanted to, but Ronda had allegedly put him on the phone. Once again, she suggested her ex-husband and his new wife get some sleep, calm down, and unplug the phone. She portrayed herself as the voice of reason that last night, a person just trying to help out.
Katie said she had befriended Ronda shortly after Ronda lost a half sister to death. Ronda hadn't met her half sister until they were both adults. The sisters got along extremely well, and Ronda found her--only to lose her too soon.
"She was very despondent over that, but she wasn't suicidal at that point. She did mention suicide to me over the years that I knew her."
"Did she ever say how she would commit suicide?"
"I've been trying to think of that, but I don't recall that she ever mentioned how."
Jerry Berry asked Katie if she knew anything about life insurance policies Ronda might have had.
"Ron says he thinks there's a life insurance policy, but he doesn't know if it covers suicide because most of 'em don't."
Ron had already made a claim against Ronda's insurance, but Katie either didn't know that or was pretending she didn't know.
"Is there anything else, Katie," Berry said, "that you can think of that might help me with this investigation?"
". . . The kind of woman that Ronda was, and you know, what I loved about her was she has such dignity and grace. At the same time, she was very forceful, and I think it was a hard world for her to live in . . . dealing with people . . . I definitely saw lots of tears and crying and depression [over] her breakup with Mark and her problems with Mark. She was really down with a lot of mental depression and she did not want to take her Lithium, and she didn't like being labeled a manic-depressive, but there's lots of people that are."
That struck Jerry Berry as odd. Katie Huttula herself had been diagnosed as being bipolar, but there was absolutely no record of Ronda being manic-depressive, and he knew from the investigators' follow-up report that Ronda had never been prescribed Lithium. The woman who sat beside him in his police car and pontificated on what was wrong with Ronda seemed to be describing herself. Katie was the one with a long history of instability and drug use. If forced to choose, Berry would have thought Katie was more likely to take her own life. But here she was animatedly telling him how neurotic Ronda had been.
Now, there were two people who were vocal about Ronda's alleged penchant for suicidal thoughts: her widower and his ex-wife.
And they were living together, and had been since the day Ronda died.
BERRY'S FELLOW OFFICERS were taking potshots at him. Dave Neiser said, "Leave it to Jerry Berry to make this into a murder," and it was clear that that opinion was shared by others.
"I was butting heads with them, and I found myself working in a more and more hostile environment," Berry recalled. "You don't do that in Lewis County. You follow orders and go along with the program."
He couldn't do that.
On May 26, 1999, Berry's sergeant, Glade Austin, representing the sheriff's office, distributed a message to the department that he was officially closing the case of Ronda Reynolds's death, declaring it a suicide. Sheriff John McCroskey's force wasn't interested in Berry's theories on the case. It was over; it was suicide and that was that.
According to Austin, anyone who read through the case file, looked at the photographs, and based his opinion on the totality of the information available would agree that Ronda Reynolds's death was probably a suicide.
The detective sergeant also stated that Rod Englert, a former Multnomah County, Oregon, homicide detective and one of America's top half-dozen blood-spatter experts, had concurred.
(In truth, Englert a longtime friend of mine, instructed him to go back and re-create the crime scene, and deduce what they could from that. He did not do an in-depth study of the Reynolds's case. When I mentioned the case to him, he said he had not "concurred" with Sergeant Austin, and that he had been told nothing of the circumstantial evidence surrounding Ronda Reynolds's death.)
Glade Austin had been with the Lewis County Sheriff's Office for twenty-seven years. He had viewed Ronda's death as a suicide from day one.
Two days later, Jerry Berry sent his own message:
As the primary investigating officer, I do not agree with this conclusion and at this time, I still do not believe this was a suicide. I base my opinion on the fact that those who reviewed the case have only looked at the photographs and the case report. They have not had close contact with the suspect in this case, nor have any of them been directly involved in this investigation. There remains an incredible amount of inconsistencies and circumstantial evidence that I feel make it impossible to rule this case a suicide at this time.
Therefore the best I can do is express my concern and opinion that this case should not be closed--but suspended.
Jerry Berry continued to work from his own notes, so he was unaware that much of the evidence in the Reynolds case had been either returned or destroyed. He assumed it was still being held safely in an evidence locker in the sheriff's office on the off chance that new information would come in.
He had taken a number of photographs inside the Twin Peaks Drive house during the first few days after Ronda's death. He believed they were all in the Reynolds file at the Lewis County Sheriff's Office, and he counted on using them in his investigation.
Jerry Berry's conclusion that Ronda's case should not be closed was filed away and no one acted on it. Its official status in the spring of 1999 was "Case Closed," and not "Case Suspended."
Since the sheriff's office considered the Reynolds's case to be over, they acceded to Barb Thompson's requests under the Public Information Act for copies of their probe. Could she read it and understand it without any background in criminal investigations? Case files connected to unexpected deaths--no matter if they are murder, suicide, accidental, or natural--can be thick and unwieldy. They are also full of codes, abbreviations, medical conclusions, and the results of various tests. Barb tackled it, making it a point to look up anything she didn't grasp.
"This would not preclude the case being reopened," Glade Austin wrote, giving Barb Thompson a small sliver of hope: "If significant information should come before us at a later date, indicating otherwise."
But Sheriff John McCroskey pointed out in a written statement, "The case remains unsolved because there is no conclusive piece of evidence or information that points in one direction to the exclusion of all others. It is possible the case could remain unsolved and open indefinitely."
Jerry Berry saw no problem with that. All he was asking for was to have the investigation marked "Suspended--Inconclusive." He had been loyal to the Lewis County Sheriff's Office for years, and he wanted to continue that allegiance. There was no tearing hurry to close the case; they weren't in a race or trying to set a closure record on cases. They were looking for the truth, and that could take time.
He feared that the case would never be resurrected, despite what Sheriff McCroskey had said. The passage of time would only put it deeper in dusty files. Barb Thompson showed Berry the photographs of the "crime scene" that Lewis County detectives had given to her. He looked, did a double take, and looked again.
"My God, Barbara!" he burst out. "Mos
t of these aren't the crime scene photos. These were taken two years later!"
He ran his finger down the evidence listed on the case file copy that Barb Thompson had and found numerous codes that meant documents had been "returned" or "destroyed."
"Wow," he breathed in exasperation. "They destroyed all this evidence. They'll never make an arrest now."
IN JANUARY 2001, when the frustrated detective became too insistent about reopening the investigation of Ronda's death, Jerry Berry was reassigned to patrol. Being sent back out on patrol was a step down for Berry. The sheriff said this was "standard procedure," and all deputies and detectives were rotated regularly. But going from a detective to a deputy who patrolled Lewis County out in the countryside felt like a slap in the face to Berry.
And it proved to be more physically dangerous than working out of the detective division. Although it hurt at the time, Berry found one of the few light spots in his profession when he returned to patrol. "I got spurred by an angry rooster while I was handcuffing a suspect," he recalled with a chuckle. "It would have been better to get a dog bite, I guess, because that rooster didn't want to let go of me!"
Berry worked all his official shifts on patrol, but he kept investigating Ronda Reynolds's death in his spare time, adding to the long list of events that simply did not jibe with the county's position of death by suicide.
Perhaps Jerry Berry's most unforgivable mistake happened when he went to Chief Criminal Deputy Joe Doench and asked that the Reynolds file be sent to famed homicide detective Vernon Geberth for evaluation and possible suggestions. Doench had initially felt that there were some things that didn't line up in Ronda's death, and he agreed to send the file to Geberth.
Geberth, whose book Practical Homicide Investigation: Tactics, Procedures and Forensic Techniques is one of of the bibles detectives turn to, is retired as the commander of the Bronx Homicide Division of the New York Police Department. He has participated in over eight thousand homicide probes, and he currently teaches classes to detectives all over the country. Apparently he became the first expert consultant to review the entire Reynolds file.
Jerry Berry had once taken a course taught by Geberth and been impressed. He felt that if anyone outside his department could shed new light on the Reynolds case, it would be Vernon Geberth. While Geberth is considered one of the most skilled and experienced experts on homicide in America, he says exactly what thinks, and he is not particularly known for his tact.
Geberth gave his opinion on what he saw as a flawed investigation, and his report was scathing. He called the Lewis County Sheriff's Office's handling of Ronda's death "a major police malfeasance. There are very few cases [where] I can state with such strength and conviction that 'This was a homicide.' "
"In my professional opinion," Geberth wrote, "Deceased [Ronda Reynolds] was a victim of a homicide. She did not commit suicide as reported by her husband. Deceased did not fit any 'Suicide Profile' that I'm familiar with. In fact, only her husband contends that she committed suicide. Everyone else who was interviewed stated emphatically that this could not be the case. Those who were close to Deceased are adamant that she was not suicidal, loved life, and would never consider killing herself.
"She had made both short and long term plans. The evening before her death, she had made airline reservations. Her best friend and former boyfriend, a sergeant in the Des Moines, Washington Police Department, had helped her pack her belongings . . . Later that evening, she had called him around midnight. She seemed calm and had a definite plan of action, which was for him to pick her up and bring her to the airport.
"The facts and circumstances of her death are highly suspicious and not consistent with suicide cases the consultant has reviewed. There were many inconsistent statements made by her husband that the police were not able to pursue. Furthermore, his total lack of concern and remorse throughout this investigation are troublesome and raise the level of suspicion as to his involvement in his wife's death."
Geberth softened that opinion just a little when he said it was not uncommon for law enforcement agencies to "short change" investigations of apparent suicides.
Geberth also wrote, "He [Berry] is a good man who put his career on the line to do the right thing. He did an excellent job."
The New York homicide expert's report infuriated the Lewis County detectives. Joe Doench exploded: "He made us look like Keystone Kops."
As a result of Geberth's negative and humiliating report on their procedures followed--and not followed--as they worked Ronda Reynolds's case, Doench, with Sheriff McCroskey's approval, forbade Jerry Berry to work on the Reynolds case--even in his spare time. "Furthermore," the edict went on. "if anyone in the department mentions it, you are to come to me immediately!"
From that point on, every report Berry filed was criticized. He was sent to "counseling."
"I went from being a stellar employee to one who couldn't do anything right," Berry said grimly. "One day in December 2001, I just came in and quit . . ."
Jerry Berry had taken all the derision and harassment he could. But just because he handed in his badge didn't mean he was quitting his search for the answers about what had really happened to Ronda on the night of December 16 three years before. He assured Barb Thompson he would continue. He would take yet another look at every facet of Ronda's death and find the so-far indefinable elements that eluded them.
Barb Thompson and Jerry Berry had long since become friends, and they worked together to create a wedge that would force the sheriff's office to re-open the probe. Jerry and his wife Susan had become two of Barb's strongest supporters. They believed that she was absolutely correct as she continued her fight to get the bleak word "suicide" off Ronda's death certificate.
Jerry Berry kept his promise to Barb that he would not charge her even a penny for his private detective work. She was grateful, but she wondered how Jerry could do that. He no longer had a job--although his wife, Susan, did. He told her he would be obtaining his private investigator's license and pick up whatever jobs he could.
"But I don't want you to worry about that," Jerry said gently. "I'll manage and I'm not going to let go of justice for Ronda."
JERRY BERRY STARTED BACK at the beginning of the case, marking every thing that struck him as odd. He was still unaware how much of the evidence and some photos had vanished from the major case file in the sheriff's office. He interviewed witnesses and backtracked on his own investigations.
In the first six months after Ronda died of a gunshot wound to her head, Berry had written down all the inconsistencies he had noted in witnesses' and survivors' actions. Looking at it again--as he had done frequently over the years--he could not fathom why the case had been closed.
Was no prosecuting attorney willing to bring charges? It was true that come election time, prosecutors relied on their winning cases, and a chancy case could lower their percentages. But if someone had the guts to take this one on--and win--Ronda's case could make his or her career.
Berry came up with twenty-one questions:
1. When Mr. Reynolds was asked at the scene if his wife was left-handed or right-handed, he didn't know. It would be reasonable to assume that a person would know if their mate was right- or left-handed. Likely a left-handed person would place the weapon in the victim's left hand, a subconscious act possibly explaining Mr. Reynolds's reaction when he was asked this question.
2. Mr. Reynolds stated that there had been about two shots of liquor in the Black Velvet bottle and that Ronda had consumed it during the night. The toxicology report indicates there was no alcohol in her system.
3. If Mr. Reynolds tried to talk Ronda out of committing suicide for 45 minutes on the cell phone, why did he choose to stop, eat, and then go to a school play before going home? Certainly not consistent with a husband worried about the welfare of his wife.
4. Mr. Reynolds stated that he went to bed with Ronda at 10 P.M. and never let her out of his sight until he fell asleep at 5 A.M. Witness statements
and phone records show that Ronda was in the bedroom alone and talking to friends until about 12:45 A.M. Ronda allegedly told a friend that Ron was in the other room. This was partially confirmed by his youngest child.
5. Mr. Reynolds stated that the closet door was closed when he opened it and found Ronda. We know that due to the position of the body that this could not be true. The door was open and could not be closed due to the lower portion of her body and legs being in the way. This can still be clearly seen in the photographs.
6. Ronda was covered with an electric blanket with both hands underneath, yet the gun was on the outside of the blanket and appeared to have been pushed into her left hand. That is--the blanket was between her skin and the gun.
7. There was fixed lividity, which usually takes eight to twelve hours.
8. There was pronounced rigor mortis, more than normally expected for a body that had been down for such a short period of time. (5 A.M. to 6 A.M. We acknowledge that the electric blanket may have affected the postmortem changes to some degree.)
9. Medical experts tell us that (brain) death was instant and no movement would have occurred, thus indicating that even if she had shot herself, there would have been no conscious movement to get her hands back under the blanket.
10. Ronda's hair was pushed upward as it would be if someone examined the wound.
11. Ronda had a damaged fingernail, indicative of a struggle.
12. The message on the bathroom mirror was inconsistent with a suicide note. It simply said the victim loved Mr. Reynolds and she wanted him to call her at her grandmother's house in Spokane.
13. It took almost a half hour for Mr. Reynolds to call 9-1-1, after he awoke at 6 A.M. (Not a very rapid response.)
