by Ann Rule
Both Dr. Selove and Dr. Donald Reay, the medical examiner of King County, which includes Seattle, had said that her paralysis would have been instant. "How then could she get her hand(s) under the blanket?" Berry asked.
What did her broken fingernail mean to the case? Ronda was a woman who always kept her nails in perfect shape. David Bell hadn't noted a torn nail on the last evening of her life, and yet, in the morning, it was evident. Why hadn't she filed it and fixed it before her flight?
Maybe she couldn't.
One by one, Royce Ferguson led Jerry Berry through the almost two dozen items he had flagged as suspicious as he'd investigated Ronda's death.
The jurors leaned forward in their seats as Berry ticked them off.
Surely they were listening--but what were they thinking?
"Did you talk to Ron Reynolds's three younger sons who were supposedly there at the house on Twin Peaks Drive on the night of December fifteenth-sixteenth?"
"I wanted to question them--as hostile witnesses--but Sergeant Austin told me to let Reynolds's attorney do that."
Ron's attorneys had tried to persuade the Lewis County investigators to close the case. That was no surprise, but Berry was discouraged when he found the department was indeed considering doing that.
It appeared that Jerry Berry had been blocked from following several good leads, and his frustration showed on his face as he testified. He wondered why Reynolds--who was said to be such a light sleeper that Ronda's dogs couldn't sleep in the bedroom--hadn't heard the shot. Why hadn't the Reynolds boys heard the gun fire?
"The GSR [gunshot residue test] showed that Ronda had just a little trace of gun debris on her hand. Sergeant Austin had stopped issuing GSR kits because they're not of much value," Berry said. "And why would a suicide wipe her prints off the bullets before she loaded the gun? Why was the gun itself without fingerprints? Ronda had handled the gun earlier in the evening, and David Bell had held both the gun and the bullets."
Their prints should have been on the gun and bullets. But they weren't.
Someone, for whatever reason, had wiped them clean.
Jerry Berry had been on the witness stand since 11:30 A.M., with an hour recess for lunch, and it was now 3:32. Outside the windowless courtroom, the icy wind tore at the Law and Justice Center building and there were snowflakes mixed in with the rain.
John Justice asked few questions on cross-examination. That had been his technique from the beginning. Terry Wilson didn't have to prove anything; the word was, he might not even testify in his own behalf. After the first day, he hadn't been in the courtroom.
Justice homed in on an eighty-four-minute phone conversation Ron and Ronda had allegedly had the late afternoon before she died. That would have been while Ron was driving home from his doctor's appointment in Olympia. No one knew for sure what they had discussed, though Ron said she'd been upset and suicidal--but was a lot calmer as he drove into Toledo. And so he had stopped for a hamburger and gone to the school Christmas musical instead of going home to check on her.
"Did Ronda threaten suicide during that long call?" Justice asked.
"I have no way of knowing, Berry answered."
If Justice was trying to show how caring and connected Ron Reynolds was on December 15, it seemed a faint argument. The picture of Reynolds chewing on a hamburger and enjoying Christmas music when--and if--his wife talked about killing herself made him appear shallow.
Asked if an expert on graphology had studied the writing on the Reynolds's bathroom mirror, Berry said, "Yes," and agreed that the authority had surmised that it was probably Ronda's writing.
Justice did not, however, call the expert to testify.
Justice asked Berry if the investigators on the first day had found a bottle of Zoloft, prescribed for Ronda, in the master bathroom.
"Yes," Berry agreed. "We found Zoloft. I can't remember who it was for. As I recall, it was written in May 1998--seven months before Ronda died. There were many capsules left in the container."
"As for the time of Ronda Reynolds's death and the rigor in her body, didn't Dr. Reay, the medical examiner of King County, comment on that?"
"He did."
Jerry Berry testified that Dr. Reay said that it would be very unusual for someone whose joints were that frozen with rigor mortis to have died only an hour or so before. "But he said it wouldn't be impossible for the time and the rigor to match . . ."
"No more questions."
IT WAS 4 P.M. ON TUESDAY, and the gallery expected Judge Hicks would break until the next morning. But he didn't.
The oak benches felt as hard as steel, and many of us were eager to leave--probably to stop at the Kit Carson Restaurant on the way to our homes or motels. The prime rib, chicken, and pot roast there tasted like home cooking and the portions were generous. The coconut cream pies were cut in fourths.
The happy-hour martinis were doubles.
And the puddles in the parking lot would be deeper than usual and edged with snow.
But Judge Hicks didn't show any sign of adjourning early. Marty Hayes followed Jerry Berry to the witness stand.
Beyond their obsession with finding the truth, the two men could hardly be more different. While Berry was quiet and soft-spoken, Hayes was bombastic, a large bearded man with a loud voice. He exuded self-confidence, and he frequently stepped down from the witness chair to demonstrate something. He often approached the rail in front of the jurors to speak directly to them.
It was clear that they were fascinated with his testimony. (After the hearing, several members of the jury picked Hayes as one of their "favorite" witnesses.)
There was a verbal scuffle in the courtroom as the defense attorney objected to Hayes's testifying as an expert in homicide investigation--or as a firearms expert.
Judge Hicks agreed that Hayes probably didn't have enough experience with murder cases to qualify as an expert, but ruled that after almost twenty years of teaching at his own company--the Firearms Academy of Seattle--he had the background, experience, and expertise to testify on firearms and ballistics.
Guns were not as alien to this small-town jury as they might be to city dwellers, so they grasped Hayes's demonstrations quickly.
Using a gun as similar to the death weapon as he could find, Hayes testified that he had studied the recoil dynamics of a Rossi handgun, using a sandbag to represent a victim's head. He then fired eighteen shots into the dummy head as he repositioned the hand grip on the gun three times. The location of Ronda's single head wound could not be matched to either of her hands' positions.
Another test Hayes conducted, with his wife Gila's assistance, was to measure the decibel level of a gunshot fired ten to fifteen feet away from the bed where Ron Reynolds said he'd been asleep. His alarm clock had allegedly wakened him, but he hadn't heard the shot that killed his wife.
This had been a huge point of contention for everyone consumed by the death of Ronda Reynolds.
Marty Hayes accomplished this test by measuring the decibels of objects such as a ringing phone, alarm clock, and gunfire as they would sound fifteen feet away. Normal conversation is 58 to 72 decibels, an alarm clock is 62 decibels, and a television set at high volume is 65 decibels.
How much noise would a gun make?
Hayes answered that. "A gun shot is from 120 to 130 decibels," he testified. "Keep in mind," he continued, "70 is twice as loud as 60, 80 is twice as loud as 70, and 100 decibels is twice as loud as 90."
At the gun range, Hayes had first twice tested the sound level of a gun pressed firmly to the dummy's head against a weapon pressed loosely. He listed the decibels for each.
Gun Pressed Firmly
Gun Pressed Loosely
114
129
92
127
Then Hayes closed the bathroom door of the range's office and put the decibel meter about fifteen feet away from the door:
Pressed Firmly
Pressed Loosely
97
/> 101
His conclusion was that gunshots that were louder than high volume on a television set, an alarm clock's urgent ring, or a loud conversation should have wakened someone sleeping less than fifteen feet away. True, the sound was lower when the bathroom door was shut, but tests had shown that that wasn't possible because Ronda was too tall to fit.
Marty Hayes testified: "All of the above analysis indicates to me that Ronda Reynolds could not have fired the Rossi .32 S&W long revolver with her right hand--down through the pillow--and [have] the gun come to rest on her temple. On the other hand, the photos of the scene and this analysis are consistent with the gun having been placed on her temple/forehead by a second or third person, who positioned her hand to brace the pistol so it would not fall. The pillow could have been placed on her head to cover the side of her head and the gun."
Hayes held the now-unloaded gun he had used for his tests up to his right temple, demonstrating different angles of fire. Even though the gallery and the jury knew there were no bullets in the chamber, it was still unsettling to watch.
He suspected that the gift box of cheeses and sausage had probably been used to prop up her right arm and hand. Why did the pillow with bullet holes in it fail to match up with Ronda's head wound? Perhaps that had been an afterthought--something meant to explain why no one else in the house had heard the shot?
Or, possibly her killer or killers could not bear to look at her.
IT WAS WEDNESDAY, the third day of the hearing, and Marty Hayes returned to the witness stand. He said he had tried to re-create the position of the pillow that covered Ronda's face.
"When I held the pillow close to the gun, it didn't work because the pin and hammer were trapped in the pillow's fabric and would not fire. I had to hold the pillow a little ways away from the gun."
The pillow might have been used to muffle sound, but the burn marks in it didn't match the gun position. Marty Hayes tried shooting the weapon to see how much difference it might make to muffle the sound with and without the pillow.
During this test, Gila Hayes had again called out the decibels on the meter fifteen feet away.
Without the Pillow
With the Pillow
112
91
113
83
94
86
Once more, Hayes used noise to educate the jury. Hayes walked in front of the jury box, his voice rising as he moved. He was shouting as loud as he possibly could--producing an extremely high-volume sound in the courtroom. His voice rattled the room, and the decibel meter registered it. And still he wasn't making as much noise as a single gunshot would.
It was a most effective demonstration; the walls themselves seemed to shudder sympathetically.
Why hadn't Ron Reynolds--or someone else in the house--heard the shot?
HAYES HAD WARNED Barb Thompson that he might need to include some body pictures in his testimony so that the jurors could actually view what the witnesses so far had seen. She knew it was coming as the screen was being set up.
After eleven years, Barb Thompson had learned to deal with most of the emotions that rose in her throat and made her eyes brim with tears. She had read, evaluated, and memorized gruesome details about her daughter's death. She had even learned to laugh again, although sometimes she joked because she didn't want to cry. But there were still some things she couldn't handle.
Barb had seen the crime scene and morgue photographs of Ronda's body. She knew that Marty might enter them as evidence. They had been shocking to her, and would be to anyone who wasn't a cop, doctor, or a forensic pathologist. But she had come to a point where she could look at them, and she even put them up on her "Justice for Ronda" website.
If anyone in the cyber world could help with advice or assistance, Barb wanted them to see all the details of her daughter's case.
And yet, when the time came to show the jurors the enlargements of the bloody photos, Barb realized she couldn't stay in the courtroom. So many people would be staring at her dead, vulnerable child--from jurors to strangers in the gallery, to the judge, to Donna Wilson and Carmen Brunton. (Terry Wilson, of course, wasn't there.) She hadn't realized how much more heart-wrenching it would be to see the photos blown up this large.
With tears coursing down her face, Barb whispered to Royce Ferguson and then bolted from her seat and ran to the courtroom doors. She hadn't expected the emotional force that suddenly assailed her; all she knew was that she could not bear to be there while Ronda's last photos were shown.
Ronda's facial features were obscured by a curtain of blood. The entrance wound was just in front of her right ear, but the blood made it difficult to see the exact location. Her pink rosebud pajamas were stained with her blood, too. In the morgue shots, Ronda was nude, and the red fluid was washed from her face, pajamas, and her hair. It was easy to see the delineation between the initial lividity that stained her fair skin when her heart ceased to beat and the secondary, lighter pink that occurred after she was placed on her back for removal to await autopsy.
A half hour later, when the photos had all flashed on the screen and it was white and clear of images, Barb came back into the courtroom holding a box of tissues. She thought she would be able to handle seeing the crime scene photos, but she wasn't. She didn't trust her reactions now; something else might very well take her unaware as the hearing progressed. She hadn't wanted to cry, but she could not stop the tears.
Still, she vowed to herself, she would not break down again.
JOHN JUSTICE began cross-examining Marty Hayes at 1:45 on Thursday afternoon. He struck first at Hayes's lack of actual experience as a detective.
"Have you ever been involved in suicide or homicide cases?"
"No."
"Ever testified about it in court?"
"No."
"What would the impact be on a sleeping person of just one loud sound as opposed to a continuous sound like an alarm clock?" Justice asked. "Would one quick sound wake a person?"
Royce Ferguson objected, and both attorneys approached the bench. It would clearly be impossible for the witness to assess how various subjects would react to either short or drawn-out noise.
Cross-examination of Marty Hayes had ended, but the court had some queries.
Judge Hicks asked his questions for Hayes: "Could Ronda Reynolds have wrapped the gun with the blanket? Could that explain no fingerprints on the gun?"
Hayes shook his head. "No."
"The gun would have recoiled down--not up on the forehead," Hayes added. "Recoil follows the path of least resistance. Ronda's aiming position wasn't right."
The track of the bullet was odd, too. It had entered just above and slightly forward of her right ear, but stopped short of midline; instead it went down and back toward the occiput.
It was only mid-afternoon on Thursday, but Judge Hicks called for the courtroom to be dark on Friday and said they would begin again at nine on Monday morning.
Barb Thompson headed home over the mountains, trying to get as much driving in before it was pitch black outside. The days were growing shorter. She knew her mother would be waiting eagerly to see her and hear more details of the first four days of the hearing. Royce Ferguson had only one more witness to call: Dr. Jeffrey M. Reynolds.
However, Dr. Reynolds was on a trip outside the United States, and Barb and her team were holding their breaths until he was actually in Chehalis and prepared to testify.
They need not have been concerned; Reynolds was waiting outside Judge Hicks's courtroom on Monday morning. He looked very tired from his long journey and wasn't dressed as most expert witnesses are. Instead he wore a casual leather jacket, probably what he'd worn on the plane. When he took that off, he had on a blue-striped dress shirt and tie.
With his striking white hair growing to his collar, Reynolds resembled the stereotype of an English literature professor more than a forensic pathologist. But he certainly had an impressive background in his special area of medi
cine. Although he had a master's degree in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his three years' service as a medic in the U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Berets) led him to go to medical school at the University of Miami. His residency was in pathology at the Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, Oregon.
Beginning in 1989, Dr. Reynolds had been the circuit-riding medical examiner for eight counties in Washington and Idaho. He had performed two thousand autopsies. Early in her search for answers, Barbara Thompson had called him and asked him to review Ronda's case. He agreed to look at the thick white binder with the myriad information Barb had gathered.
"If you had been told Ronda Reynolds's death was a suicide," Royce Ferguson began, "would you have concurred?"
The witness rubbed his forehead and shook his head slightly. "It was a very unusual death," he answered. "Women rarely shoot themselves in the head."
But he had another reason to doubt the conclusions of the coroner and sheriff's investigators. "A temporal--self-inflicted wound--almost always goes out the other side of the head. This was very odd. The bullet didn't cross the midline of the brain; instead, it went down."
"That was unusual?" Ferguson probed.
"It would be almost impossible [for her] to fire from that angle."
Dr. Reynolds held the empty gun up to his own head just as Marty Hayes had. His wrist bent improbably as he tried to aim down through his head instead of aiming straight across the brain, transecting it. His hand bent almost back to his wrist.
"The angle of the wound track is wrong," Reynolds said firmly, agreeing with Hayes.
The forensic pathologist continued to point out aspects of Ronda's shooting that did not ring true. "It took three and a half pounds of pressure to pull that trigger. With her right hand in that cramped position, I don't think she could have done that. And there was a deep impression at the entrance wound."