by Ann Rule
When Ron Reynolds filed his claim for the $50,000, he identified himself as the "Executor" and "Beneficiary." It was all very civilized and pleasant, although he didn't get the money until September 1999.
The company wrote: "Mr. Reynolds, your insurance proceeds have been deposited into a Resource Manager Account in your name. This is a flexible account designed to accommodate both your immediate and long term financial needs. Because we understand you may need time to make decisions about your funds, you are welcome to keep your balance in this account as long as you like. While you do, it earns an attractive rate of interest."
Both Ron Reynolds and Katie Huttula Reynolds were extraordinarily covetous about money. Katie had been awarded almost $100,000 when Ron divorced her, and that left a bitter taste in his mouth. Especially since she had spent almost all of it in a year.
He had fully expected to realize $300,000 from Ronda's insurance, and Barbara was the first to see how upset he was about that when she confronted him the day after Ronda's death--far more upset than he seemed to be about the loss of Ronda.
Ron took the $50,000 as soon as it was available.
IN THE LATE SUMMER and fall of 2001, the Lewis County detectives had began to look at Ronda's manner of death again. Barb Thompson was heartened when she heard there were slight stirrings in the sheriff's office of new interest in the case. She hoped that it was true.
By Christmas season 2001, Ronda had been dead for three years, and Jerry Berry had resigned from the sheriff's office. Apparently Ronda's widower had expected that the past should be old news by then. He was tired of the questions, the suspicions, and the way some people stared at him.
He must have known that he remained the prime "person of interest" in Ronda's death. Sheriff McCroskey had written a letter to Barb Thompson on July 26, 2000 in which he offered his condolences. Then he added, "As happens in any investigation, some mistakes were made--but none of them changed the facts we have to work with. . . . Unfortunately, the only suspect in this case invoked his rights and has an attorney."
Rayburn Dudenbostel, a civil attorney in Elma, and Brett Ballew were representing Ron Reynolds now. Dudenbostel had been Laura and Leslie Reynolds's lawyer for years. He described Ron as a "gentle man, who has suffered a great tragedy and is upset."
Ron's attorney said that the sheriff's men asking questions more than two years later had opened up a lot of wounds. "You can imagine how upset you would be if you woke up and your spouse had committed suicide, and then be accused of killing her, and finding out law enforcement didn't follow procedures."
Because Ronda's death investigation was about to be reopened, he declined to tell The Chronicle reporter Sharyn Decker any information he had that would exonerate Ron Reynolds--in case it might be used against him.
Dudenbostel said he had no doubts that Ron was innocent, and pointed out that that could have been established if detectives had only swabbed his hands for gunshot residue. He added that Ron had passed a second polygraph, submitted to interviews, given DNA and handwriting samples, and handed over telephone and credit card records.
Dudenbostel and Ballew insisted on being present during any questioning of their client. That should not have scared Sheriff McCroskey's office into dropping the case; virtually every suspect in a homicide case retains an attorney. That doesn't mean "hands off."
On December 14, 2001, Reynolds prepared to submit to his last "cooperative" interview, this time with Sergeant Glade Austin. Blair felt he wasn't very concerned about it, because he'd gone through "practice" interviews with his attorneys to prepare him for the questioning. Blair went with him, and she recalled that Jonathan Reynolds was also instructed by the attorneys on what to do and say when the sheriff's detectives interviewed him. This was standard practice, although legal clients are admonished to tell the truth.
This pre-Christmas interview was almost three years to the day from when Ronda died. It was a very long questioning period--almost two hours on the tapes that silently recorded it. It began at 6:12 P.M. and ended at 7:48. Blair Connery waited in Dudenbostel's outer office, not privy to the statements Ron was making.
Austin began by asking Ron basic questions--birthday, occupation, address--before he plunged into the more difficult queries. The detective sergeant first thanked Ron for his continued cooperation.
"Going back several years, when did you first meet Ronda?" Austin asked Ron
"I met her several years before we got married. At the time I was one of Jehovah's Witnesses, and she was attending and she was a friend of my ex-wife's. So that's how I met her."
The detective and the suspect agreed that that was probably about 1996.
Ron said that his first wife was Catherine Huttula.
She was not. He simply skipped any mention of his actual first wife, Donna.
After his divorce from Katie, he said he had become a much closer friend of Ronda's. They married on January 2, 1998, and lived first in McCleary on Elma-Hickland Road.
"How long did you live there?" Austin asked.
"Um . . . well, we got married in January, and I signed papers on my house in Toledo in August of '98."
"How, in general, would you describe your relationship with Ronda from the time you got married?"
"We had a good relationship. Um, you know, we didn't fight. We didn't have problems that much--I mean, um, you know, some kid problems once in a while, you know, but, uh, we got along. The only thing that, uh, came to mar our relationship was, you know, some of the dishonest things that Ronda started doing."
"Is it safe to say it's difficult for a stepmother to have three boys in the house at times?"
"Yeah. I think that was somewhat hard on Ronda because she wasn't used to it."
This was inaccurate. Mark Liburdi had two sons and a daughter, and Ronda had been a mother to them for eight years.
"Was it difficult at times for the boys, too, having a stepmom in the house?"
"Uh--probably, yeah."
"Okay. What led up in a progression-type fashion to a point that you decided that you were going to separate or get divorced?"
"Well, I started getting more and more information, um, about Ronda running up credit cards, and you know there was one that was over six thousand dollars that I paid for when I closed my house deal. And, uh, there were some others that I was starting to get notifications in the mail about, and when I questioned her about this, she wasn't truthful and she'd say, 'Well, that's Mark's account. This is a mistake having--getting it sent to you,' and, you know, she just kept . . . um making excuses and not telling me the truth, so gradually I grew to not be trusting her. It was like a breach of trust--"
"Do you remember when that would have started?" Glade Austin cut in.
"Well, I was probably starting to get suspicious some in August, between August and November [of 1998]. I was getting more suspicious all the time, 'cause I kept getting phone calls and things."
"Now, were these credit cards you were aware of?"
"No," Reynolds said. "Every time I'd try to get accurate information, she was not honest about it. She'd tell me things like: 'I'm taking care of that. That's a mistake.' "
Ronda, of course, was no longer present to defend herself. And Ron had spent those summer to winter months in an affair with his ex-wife, so he himself wasn't a prime example of honesty.
Someone had falsified information in order to get a credit card--or several--in the name Mrs. Ronald Reynolds. But which one of his most recent wives had done that?
Katie Huttula had written $1,800 worth of bad checks to a supermarket without Ronda's knowledge. Was it possible that she was the wife who kept getting new credit cards?
Glade Austin focused only on Ronda, however, and he appeared to be phrasing his questions in a way that validated his own opinion that Ronda was dishonest, rather than focusing on anyone else. Ron was quick to oblige.
"I went through . . . um . . . After she passed away, I started going through papers and things and I uncov
ered evidence and I found out they [credit cards] were in my name and I called the companies and I got copies of the applications and things and I realized that she had forged my name and signatures and things."
"You probably didn't have those cards in your wallet?"
"No, I didn't."
"When did you finally reach a point where you decided that it wasn't going to work, and you were talking with her about splitting or separating or divorcing?"
"I took some time to think about it ahead of time--probably through the month of November--but, you know, it was like . . . um . . . it was like the day before the night of her suicide that I talked to her about it and told her I wanted her to leave because I felt our trust was broken."
"So that was the day that you actually, for the first time, said, 'It's over, move out, get out, or--' "
Ron shook his head. "Well, I didn't say it like that. I--I tried to be kind. I mean, you know, I--I cared a lot about Ronda and it broke my heart that she did that. But I was at a point where, for the good of the future of myself and my boys, I couldn't have her doing that."
For a man who was capable of giving charismatic speeches at educational conferences, Ron Reynolds's answers to Austin's questions were halting, stumbling, and dotted with "ums" and "you knows."
The longer the interview continued, the worse his memory grew. He thought that December 15, 1998, was the first time he'd actually told Ronda it was over between them. He could not remember what time of day that happened. He thought that conversation had happened before she took the waterbed apart, but he wasn't sure. They had talked about separating in their home, and no one was around. At this point in this interview, he didn't mention his doctor's appointment that day in Olympia.
"Did you and Ronda and the rest of the family celebrate Christmas?" Austin asked.
"I was getting ready to celebrate Christmas. Ronda did not want to celebrate Christmas because of her beliefs as a Jehovah's Witness, but I was preparing stuff to celebrate it with my boys and we were just gonna spend it at home."
"You were no longer a Jehovah's Witness?"
"No."
"Okay. Now on the fifteenth, you had a doctor's appointment? And some time near that appointment, you and Ronda talked for an extensive amount of time. Do you recall where you were at when that phone call started?"
"I was in the parking lot of the Olympia Multi-Specialty Clinic, where I go see my cardiologist. And I'd completed my appointment with him, and when I got in my pickup, Ronda had left at least one message on my cell phone, and I returned the call to her and started talking to her there in the parking lot."
"I think the conversation lasted about eighty-four minutes?" Austin asked.
"I didn't know that until later, but we did talk a long time . . . At times, she was saying some things that kinda worried me, so I just kept talking to her. I noticed it was getting late so I started driving home, and I continued to talk to her . . . uh, until I got pretty close to home and--"
"Okay," Austin interrupted. "Can you be somewhat specific on what she was saying that bothered you or worried you?"
"Well, she was really depressed over us separating and . . . she started talking about things that led me to believe she had suicidal thoughts. And she was talking about one of her friends in the Patrol who had committed suicide and she said: 'I never used to understand why she did that, but I understand that now because it would be so peaceful.' Or something like that. So, you know, I'm not an expert on those kind of things, but when somebody's talking like that, I know it's serious, so I just kept talking to her and trying to calm her and tell her, 'Look, things are gonna look better, and uh, and uh, I was fully planning on going home and talking to her, but as I got close to Toledo, she, um, said, 'Don't come home now. I'm fine' and--"
Once again, Austin interrupted his subject, but Reynolds's voice overrode his.
"--and I'm gonna be okay . . ."
"Were there other things she said during that conversation?" the detective sergeant asked. "Other than that--that led you to be concerned?"
Derailed from his rapid string of words, Reynolds wilted a little.
"Well, I can't remember conversations that well. I--I'm not good at that, but . . . um--Just her whole tone sounded depressed."
"At that point was she threatening suicide or saying she was going to commit suicide?"
"No. Talking about it. She was having ideations, you know, you know. It had me concerned."
Reynolds was, indeed, not good at remembering details, examples, and even whole conversations. He faltered often. He couldn't recall if it had been during the phone call or later on the night of the fifteenth when Ronda said she didn't want to go on without him.
"So you drove back to Toledo [from the clinic in Olympia] and I believe that you were going home, but she told you--"
"She told me basically, 'I'm okay now. You don't need to come home.' So the time was getting close for me to be down to the school for my program, and I grabbed a quick bite to eat and went there because, you know, I thought she was stable."
Ron said he'd stopped at Betty's Place in Toledo for a hamburger, after deciding it wasn't necessary for him to go home to check on Ronda.
His reactions on the last afternoon of Ronda's life appeared to have been mercurial. He was terribly worried for Ronda when she called him in Olympia; he was fearful that she was suicidal. But he called no one else, and as he drove into Toledo, he had apparently felt serene in his belief that she was no longer in danger.
He explained that a school principal was expected to be at the various plays and musical programs--so he showed up at seven for the school Christmas program and stayed until at least nine-thirty.
"I'm usually the last one out, making sure all the doors are locked and the building is clear."
When he arrived home, he'd seen Dave Bell there, with his truck backed up in the driveway. The Des Moines police sergeant and Ronda were apparently unloading the truck and carrying things back into the house.
"I think she was taking stuff back in her room. I didn't stay out there to watch what they were doing," Reynolds said. "I didn't interfere with that. I went in the house and talked to my boys 'cause they were kinda upset, saying, 'Ronda's taking things out of the house,' and I told them, you know, 'It's okay. She's gonna be leaving--it'll be all right.' "
Ron said he hadn't talked to Dave Bell at all. He'd been too busy talking to his sons. "They were okay with it. I mean they weren't upset or anything. Nobody was really upset."
"Did you have any conversations with the boys about David Bell and a gun at that point?" Galde Austin asked.
"No, I never knew anything about it. The boys saw him give it back to her, but I never knew about that until after her death."
Reynolds said he'd helped Ronda put the waterbed back together, and they'd begun to refill it. "We were just talking while we were doing that."
"Was [sic] there conversations about what her plans had been before Dave Bell brought her back?"
"She didn't go into what her plans had been. She just said she decided to stay home and try to work it out . . . I kept telling her I've made my mind up, you know. I didn't give her any false hopes."
Reynolds said that his boys had gone to bed later than they usually did--Josh at the end of the hall, his wall backing up to the master bathroom closet, Jonathan in the first room beyond the front door. It had French doors and had been designed as a family room. David's room was on the corner of the house.
Perhaps seeing Ronda with another man had made Ron jealous, and she became--at least temporarily--more attractive to him. At any rate, he told Glade Austin that they'd been intimate. "We had intercourse, and then she got back up to make some phone calls in the bathroom--we have a phone jack there. But then, after she came to bed, she was beside me, and when I went to sleep, she was beside me."
Asked about the bottle of whiskey detectives had found in the master bedroom, Ron still couldn't explain that.
"Do you know
if Ronda had anything to drink that evening--alcoholic-type drinks?" Austin asked.
"Well," Reynolds began slowly, "there was a bottle of--we'd had a partial bot--you know, maybe a fourth full or something of Black Velvet in the house. I noticed that that was in the bedroom, and um . . . so she could have been drinking, but I don't know. I didn't see her drink . . . But I know the bottle was in there and that wasn't a normal thing . . . I don't think it was there that morning."
Any hard alcohol was usually kept in a cabinet above the refrigerator in the kitchen. Reynolds didn't recall the can of Pepsi and some glasses on the bedroom floor. He seemed completely baffled about who might have emptied the bottle of Black Velvet.
Ron didn't know what time he'd gone to bed. He'd been in bed when Ronda joined him after making some calls. He did remember that she had made one call to his ex-wife, Katie. That was before they had sex, he thought, and he was fairly confident that he had gone to sleep before Ronda did.
"What time did you wake up?" Austin asked.
"I recall waking up briefly sometime around five to five-thirty A.M. 'cause I remember looking at my alarm clock. I didn't check [on her] or anything, but I had the feeling that Ronda was there, and I fell back asleep until my alarm started going off."
"After that, what time did you wake up with the alarm clock?"
"My alarm goes off at six, but I didn't--I was really tired and didn't wake up on the first ring, and it goes on at nine-minute intervals. I wasn't sure what time I woke up--um . . . I also set my alarm clock five minutes fast--"
Austin waited, and Ron Reynolds continued his stream of consciousness. "So somewhere in there, according to what has been said that when I called 911, probably on the third ring of my alarm clock, I probably started waking up, and uh, and uh, I probably laid there a little bit til I got awake and then I noticed Ronda wasn't in bed, and I got up and went out and looked in the living room 'cause, you know, a time or two when she couldn't sleep, she'd gone to the couch out there and she wasn't there, so I walked back in the bathroom, uh, and that's when I found her."