by Ann Rule
The newlyweds moved to Pullman, Washington, to attend college at Washington State University. The baby Donna conceived died in utero, and their marriage didn't last long. Often Ron Reynolds doesn't even list Donna as one of his wives. She has been happily married for decades and has a son and a daughter with her second husband.
Many people believe that Catherine Huttula was Ron Reynolds's first wife, and the only wife he had before he met Ronda Liburdi, but that isn't true.
Both Catherine and Ron dabbled in drugs in their college years, but she was the one who got hooked. According to relatives, schoolmates, and friends, Katie's affair with both illegal and prescription drugs would continue off and on for the next forty years.
There had been halcyon years for both Katie and Ron and the other elementary school kids in McCleary and Elma. The children belonged to everyone in the two small towns, ran free, and seemed to have nothing to fear. Katie and her siblings and friends played kick-the-can, hopscotch, and even enjoyed hide-and-seek in the morgue of the local funeral home.
Catherine and a fellow Elma High graduate attended nursing school in Arizona immediately after high school. Katie's problems with drugs grew worse there and she was asked to leave college.
The Huttula family was well-to-do, and owned a pharmacy in Elma, but their family had suffered--and would suffer in the future--a number of tragedies. Mrs. Huttula bore five children; there were three older siblings: Carl, Janice, and Catherine, and two younger--Tom and Mary. Carl died in Vietnam in 1967 when he was a door gunner on a helicopter. The aircraft was hovering over wounded soldiers they had gone in to medevac when Carl was shot and killed. One classmate who was in Carl's unit remembers that the entire helicopter exploded in midair. Carl was buried in a closed coffin from the funeral home whose morgue he once scampered around.
He hadn't wanted to go to Vietnam. One of his friends recalls finding Carl crawling in the snow, dead drunk, a few days before his unit was set to leave. He was trying to get across the street to the Huttulas' house.
"He wasn't making any headway, so I took him in my house and sobered him up before I took him home," his friend said.
Catherine was sixteen, two years younger than Carl, and she had been especially close to her brother. His death devastated her. Although she maintained a bubbly facade, some who knew her say that she was never the same after Carl died.
Janice became a schoolteacher, but never married, and Katie eventually became a registered nurse. But she lost her job at at least one hospital when drugs were found missing from locked cabinets. Tom Huttula would one day take over the family pharmacy but he was forced to bar Katie from coming in the store after the count of drugs and other items didn't tally with the amount delivered to the drugstore.
Mary suffered from bipolar disorder and committed suicide in the fall of 2004. She may have been living with Katie at the time, although opinions vary on that.
Mrs. Huttula was often ill, with headaches and vague complaints, and Katie's school friends were used to seeing her lying on the couch, sometimes waiting for meds from the family pharmacy. That was one image Catherine's friends had of her mother.
"When I think of it," she said, "Catherine was a lot like her mother. She was always complaining of sickness, too. Her father was a sweet, wonderful man, though."
Other memories of Katie's mother weren't very positive. Mrs. Huttula taught "nurse's aid" classes at Elma High School, and many of her students found her "mean." One girl--who happened to be related to Ron Reynolds in the vast network of cousins on his mother's side--became pregnant and desperately tried to hide it.
"Mrs. Huttula told the whole class about it, and I was so embarrassed," the woman said forty years later. "She brought it up several times--using it as a kind of 'teaching aid' on what happened to girls who weren't virgins. Finally, I told the principal and she stopped."
JUDY SEMANKO WAS aware that although her parents had been married over thirty years, her mother wasn't really happy. Laura never complained, but Judy sensed that her father loved her mother far more than she loved him. They never fought, and their three children weren't subject to harsh words, but Judy knew. Even so, she expected them to stay together.
After Ron Reynolds's divorce from Donna Daniels, Catherine Huttula hooked up with him at Washington State University. Although they hadn't really dated at Elma High, suddenly it was almost as if they wore magnets that kept pulling them together.
Ron earned his bachelor's degree at WSU in education, and years later got his master's degree, which made him eligible to be a school principal.
Ron's college grades were even better than those he'd earned at Elma High School. He explained his technique to friends. He would "think ahead" on any given chapter, read the summary of that chapter, and then write down what he thought questions on a test would probably be. Then he would search for the answers in the chapter itself. It saved him a lot of reading and improved his grades at WSU.
Although she didn't seem to be ideal wife material, Ron married Katie Huttula and fathered five sons: Simeon, Micah, Jonathan, David, and Joshua. They had biblical names, possibly because Ron and Katie had become deeply involved in the Jehovah's Witnesses.
"My brother forbade his sons to play with our children for fifteen years," Judy Semanko said. "There were all these cousins in our extended family, but Ron considered them--and us--'heathens' after he joined Jehovah's Witnesses."
Shortly after Ron graduated from college, Leslie and Laura Reynolds got a divorce. Although she knew they weren't happy together, it was a shock for Judy and it hurt a lot to see her family break up. She vowed to remain close to both of them.
Neither ever married again, although at eighty-nine, Laura has lived with Tom Reed for thirty-one years. Tom is a kind man who would like to be friendly with everyone.
Ron's father later moved to a house adjacent to his own.
As Blair Connery suspected, there were some secrets in Ron's childhood home, but mostly they came from the effort it took to maintain the image of a perfect family. Ron's parents were far happier apart than they had ever been together. Nevertheless, he remained their shining child, their brilliant son, and they both believed in him. Even Tom Reed--after his early doubts--had come to believe that Ron was incapable of doing anything immoral or illegal. He now considered Ron his best friend.
The longer they were together, the more Blair Connery began to wonder if some of the rumors about Ron's possible part in Ronda's sudden death could possibly be true. Still, that wasn't why she thought about breaking up with him; she simply grew weary with caring for what were, essentially, two households and two families. And the flatness of Ron's emotions made it impossible for her to break through the invisible wall that surrounded him.
LESLIE REYNOLDS'S HEALTH declined in the mid-1990s. Ron and Katie convinced him that he shouldn't be living alone in his house next door to theirs. What their reasoning was is obscure; his house was far more comfortable than the used camping trailer they bought and put behind their house. They moved the elderly man into that. Katie promised to cook for him and do his laundry, and assured him that she and Ron would look after him. They would also see to paying his bills so he wouldn't have to worry about that. Nearly eighty, Leslie Reynolds had cancer and the early signs of Alzheimer's disease.
He turned his assets over to Ron, his trusted son.
His daughter Phyllis was in South Carolina and Judy was sixty-five miles away; she tried to keep in touch with her father, but Ron didn't encourage it. He was concerned that she might try to go after their father's money. That was the furthest thing from her mind. She just wanted to be sure her dad was doing okay.
The camping trailer was cramped. It had bunks because there was no room for a comfortable bed. Leslie couldn't cook anything hot for himself, and he was lonely in the camper. Leslie told Judy that he had been told he wasn't allowed to go into Katie and Ron's house.
Leslie Reynolds had given Ron money for all of his life. He wasn't poor; he ha
d a pension, Social Security, and savings. He'd even given Ron money for lawyers in a custody hearing.
Judy Semanko found out how bad it was for her dad when one of her aunts--Edna Arnot, who worked for the county, checking on senior citizens--called her. She had visited Leslie and found there were no groceries in his cupboards, and nothing at all in the refrigerator.
"Buy him what he needs," Judy said. "I'm sending you money right now, and I'm heading over there."
When Judy got to McCleary, she found her father terribly thin and barely able to walk. She told Ron she wanted to take him home with her for a visit, but her brother said the doctor felt that wouldn't be a good idea.
Katie Huttula Reynolds was an unlikely caretaker. She continued to be addicted to all manner of drugs--from prescriptions to crystal meth to marijuana. Indeed, her drug use was usually the first thing people mentioned when they attempted to describe her. She didn't stop using--not even when she was pregnant with some of her sons. Her friends and relatives had long since learned to hide their prescriptions, since almost all of them had found pills and capsules missing after visits from Katie.
Judy saw that Katie hadn't been taking care of her father. At the very least, Leslie Reynolds was undernourished.
Once Leslie called Judy in desperation. "Katie told me that I don't have any money left," he said. "She says I'll have to go into a home--"
"You have money, Dad," she told him. "Don't worry. I'll straighten it out." And she did. He had money, but not nearly as much as he had had before he was moved into Ron's travel trailer.
Judy finally managed to take Leslie to his doctor, but not before she bought some decent clothes for him. Everything he had was old and threadbare. She asked Ron for three hundred dollars to buy shoes, shirts, and trousers for the old man, but Ron insisted on taking him shopping and buying the clothes himself.
At this point, Leslie Reynolds could no longer walk. He was clearly afraid of angering Katie. One of his arms was bruised, and the bicep hung below his upper arm where it had been torn. Someone--Judy never determined who--had appeared to have grabbed him roughly.
Judy was prepared to prove to the doctor that her father should be able to go home with her for a long visit. She was concerned about his health and nutrition, and she had discovered that neither Ron nor Katie was doling out his medications to him in the proper quantity and at the right time.
"They just gave him the bottles and let him figure out when to take them. He's taking way too many at a time," she told the doctor.
She was shocked when her dad's physician said there was no reason she couldn't take her father to her house, and that that might be a good idea.
At Judy and Larry Semanko's house, Leslie Reynolds grew much better physically--but his Alzheimer's symptoms remained. He forgot things, and grew confused easily. On his birthday, he was relaxing in a recliner after dinner when he kept asking the same question: "How old am I?"
Finally Judy said, "Dad--today you will be eighty!"
"Damn! I'm old!"
And they all laughed. It was one of the few humorous moments they'd shared since her father began to decline. With Judy and Larry, Leslie continued to improve enough to move back with Ron.
When Ron married Ronda, life at home in McCleary was much better for the old man. She cooked Leslie good meals and took care of him. But he was ill--both from the Alzheimer's and cancer--and it became clear that he needed to be in some kind of assisted-living facility. Judy found a comfortable nursing home for him, but the staff called her a week later and told her they could not care for him; his needs were too great.
And then Judy couldn't find her father at all. Ron had moved him out of the nursing home, but she had no idea where he'd taken the old man. She finally found him in a hospital annex in Centralia. Shortly thereafter, he was taken to a hospital in Olympia, where he died in May 1998.
Ron inherited his father's house and assets. His divorce from Katie had cost him dearly, and he felt all of his father's possessions should go to him. Neither of his sisters fought him for his dad's house and car and now much-diminished savings. He gave the car to either Jonathan or Micah.
BY THE FIRST YEARS of the millennium, Blair slowly begin to wonder if Ron might be cheating on her. It hadn't even occurred to her during the early days of their relationship. His job as principal kept him so busy, and there were always after-school meetings and teachers' conferences to explain his absences from home.
"Finally, I began to suspect that he was seeing Katie again," Blair said. "I found his Visa bill and there were charges for dinners out for two during this time."
Like Ronda, Blair had failed to understand why Ron continued to help Katie out. She knew that Ron had paid off Katie's car. Whatever the attachment was between him and his ex-wife, it seemed never to have been completely severed. Katie might have been attractive once, but at close to fifty, she was bone-thin and worn looking. With any other man, Blair might have thought Ron felt sorry for Katie, but she'd learned he had precious little empathy for anyone else's problems--even her own. Katie had some hold over him, but Blair didn't know what it was.
And then Blair began to doubt what the real quarry was in Ron's "hunting trips" in the woods down near Aberdeen "He wanted to put a mattress in the back of his pickup truck, so it would be handy while he was hunting," Blair laughed. "I accused him of cheating with Katie, but he denied it."
Blair stayed in the relationship longer than she might have, because she concerned for Ron's sons. But she was increasingly turned off by his preoccupation with money--her money.
"He had plenty of money coming in after Ronda died. He collected the fifty thousand dollars on Ronda's work insurance, and his salary was up to seventy thousand dollars. He had a low house payment--but he still wanted me to get a credit card so he could put all of his bills on it. I could see no reason for that. We weren't even married. I refused to do it."
Was it for money to help Katie? Blair doubted that. Maybe Ron simply wanted to build up his savings so he wouldn't have to worry about money when he retired.
Blair hadn't thought about other other women--beyond Katie. Her older son was getting married, and she was caught up in his wedding plans. She didn't have time to keep track of Ron. Quite honestly, she found herself less interested in a long-term relationship with him.
"Frankly, I was never quite sure where Ron was," Blair said. "We had drifted apart, and I didn't have time to take care of all his chores."
One evening, Blair called Ron and said she had some things that she needed to drop off at his house. He sounded nervous when he said, "It's not a good time."
She asked if someone was there, and he mumbled something. Blair figured he was entertaining Katie. She found out later that it hadn't been Katie who shared the restaurant meals with him; it was Sandra*, a woman who taught in the Toledo School District. There were others, too, women she never knew of, and Blair realized the concept of fidelity had never filtered into Ron's brain.
"I liked Sandra," Blair Connery said. "What I knew of her. She was a Lewis County girl, too. She had lovely hair, a nice figure, and she had overcome a lot. She married when she was very young--in her teens--and had a baby. She could have given up because her marriage failed soon after. They were both too young. But she studied and got her GED and then more education and became a teacher."
Sandra had a large piece of property, one of the things she had in common with Ronda and Blair--Katie, too. They either had money or property in their families or they had worked hard for it. Sandra came from a family with a solid financial background.
But Blair was curious. Her government job allowed her to view certain property transactions, and she found that Sandra had changed the deed on her land within a few months of her marriage to Ron, and he became half owner of Sandra's acreage, a not insubstantial addition to his net worth.
Indeed, every liaison Reynolds had had with a woman as an adult man had enriched him financially. He had the house that Ronda had helped pa
y for, the benefit of all her painting and decorating skill, and Barb Thompson never got any of Ronda's expensive furniture or good jewelry back. Katie Huttula had come to him from a well-to-do family, Blair had contributed money, groceries, and her own labor in cooking, gardening, laundry, and cleaning, and she came from money, too.
KATIE HAD LEFT RON'S HOUSE at his request in the spring of 1999. Shortly after she moved out, Katie Huttula bragged to old high school friends that she was "living with Vince Parkins*," another Elma High classmate.
One day, Parkins became violently ill in the Olympia apartment where the pair was living. He told Katie he had to go to the emergency room. She drove him there and seemed considerate as he slowly got better.
Puzzled by his ailment, which seemed far more serious than his initial diagnosis of stomach flu, his doctors ordered tests and found that he had ingested arsenic. Almost all people have a small percentage of arsenic in their systems, and those who live near the various waterways and beaches in Washington state have more than average.
But Vince Parkins had enough arsenic in his system to threaten his life.
He told Katie what the doctors had found. When he was released from the hospital, he couldn't get in touch with her to drive him home, and when he finally got there, he saw that she had packed all of her belongings and disappeared.
Bewildered, he told friends and relatives, "I don't know why--but I wonder if Katie was trying to kill me."
Another man told mutual classmates that Katie had surprised him. "They [the Huttulas] have one weird daughter," he said. "I dated her twice and I'll never go out with her again!"
He didn't go into the details of what had turned him off.
BARB THOMPSON WONDERED how Ron had managed to collect on Ronda's insurance policy with Walmart. She wrote to the insurance company in Iowa, and although they wouldn't share information with her, they agreed to send paperwork to the Lewis County Sheriff's Office. They sent the following information to Detective Dave Neiser: Ronda had become eligible for death benefits through Walmart in the amount of $50,000 on September 12, 1998--three months before she died. The Walmart coverage could have been converted as Ronda paid the premiums and she could increase the amount, too, as it was "always open enrollment." The monthly premium for the $50,000 payoff was $6.50. That amount had arrived in the insurance office on December 18 and was posted to her account on December 22--six days after Ronda's death.
