by Ann Rule
Quite possible. He might have left Ronda alone in the house, vulnerable to his sons and others who attended the alleged alcohol and drug party.
Here's one scenario to consider:
An early morning phone call from his panicked sons telling him that Ronda had died would certainly have brought Ron and Katie rushing from Olympia to help cover up a murder and make it look like suicide.
Perhaps the reason that Ron Reynolds did not hear the gunshot that killed Ronda was that he was twenty-five miles away--not ten or twelve feet away.
The fatal incident at the alleged party would have occurred about 2 A.M., a time that matched the amount of lividity and rigor mortis in Ronda's body. Ron and Katie probably didn't know about after-death changes. She would have left for Olympia about 5 A.M., before Ron called 911. Her sons had followed two hours later.
But that's only one scenario.
Mark Liburdi was Ronda's ex-husband, which put him in a small circle of those who were close to her--or had been. While their divorce hadn't been particularly friendly, they were on speaking terms. Both of them had remarried soon after their divorce. They were established in new lives when Ronda was shot.
Most convincing about Liburdi's innocence: he had been on patrol, talking with WSP radio often, at the time Ronda died.
"Jerry even checked out David [Bell]," Barb told me with a tinge of regret in her voice. "That had to be done, but David was right where he said he was in the early morning hours--on patrol in Des Moines."
Bell probably knew that Berry had checked on him. He was a trained and experienced cop and understood the process of winnowing out suspects.
An investigator who didn't know him could have wondered if Bell was angry and jealous that Ronda had decided to stay with her husband that fatal night. Bell wasn't her lover when she was killed--but he had been a decade earlier. That put him in the second tier of suspects.
What about Cheryl Gilbert? She was obsessed with Ronda, and frequently proclaimed that she was Ronda's "very best friend."
Was her attraction to Ronda romantic or sexual? No one knows. But she attached herself to Ronda. She could well have been upset when she found the keys to her house, which Ronda had tossed inside on the evening of December 15. Cheryl was thrilled by Ronda's decision to move into her extra bedroom when she left Ron. She'd even bought a bed for herself. Cheryl had counted on picking Ronda up to drive her to the airport in Portland, having breakfast on the way and a good conversation.
For some reason, Ronda changed her mind about the living arrangement, and she decided to have David Bell pick her up. Possibly she began to feel smothered by Cheryl's constant attention, which may have sometimes felt like stalking. Or maybe she just wanted a backup driver to be sure she got to the airport on time.
Cheryl certainly enjoyed being the center of the investigators' attention for some hours on the day Ronda died--and thereafter. She was talkative and animated when she met with detectives. Subsequently, she changed her story many times--and ended by agreeing a year or so later that Ronda probably had killed herself. Cheryl also lied numerous times.
Ronda never called Cheryl her "very best friend," because she wasn't. But Ronda often felt sorry for her, unaware that Cheryl had fashioned a bizarre imaginary relationship. Ronda had never been attracted to women. Was Cheryl? If Cheryl had gone to Ronda's house while Ron was at Katie's apartment all night, could Cheryl Gilbert have been so distraught--feeling betrayed--that she could have shot Ronda?
Or did Jonathan Reynolds kill Ronda? It is well documented that he hated her. Add to that, she was a beautiful woman, thirty-three years old, and he could well have felt some sexual attraction to her, even though she was his stepmother. That would have caused a love/hate schism in his mind.
Ronda believed that Jonathan or one of his brothers killed one of her dogs. She believed he had a cruel streak that made other creatures' pain attractive to him. One of his friends told Barb of an incident that happened when he was trying to get a trapped bird out of his fireplace chimney so he could light a fire.
Jonathan came by his house, saw the situation, and swiftly lit a match, holding it to the kindling in the fireplace.
"I saw his face when that poor bird burned alive," his friend recalled. "It excited him to see that."
Whether there was or wasn't a drug party going on at the house on Twin Peaks Drive the night Ronda was shot--and accepting that Ron Reynolds probably was not there--Ronda needed to get some sleep that night. There may have been raucous voices and loud music. She would have done what she always did when she needed some peace and quiet, or surcease from an argument: grab a pillow and a blanket and find some out-of-the-way spot to sleep.
High on drugs, Jonathan may have been extra angry to hear Ronda call out, telling whoever was there to quiet down. Ronda may even been a little frightened by the drugged teenagers, who were as large as men.
And Jonathan might have decided to kill her, and get rid of her once and for all. He knew where the gun was--he had probably watched David Bell empty it of bullets and put the gun in the drawer under his father's side of the waterbed. The bullets themselves would still have been where Bell had tossed them.
According to Bing Spencer--who admitted lying about a number of things--Jonathan had cried out right after the gunshot echoed through the house. And Adam Skolnik had run from the room, terrified.
Then there were the polygraphs. Polygraphs are not as reliable as many laypersons think. True sociopaths can often fool the lie detector; they are so confident in their own power that they can be fearless. They have no consciences and don't feel guilt, so they don't show physical reactions during polygraphs as most subjects do. Their heart rates stays steady, they don't sweat, their blood pressure doesn't go up.
And so much of what Bing Spencer said fits the known facts.
There is one person of interest who has never been interviewed: Jack Walters, whom Bing counted among those who were at the house on Twin Peaks Drive the night Ronda was shot.
With Jerry Berry's help, Barb Thompson had tracked him to Montana after she checked on Walter's "rap sheet" to see if he'd ever been arrested. He had been.
In 2003, Jack Walters sexually attacked a fifteen-year-old girl, and he had other sexually related charges in the past--enough so he was deemed a "sexual predator." Carrying that official tag, he was legally bound to register with local police departments when he moved to a new location. He should have checked in when he moved to Montana.
But Walters never did.
Barb found his corrections officer, Scott Albert, who had a warrant for Jack Walters.
"He worked so hard to help me," Barb remembers. "Something on the warrant needed to be changed--so he rewrote the whole thing. Everyone in Cascade County, Montana, was kind to me--but Scott went several extra miles."
With Albert's help, she located the address where Walters was living, and Sheriff's deputy Jeff Ripley arrested him for failure to register as a sexual predator.
If Walters verified that there had, indeed, been a party that night, Barb and Jerry Berry felt, it would move the investigation ahead rapidly. They waited to hear what the Lewis County detectives had found out.
Weeks after the Washington investigators were given Walters's contact information, Barb and Jerry Berry were shocked to learn that no one had called Ripley to arrange an interview.
By that time, Jack Walters was no longer in the Cascade County Jail. Ripley said they had kept him locked up as long as they legally could, but it would be difficult to locate him now.
Barb Thompson was angry. "I practically gave Lewis County Walters on a silver platter," she said. "And they couldn't be bothered bringing him back to Washington, or flying to Montana to talk with him face-to-face."
Barb had offered to buy Jerry Berry a ticket to go to Montana to interview Jack Walters, but he thought it would be better to let Lewis County detectives go. When they learned that Lewis County hadn't followed up, Berry regretted his decision.
&nbs
p; "If Jack Walters had been interviewed, and he said that there had been the party Bing Spencer described, we would have been much farther ahead--but Lewis County didn't seem to want to open that possibility."
Still, Jack Walters is a sexual predator who might have knowledge about how Ronda died. Even if interviewed, he might have shaded the truth to protect himself.
Walters joined the list of possible suspects.
Katie Huttula moved in with Ron right after Ronda was murdered. It's possible they joined forces to protect their sons. Perhaps they joined forces to keep an eye on each other, but living together didn't work.
There also remains a slight possibility that Ronda died in a home invasion.
She had made some enemies--both as a state trooper when she arrested angry felons, and as a store security officer. She might not have known if there was someone out there who harbored a paranoid grudge. She wouldn't be that hard to find. She lived in a small town where people knew each other's business.
Ronda was an extraordinarily beautiful woman, the kind of woman who could attract a stalker, a man--or woman--who knew her routines, knew when she was alone in her house. If she was there by herself on the night she died, the Reynolds boys probably hadn't bothered to lock the front door.
As I have often written, there is indeed such a thing as the "perfect murder." That usually requires a stranger-to-stranger encounter. One could describe Ronda's world while she was living with Ron as rife with shady characters, druggies, juvenile delinquents, and at least one known sexual predator. She handled herself safely and efficiently as a trooper and a store detective, but whoever wanted her dead in December 1998 had been crafty as a fox.
She never saw danger coming.
BARB THOMPSON AND I have continued our detective work, a pair of slightly older Cagney and Laceys. In July 2010, we drove once again to Lewis County to interview people we had been unable to reach earlier, and to talk again with Jerry Berry and Marty Hayes.
We went first to the home of Karen and Sig Korsgaard. Sig had once been a Lewis County deputy himself, and both he and Karen had been frustrated when their initial attempts to give information to the sheriff's office were ignored. They had tried since 1998 to tell the detectives about the party at Ron and Ronda's home on December 15-16, but none of them had responded. And Jerry Berry had never been handed the message to call them. Finally, after the verdict in Terry Wilson's hearing had come down, they tried once more.
Two detectives came to the Korsgaard's home and said, "Sheriff Mansfield told us to come out and talk to you."
"It seemed like they weren't really interested," Karen Korsgaard said, "and they were only here because the sheriff sent them. Maybe we were feeling snubbed because Sheriff McCroskey had ignored us when he was in office, but we still felt slighted. It was our son who had come up with so much information, and we thought he did tell most of the truth. We know he isn't always truthful, but this time we believed him."
Both Karen and Sig remembered the bloodied clothes that Bing brought home on December 16, 1998. "He said he'd been in a fight--or maybe it was Adam who had been in a fight--and that was why the clothes were bloody. But that didn't seem right," Sig said. "Those jeans had way too much blood on them to have come from a fight. They were absolutely sodden with blood. The shirt had very little blood on it."
But Bing had stuck to his story, and Karen had washed the blood-soaked jeans in cold water.
As we talked, all four of us realized that the only way jeans could have been so drenched in someone's life fluid was if the person who owned them had kneeled in a pool of blood. Ronda's body was found lying in that much blood.
Whatever Bing Spencer's faults were, neither his mother nor his stepfather believed he was capable of killing anyone or, for that matter, any creature. They acknowledged his weakness for drugs and his tendency to exaggerate--and even outright lie.
Karen was temporarily angry with her son for being so stupid and sneaky--but she believed 90 percent of his recall of the night Ronda died.
The Korsgaards were slowly going through all the belongings of their four children that were stored out in their shed. They said they hoped to find the notebook that Bing had kept for years after Ronda's murder. Sig was a chronic diary keeper, and Bing had picked that up from him.
"I always taught him to write things down, keep good records--things like that," Sig said. "And as far as I know, he did."
The Korsgaards confided other information to Barb Thompson and myself--very important things that I am not at liberty at this point to reveal. And I realized that they probably held the key to the suspects who murdered Ronda Reynolds.
It felt strange--but good--for me to be actually working as a "detective" again after all these years. And I could see that Barb was a bulldozer, but a tactful one, who never gave up until she was exhausted.
We drove by the house with the blue trim, the house where Ronda had died a dozen years before. Of course Ron no longer lived there; an elderly couple had bought it, saying they didn't feel any darkness or danger there.
Barb pointed to a large patch of tall and thorny weeds. "I think the holster for Ron's father's gun might be somewhere out there," she said. "You know, they never found it. I'm going to look for it myself."
"Now?" I asked, reminding her that it was 95 degrees out.
She laughed. "Not now--but someday."
A day later, we tried our best to find Katie Huttula. This time wasn't any more successful than our first try back in November although we drove to several addresses. No one we talked to admitting knowing her. One of the apartment complexes was supposed to be her current address. There was little doubt that it was a drug house, and there were several residents in their early twenties having a barbecue in the parking lot. We smelled marijuana and saw that one woman was clearly high on pills, but they all said they had never heard of Katie Huttula.
We went back three times, positive that they did know Katie, but they were adamant that they didn't. They smirked at us and seemed to share a secret joke--but maybe that was the pot.
It was growing dark, and we finally gave up the search.
Some tipsters say that Katie is in California. We called the apartment manager there and got only a recorded message. We have been unable to locate Katie Huttula. She may be dead. She is more likely alive, perhaps living far from Lewis and Grays Harbor counties. She is one person I would sincerely like to talk to. I'm sure she knows something, but she is afraid to tell.
Many of the main characters in the sad saga of Ronda Reynolds continue to reside in Lewis County. Others have virtually vanished.
Ron Reynolds is still the principal at the same school. If the school district should fire him because of any suspicions about him, they would probably face a lawsuit, as nothing has been proven that involves him. He refuses all media interviews. If he or he and Katie Huttula did rush to his Toledo home from Katie's apartment in Olympia to help their sons set up a scene to make Ronda's death look like a suicide, neither faces any charges of being accessories after the fact. The statute of limitations on that charge has run out.
Ron and his fourth wife live on a beautiful piece of acreage.
David Bell lives in Des Moines, Washington, five miles from my home, and he is still a sergeant with the Des Moines Police Department. He is single.
Some of the Reynolds sons--including Micah--have gone to Alaska to work on the mammoth fishing trawlers. Jonathan has a band that appears in taverns around Lewis and Gray's Harbor County. Micah's wife recently had a baby.
Mark Liburdi is close to retirement from the Washington State Patrol.
Tom "Bing" Spencer is in prison for the next few years. At this point, his mother does not correspond with him.
Cheryl Gibson hasn't contacted Barb Thompson for years. The last she heard, Cheryl was living in either Lewis or Gray's Harbor County.
Jerry Berry, Marty Hayes, and Royce Ferguson continue in their professions. Berry and Hayes have both run--unsuccessfully--for
coroner of Lewis County. They are not registered for this term's election.
Berry's private detective agency--West Coast Investigative Services--is thriving. He is a remarkably thorough detective and I recommend him to correspondents often.
Marty Hayes continues to operate his Firearms Academy of Seattle and is very close to getting his law degree. A visit to his home, close to the gun range, takes a little getting used to. Every so often, the air is filled with the sound of what seems like a hundred guns as his students fire at targets in a field below his house.
Royce Ferguson has just filed his brief in response to Terry Wilson's appeal for a new trial.
No matter what they may say, the triumvirate will never stop working on Ronda Reynolds's case until her killer is in custody.
BARB THOMPSON CONTINUES to live on her ranch in Spokane. She still breeds and trains American quarter horses, and she and her dog, Trooper, were present at the birth of several colts this spring. I called her two weeks ago and she answered her cell phone while she was up on her barn roof repairing it! She lives by the slogan she and Ronda shared: "No fear."
She is one tough lady who manages to remain pretty and feminine.
The next time I talked with her, Barb was lame, because yet another horse kicked her in the shin. It took a lot of persuasion on my part to get her to go to her doctor. Her leg was infected--but it got better. She had healed up enough to go on a pack-mule trip with friends up into the mountains last weekend.
In a week or so, she will bring some horses over the Snoqualmie Pass to their new owners, and then I will join her for yet another trip to Lewis County. We have people to interview, witnesses with new information.
Like so many others before me, I have caught the fever of finding justice for Ronda. It is contagious.
We are so very close to the killer (or killers) now.
Ronda Liburdi Reynolds was smart, kind, strong, and absolutely beautiful. She didn't look like a Washington State Patrol officer but she could hold her own with the male troopers. She died too young and her mother vowed to find justice for her. Barb Thompson Collection.
