by Ann Rule
His words tumbled out hurriedly, each on top of the next. His recall seemed unable to keep up. He wasn't sure what time he discovered Ronda's body, but he thought it was a "pretty short time" after his alarm went off the third time.
"Right after I found her, I called 911 immediately," Reynolds said. "She wasn't breathing, she wasn't moving, and so I just went and called 911."
"Okay. During this process, did you do anything else? Check any of the kids, or check the other bathroom, or use the bathroom yourself? Did you examine her at all at that point? Or see anything that caused concern for you?"
"Well . . . I picked up the pillow to look at her and I saw that she had shot herself, and, you know, she wasn't moving. I didn't know anything I could do but call 911."
"What guns were in the house at the time of this incident?" Austin asked.
"Well, I have a set of hunting rifles, um, and um, target practice rifles. Like I had a single-shot Remington twenty-two. I had a Winchester thirty-thirty. I had, um, a twenty-gauge. I don't remember the make of that, um, a single-shot shotgun. I had a Springfield .30-06. Um . . . I think I had a twenty-two automatic that was my father's, and an eight-millimeter Lebel French World War I rifle that was his. I think that's all and then the pistol."
"The one that she used?"
"Yeah."
Reynolds knew it was a .32, but he wasn't sure of the manufacturer. He didn't think he had ever fired it.
"How did you come into possession of that firearm?"
"Well, when my father was getting old, um, and feeling bad, he started saying things to me like he didn't want to live like this anymore and stuff, so I just got it away from him because I didn't want him doing something with it, and so--"
Ron Reynolds was sure that Ronda had known about all the guns in the house, but he didn't think she had any guns of her own any longer. He said he had found the holster of his father's .32 lying on the right side of the toilet the evening before Ronda died. "I picked it up, and went back to where she was working on the waterbed, and I said, 'Where's my father's pistol?' and she said, 'I gave it to Dave Bell.' So at that point, I took the holster and put it back in the drawer under the bed where it had always been."
He hadn't mentioned this earlier, but he said he hadn't been worried about the missing handgun because he believed Dave Bell had it. Reynolds said he had forgotten about finding the holster during earlier interviews. He had also been confused about whether he had checked Ronda's pulse once or twice. He had told some investigators that he'd sought signs of life before he called 911, but now he was sure he hadn't checked for a pulse until the 911 dispatcher asked him to do so.
Reynolds said that both the bathroom door and the closet door off that were closed--although the latter might have been opened just a bit. He said he had had no trouble getting into the closet where Ronda lay. Her head had been at the back of the closet--close to the wall shared with Josh's room; her feet were toward the door.
He emphasized that both he and Josh were very sound sleepers, so it wasn't surprising that neither heard the fatal shot.
Reynolds was adamant that Ronda had no financial interest in his house. Asked how she might have charged $25,000 on his credit cards, he believed she had sent money to her mother and grandmother. He also said Barb Thompson had stolen a horse trailer from Mark Liburdi.
(In truth, the trailer belonged to Ronda, and she'd given it to her mother. Mark Liburdi, angry at the negotiations about their assets, had taken a tact squad from the Washington State Patrol to Spokane to retrieve that horse trailer. After Ronda's death, the WSP impounded the trailer because it was in Ronda's name. Legally, it probably belonged to her widower: Ron Reynolds--not Mark Liburdi. It sat in impound for years. Whether Ron ever took possession of it isn't known.)
ASKED IF RONDA used drugs or drank, Ron shook his head. "She was taking some herbal things, and I think she took something to help her sleep sometimes. Cheryl Gilbert mentioned that Ronda was taking that St. John's Wort, and I can remember seeing bottles of herbal medicines like that. But the prescription I found from Dr. Conover was for Zoloft--which she never had filled."
"Did you ever take a death investigation class--specifically that talks about death, uh homicide, anything like that?" Glade Austin asked, changing the subject.
"No," Reynolds said flatly.
"Okay. The officers at the original scene felt that they didn't see a lot of emotional response from you that morning. Can you comment on that in any way?"
"I was in shock that morning," Ron answered. "A lot of times in my life when loved ones have died, I don't always break down right away, but at some point when I'm by myself, I do that."
"That morning, one of the first things you did--well, let me back up. After you made the 911 call, when did you wake your children up--and have them do . . . what happened there as far as getting them out of the house?"
"Well, the lady on the 911 line was helping me 'cause I was having a hard time. She asked me, 'Are there children in the house?' and I said, 'Yes.' You know, I hadn't thought about that at that point. And so I called their mom and made arrangements for the boys to--Jon was old enough to drive, and he drove the boys up to their mom's house."
Ron Reynolds agreed that several people had showed up at his house. He'd called his superintendent and told him what happened, and Tom Lahmann came, and then Bill Waag, the middle school principal. "I called my mom and she came, and her significant other (Tom Reed). Cheryl Gilbert came, her father--who's a minister. I think at some point in the day, my sister and brother-in-law came. I don't remember everyone."
"Judy and Larry Semanko?"
"Yes--they spent several hours there."
"Now Detective Berry said that you stated to him, 'Is there any evidence that can be linked to me?' What did you mean by that?"
"I recall that. It probably had something to do with the fact that it was like two days after Ronda's death, and I was, you know, in bed in a depression and I get a call from him asking me to come in. I went through the questioning with him, and then he wanted me to take a lie detector test. It was probably in connection with that."
Ronda's widower readily admitted he had paid the premium on her insurance policy even though he knew she was already dead. He insisted he expected nothing more than the $50,000 payoff even though he had told Barb Thompson that he believed Ronda's insurance totaled $300,000, and he'd been angry about that. Austin didn't push him.
Sergeant Austin asked Ron what he had been wearing at the time he woke up and discovered Ronda's body. He had forgotten many details, but he remembered his clothing that morning in mid-December three years earlier.
"I was wearing some flannel pants and a pullover long-sleeved shirt."
"Okay. And do you know what eventually happened to those?"
"I turned them over to my attorney . . . When the investigation was going on, I told my attorneys that nobody had looked at my clothing, nobody had asked me any questions about that, so they advised me, you know, to turn them over to them."
"Give them to your lawyers--or the detectives?"
"My attorneys."
"Had those clothes been washed between the morning of her death and the time you gave them to your attorneys on January twenty-second?"
"Well, I'm just not sure. They could have been."
(Perhaps they had been washed the morning Ronda died. That would account for Larry Semanko, Ron's brother-in-law, smelling fresh laundry when he walked in the house on Twin Peaks Drive.)
Yes, Reynolds admitted, his ex-wife Katie Huttula and he had had an affair going back to late summer--although he stipulated they had had intercourse on only one occasion. After Ronda died, Katie had moved back in to help with their boys. "She stayed at the house right after Ronda's death, but some time passed before she moved in, and then, you know, by May she was out of the house."
"I guess Ronda told more than one person," Glade Austin began, "that you stated that you loved her and your ex-wife, but because of the boy
s you needed to get back with your ex-wife."
"I don't think I ever said that. If Ronda would not have broken trust with me, I never would have even thought of going back to my ex-wife."
"Okay. I'm not sure you've aswered the last question--because it enters into what people say--is whether or not your ex-wife, Katie, stayed that night or was it after the night of Ronda's death or was it several days later? Or do you recall when she first stayed there?"
"She might have been there the night of her [Ronda's] death, but she didn't stay with me. You know, she might have been with the boys."
That was an odd thing to say. The house where Ronda died wasn't that big; how could Katie Huttula have been hidden from Ron so successfully that he didn't even know whether she was there or not?
Glade Austin had framed his questions to get certain responses, and most of them had been easy for Ron Reynolds. The detective sergeant was convinced Ronda had been a suicide, and his reports were full of derogatory statements about her, as if he'd been deliberately searching Washington State Patrol records to prove she was a neurotic woman and a bad cop.
Had Glade Austin detected the possible reverberations that might ensue if Katie Huttula had been at the house on Twin Peaks Drive during the hours when no one really knew what happened?
If he did, he didn't pursue it.
Austin's decision not to ask more questions about exactly who was at Ron and Ronda's house the night of December 15 to the early morning hours of December 16 seems, in retrospect, to have been unwise.
But like most of the Lewis County detectives, Glade Austin believed that Ronda had killed herself--and that there was no reason to look at anyone else who might have fired the death gun.
AS NEW YEAR 2002 DAWNED, Jerry Berry had been resigned from the Lewis County Sheriff's Office for less than a month, but he had not lost his belief that Ronda Reynolds was a homicide victim. He planned to continue his probe as a private investigator. As for Barb Thompson, she would never stop seeking the truth. She was far more determined than the Lewis County investigators had foreseen. She sold off some of her horses to pay for the travel, phone calls, attorneys, and other expenses she faced in her personal investigation.
It had all seemed hopeless, when the Lewis County Sheriff's Office announced in the first week of January 2002 that they had reclassified Ronda's death once again. Surprised, Berry continued to work on his own.
Terry Wilson, the coroner, reverted to his "Undetermined" manner of death findings. Most gratifying of all, the Lewis County detectives were reopening the case. It had been a little more than three years since Ronda died, and now, at last, it looked as though there was a good chance that Barb Thompson's and Jerry Berry's belief that she had been murdered might be validated.
Still burned by Vernon Geberth's negative view of their handling of the case, Sheriff McCroskey and his top detectives asked for another review. This time, Chief Criminal Deputy Joe Doench formally asked to have members of the Washington State Attorney General's Homicide Investigation Tracking System (HITS) unit take a look at Ronda's death. HITS is a software application designed to store crime-related information that police and sheriff's departments around Washington and Oregon contribute voluntarily.
Not unlike the nationwide Violent Crime Apprehension Program (ViCAP), HITS has become a central nexus and repository for detailed information on violent crimes. There is no question that HITS, begun in 1987 after the Northwest experienced such savage serial killers as the "Green River Killer," later identified as Gary Ridgway, and "Ted," who turned out to be Ted Bundy, is an important tool in the criminal justice system. Its investigators almost always are selected from retired homicide detectives in Washington and Oregon.
In any calendar year, HITS responds to about eight hundred requests for assistance and information. Their official mission is to "collect, analyze, link, and then provide law enforcement with information that will link and facilitate the resolution of violent crimes and speed the apprehension and prosecution of violent criminals."
Doench's request for help was forwarded to HITS on November 28, 2001, although the announcement that Ronda's death investigation was being reopened wasn't made for several weeks. During that time, Sergeant Glade Austin had, of course, reinterviewed Ron Reynolds--to little avail. Her widower still insisted that Ronda had committed suicide. And he and Katie Huttula were among the few laypersons who did so insist.
On April 25, 2002, Attorney General Christine Gregoire (now in her second term as Washington's governor) sent the HITS findings to Sheriff John McCroskey. It was signed by the team who had reviewed the Lewis County investigation: Chief Criminal Investigator John H. Turner, Senior Investigator/Analyst George Fox, and Senior Investigator/Analyst Richard Steiner.
They had looked at evidence in Ronda's death consisting of three four-inch binders, written reports, transcribed interviews, polygraph records, and numerous photographs and newspaper articles--all provided to them by the Lewis County Sheriff's Office. They did no independent investigating on their own.
"We did not consider emotion, politics, or outside pressure in reaching our findings. Evidence was first independently evaluated by each investigator and then reviewed by the team collectively. Numerous team meetings were held to focus on each aspect of the investigation review.
"First, let us begin by saying there is not a death investigation known that couldn't be better critiqued at a later time with more favorable options noted. However, basic techniques should be consistent in all investigations of this type must be investigated as a potential homicide until proven otherwise."
It looked, initially, as if the HITS investigators agreed with Jerry Berry's and Barb Thompson's belief that county detectives had fumbled the ball and focused too quickly on suicide, and never considered homicide.
"The following is a list of issues that we feel should have been considered and are presented here at your request."
The list of mistakes made by the first responders followed but they were couched in terms that said they should be mentioned only because they might useful in future training exercises. The report pointed out that the Lewis County sheriff's men who entered the Reynolds house on the icy morning of December 16, 1998, should have:
1. Secured the entire house as a crime scene, rather than just a room, and allowed no access to the crime scene by either civilian or law enforcement personnel--regardless of rank--who were not directly involved in the immediate investigation.
2. Obtained a gunshot residue test on Ron Reynolds's hands and person.
3. Obtained verbal or written statements of medical aid personnel.
4. Interviewed the Reynoldses' children in a timely manner after they left the house.
5. Kept a log of the crime scene photos to assist in locating them.
6. Noted personal items left in the crime scene that occurred in photos.
7. Added the dates and times to some photos shown prior to the incident.
8. Documented the lighting conditions and room temperature.
9. Numbered and indexed the final report.
10. Diagrammed the crime scene with measurements that would have allowed them to re-create it accurately later.
11. Clarified conflicting issues in officers' reports.
12. Documented and filed some of the investigative materials in a timely manner.
13. Retained a complete case file, eliminating the apparent loss of missing photos, negatives, and evidence.
Yet, the HITS investigators didn't feel that any of the thirteen misteps--or all of them--raised any questions about their decision or altered their findings.
"A careful review of the evidence presented, excluding secondhand information and opinion, was completed. The full spectrum of evidence was considered, including the deceased's personal history, the events leading up to her death, the position of the body and postmortem changes, inconsistencies in some of the witnesses' statements, and motive or lack of motive were also considered."
; And then the team from the Attorney General's Office stated their official finding:
This evidence is consistent with Ms. Reynolds becoming despondent and positioning herself in the closet after previously obtaining Mr. Reynolds' handgun. The position of the hands and blanket and the location of the weapon all indicate that Ms. Reynolds covered herself with the electric blanket and grasped it with her left hand. Ms. Reynolds held the weapon in her right hand and fired one round with the trajectory of the bullet through the pillow, entering her head by the right ear and traversing the brain to where it was recovered, to the right of center, is consistent with being selfinflicted. This injury would cause immediate death. The weapon then dropped to the right forehead, where it remained, leaving a notable impression, until either Mr. Reynolds or first responders dislodged it from that location.
The weapon then dropped straight down, coming to rest between both hands, at a location between the chin and forehead. The first finger (trigger finger) of the right hand remained in an extended firing position.
It is our unanimous finding that the unfortunate death of Ronda Reynolds was the result of an intentional, self-inflicted single gunshot wound to her head and should be classified as a suicide.
It was a stunning conclusion, and it hit Barb Thompson hard. How could the HITS detectives eliminate emotion from their evaluation of Ronda's death? How could they dismiss all of the red flags, the autopsy findings, the motives, and the mass of circumstantial and physical evidence that shouted that Ronda hadn't committed suicide?
