by Rule, Ann
Ferguson listened as Hayes outlined the bare bones of the case. By the time they had finished their pizza, Ferguson had agreed to meet with Barb. He hadn't committed to anything at that point, but he was willing to hear her out.
Royce Ferguson's one-man office was in Everett, Washington, about 120 miles north of Lewis County. It had none of the ostentation that many attorneys affect: the leather chairs, thick rugs, huge desks, paintings, and heavy drapes. Nor did he automatically start a timer as they began to talk. Barb had met lawyers like that and quickly sensed that the hourly fees they stipulated were paying for all the pomp and glitter. She knew she couldn't afford them.
His secretary and paralegal, Cece, was gracious and efficient as she welcomed Barb, who felt completely comfortable and optimistic for the first time in a long time. Royce looked to be in his fifties, a compactly built man with a burr haircut out of the past.
Although Royce Ferguson had handled a number of high-profile cases, he didn't talk about them. Until the writing of this book, Barb was unaware of the myriad unusual cases in which Ferguson had acted for the defense. Some were deadly serious, and others were almost whimsical.
Ferguson was a man for all seasons whose interests varied from fishing to cooking to history to music to writing and updating textbooks on Washington state law criminal practice and procedure. His two volumes are cited as authority by both the Washington State Court of Appeals and the Washington State Supreme Court. But it was the law that fascinated him the most.
"Each lawyer has a different set of dreams and goals," Ferguson wrote on his blog, "Mouthpiece Notes": "Mine include wanting to help the little guy, take on some cases which other lawyers may fear as too hard or impossible, solve some tricky legal questions in a novel way, and then be recognized for a tough job well done. So, I guess, I wanted to be a hero (hopefully) and help 'make some new law' by having a case reported in the law books as a 'case of first impression.'
"The promise of fees has never been the determining factor. Fitting cases usually involve modest or no fees at all. I recall a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln--'Do a good job practicing law and the fees will take care of themselves.' Or something like that. It's true."
Royce Ferguson grew up admiring Lincoln, Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird, Don Quixote, Clint Eastwood's Detective Harry Callahan, and an assortment of heroic cowboys who once galloped across black-and-white television sets.
It was only natural that he would soon be jousting at windmills himself and representing an assortment of both good and bad guys.
In perhaps the most disastrous serial arsonist case in the Northwest in decades, Ferguson defended Paul Keller, twenty-seven, an advertising salesman in his father's firm, on charges of setting seventy-seven fires that terrified Washington state residents in four counties during a six-month spree in the summer and fall of 1992.
Financial loss from the charred buildings, churches, homes, businesses, and retirement homes was estimated at $14 million.
But worst of all, three elderly women died in the inferno that destroyed the Four Freedoms House retirement home on September 22, 1993. Bertha Nelson, ninety-three, Mary Dorris, seventy-seven, and Adeline Stockness, seventy, perished and several other residents were injured. Damages totaled half a million dollars.
Keller was a troubled man whose own father turned him in.
Royce Ferguson didn't argue that Keller was innocent, but did ask that he get mental health treatment for problems that had begun when he was a child. He was so hyperactive as a boy that his father would drive him miles from home and leave him there, hoping that he would work off some of his energy walking back.
Paul Keller received a ninety-nine-year sentence, and, of course, remains in prison. But there is not enough money in Washington's prison budgets to provide psychiatric help that might reveal who or what Paul was railing against as he set fire after fire after fire.
I wrote about another of Ferguson's high-profile clients in Ann Rule's True Crime Files: Vol. I.
One of the most infamous killers in Washington state's history was Charles Campbell, who was in his early twenties in 1974 when he raped Renae Wicklund while holding a knife to her baby daughter, Shannah. He went to prison but obtained an early release in 1982.
On April 14, 1982, Charles Campbell returned to the Wicklunds' home in Clearview, and killed Renae and Shannah, as well as Barbara Hendrickson, a fifty-one-year-old woman who lived across the street. He was arrested almost at once and charged with three counts of murder on April 19. Campbell was an attorney's nightmare. He was an ungrateful client who did nothing to cooperate with any of the lawyers who represented him.
Royce was appointed by the Court to represent Campbell, along with Ken Lee, who was the lead attorney on the case. The two of them worked on his case for about a year, but it became so frustrating that Lee asked to be fired. Although Royce could work with the very difficult Campbell, he looked at Lee's request as a chance for him to leave the thankless case. New attorneys were appointed.
It's probable that none of them wanted to see Charles Campbell walk free; he was too dangerous--but they tried to save him from the gallows. It was impossible. He spit on the governor who came to his cell opening, hit his own small son on the head when he came to visit, and was cruel to a female corrections worker, whom he had seduced and impregnated.
Over the years, Campbell wrote or called Royce--collect, of course--from prison, asking for copies of legal cases or decisions. Royce obliged, figuring that even a despicable convicted killer deserved a little help in his quest to stay alive.
Twelve years later, Royce Ferguson represented a journalist who wanted to videotape Campbell's execution by hanging in 1994. The case was dismissed on grounds that the state constitution specified "there was no right to access the visual images of a hanging."
As Campbell ran out of appeals in late May 1994, he wrote to Royce again. The end was near for him. Royce wrote back, choosing his words and phrases very carefully.
"I was looking for the right words to tell a condemned man there was nothing more I could send him, and nothing more that I would do. You don't want to say goodbye," he explained later, "because then the guy might give up what little hope he has, but it was a way, for me, to end it. Kind of a no-hard-feelings letter, without saying, 'Hey, you're a dead man.' "
For Royce Ferguson, dealing with Charles Campbell was a front-row seat from which to study a classic psychopath. "I was able to get some insight into a man awaiting death for the three murders he'd committed."
Charles Campbell died on the gallows, so terrified that he could not walk there and had to be carried by corrections officers.
Criminal defense attorneys are often maligned, but Ferguson almost always looked for the small specks of humanity in potential clients or those he was suing on behalf of someone else. He tried to find the reasons that made them do what they did.
He didn't find many that explained psychopathy. However, there was a case where a man named David Schubert was the prime suspect in the presumed murder of his wife, Juliana.
On June 30, 1989, Juliana Schubert, thirty, was seen alive for the last time. Her employer at the Everett Steel Company said goodbye to her on that Friday. On Monday, July 3, David Schubert, forty-seven, called to say that his wife would not be working that day. Two days later, he called her employer again and said Juliana was in Colorado with a "friend" and would not be returning to work at all. Later, he went to her office and picked up her personal belongings and returned her post office box key. Schubert asked about her check, but her boss refused to give it to him. But the missing woman's husband did collect a refund from the employment agency that got her the job, citing a "sixty-day clause."
The couple and their two sons had lived on some sixteen acres in Arlington, Washington, but they just didn't get along. Juliana had talked with her friends about seeking to have her marriage dissolved, and said she hoped to get an apartment for her sons--then seven and five--and herself.
One witness said that about a month before Juliana went missing, David Schubert had said, "I will kill Juliana to get peace of mind."
Over the weeks following Juliana's disappearance, Schubert gave conflicting accounts of where she was. Besides Colorado, he said she was vacationing in Chicago, in New York "back east," and was in Arizona with another man.
On July 24, almost four weeks after she vanished, David Schubert finally told her mother, Karil Nelson, that she was missing, and that she had taken neither her car nor her clothes--but he thought she might have taken her purse or five hundred dollars. Her mother immediately called the police in Everett, only to find that David had not even filed a missing-persons report.
This was particularly strange since Schubert had served as a reserve police officer. He was also an insurance agent. He testified later that he and Juliana were having marital problems and were in the process of a "do it yourself" divorce.
He had sought advice on that, however, from their family attorney, when he learned they had to have a parenting plan for their two young sons. Juliana had allegedly reacted badly to his choice of attorneys--since the lawyer also represented her mother. He said she threw the car keys at him, saying "It's your car, it's your house . . . I hate it! I hate it! I hate it!"
And then he said she left, deserting her little boys, her whole life. David Schubert said he figured she would come back when she cooled down.
But she never did. Her sons grew up believing she had left them on purpose.
David Schubert sometimes said, "Only stupid people get caught for murder."
Police suspected that Schubert had murdered Juliana, and they went so far as to arrest him on charges of second-degree murder. But after the lead detective on the case, Rick Blake, fell ill with leukemia and died, the charges were dismissed.
When Juliana had been gone for seven years, David Schubert filed to have her declared legally dead. The court obliged on September 23, 1996. The next day the widower filed a petition for an order to probate Juliana's will and appoint him personal representative.
But Karil Nelson went to Royce Ferguson. This couldn't be right. She believed that Schubert had killed her daughter. Royce alleged that since the "widower is the slayer of Juliana M. Schubert, he is otherwise disqualified to serve, administer, and inherit."
Karil Nelson was appointed as special personal representative of Juliana's estate, and she filed a wrongful-death action against her former son-in-law, seeking to have him legally declared the "slayer" of her daughter.
Juliana's murder began a series of events that brought tragedy after tragedy. The boys had never been allowed to know their grandmother, and totally believed what their father told them over the years.
David Schubert was subsequently charged once again with the second-degree murder of his wife, and went on trial thirteen years after Juliana vanished. Although her body was never found, he was convicted in 2002 and sentenced to thirteen and a half years in prison.
He is now seventy years old. His only hope of early release would be Juliana walking out of the mists of time to prove that she is not dead after all.
Royce Ferguson represented Juliana's mother, Karil Nelson, pro bono.
BARBARA THOMPSON knew virtually nothing about Royce Ferguson's other cases, nor did she realize that he was probably one of the few attorneys who would take a chance on her--even if she had little money, and even though years had passed since Ronda's death. She remembers the first time she met him at his Everett office.
"We began to discuss Ronda's case," Barb recalls, "and, at first, I could tell he wasn't really buying what I was saying. But he kept listening. He was very polite and intent, and as I talked on, he started asking questions. He asked me to show him evidence backing up what I was saying. I was able to illustrate my points in the case file I had put together, and I could see he was growing more and more interested."
Their conversation went on for two hours. As they neared the end of their meeting, Ferguson realized that Barb had come prepared. She wasn't there to complain or cry or say that life isn't fair. She had the facts, statements, and evidence to validate everything she was telling him.
"He decided to take the case," Barb remembers, still in awe that thanks to Marty Hayes, she had "found the best person possible to join us in our struggle to get a judicial review. He made no promises, and asked only to have a small fee up front and money to cover court costs deposited in his trust account. We shook hands and never looked back."
IN THE YEARS AHEAD, Barb found that Royce was honest, sincere, and "so very dedicated" to his profession. "Anyone who says attorneys are heartless, money-hungry crooks, with no conscience hasn't met Royce Ferguson! He is an example of what all attorneys should be and he has fought as hard as I have since he came on board. In spite of everything that lay ahead, I don't think Royce has ever regretted taking Ronda's case."
Once or twice every month, Royce Ferguson plays trumpet and keyboard with his fellow musicians in the North End Jazz Quintet. Their usual venues are the Wayward Coffee shop in the Greenwood district in North Seattle, and the Jewel Box Cafe. It's one of his many ways of easing the stress of filing briefs and motions and the trials that ensue.
BASED ON HIS HISTORY OF CASES, and his avocations, Royce Ferguson could be the model for a television series, but he's probably too modest for that.
The team of Barb Thompson, Jerry Berry, Marty Hayes, and Royce Ferguson were dedicated, hardworking, and innovative, and they soon formed a tight bond. They met often, laughed when they felt like crying, and vowed to find justice for Ronda.
But they faced some hard times ahead.
GEORGE FOX, the retired detective from California who was on the HITS team that had reviewed the case and came back concurring with the Lewis County sheriff's team's opinion that Ronda had killed herself, was particularly scathing when he described the men who were helping Barb Thompson, as he wrote to the incoming Lewis County sheriff, Steve Mansfield, in June 2006.
"I found it very troublesome that individuals with no--or limited experience--prey on a grieving mother for their own personal financial or political gain."
Not surprisingly, this did not sit well with Marty Hayes. Hayes had worked almost a thousand hours for Barb, all pro bono--as had Jerry Berry and Royce Ferguson. He'd charted the decibel level of a ringing alarm clock against the sound of gunfire and tested the pillow placed over Ronda's head and face for gunshot residue. With a nearly identical handgun, he checked to see where the recoil direction of the gun should have been. Certain photographs--alleged to have been taken the morning after Ronda died--were missing; they were either lost, stolen, or had been thrown away for no good reason.
Hayes knew guns--and that was obvious. He didn't have as much hands-on experience in homicide investigation as many of the detectives involved in the seemingly endless search for Ronda Reynolds's true manner of death, but he knew what guns will do, how loud they are, and how people used them. Since the gun used to kill Ronda Reynolds had been moved prematurely by Detective Dave Neiser, it was very important to have someone with that kind of knowledge in reconstructing the shooting.
Hayes and George Fox spent a lot of time trying to prove the other was misguided, incompetent, conceited, deluded, and overly ambitious.
Small and large turf wars are far from uncommon in high-profile investigations. The important thing is that they should not be allowed to interfere with finding the solution to the mystery.
Fox said that Vernon Geberth, the New York homicide expert, had acknowledged later that he had changed his mind about the fallacy of Ronda's "suicide," and now believed she had killed herself. Since Geberth is an old friend, I called him and asked him about that--was he really coming around to thinking Ronda had killed herself?
"No!" he said. "I've never said anything like that to Fox. If I had further thoughts, I would have written them down. I don't casually comment that I've changed my mind! I still believe Ronda Reynolds was a victim of homicide!"
When--and if--a judicial hearing would take place, Marty would be a powerful witness in demonstrating how Ronda died.
Hayes began a series of tests. First, he had to find a revolver similar to the death gun. He located a Rossi .32-caliber long revolver.
He wanted to see if it would have been possible for Ronda to wrap a pillow around that gun and then shoot herself. The first two times he attempted to fire the gun, the pillow's case caught between the firing pin (which is connected to the hammer on a Rossi revolver) and the cartridge.
Holding the gun clear of the pillow allowed the firing pin enough leeway. But tests done this way produced a dual pattern on the pillow case--which did not coincide with the actual pillow detectives removed from Ronda's head.
"It would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible," Hayes wrote, "for her to have positioned herself in the manner in which she was discovered, wrapped the gun in a pillow, fired it, and have the gun come to rest on her forehead or temple."
There had been a distinct imprint of the revolver in the skin of Ronda's forehead, and that was difficult to explain. Especially since it was underneath the pillow, with the gunshot hole on the outside of the pillow.
Unless someone had placed it there.
Marty Hayes continued to experiment with various diagnostic devices in an effort to either prove or disprove whether the first deductions by the sheriff's office were correct.
WHILE MARTY HAYES, Jerry Berry, and Royce Ferguson were working with Barb Thompson because they believed that Ronda deserved to have the truth known, there were others who were parasites--vultures--looking to make money or to take some kind of perverse pleasure out of her grief.
