by Ann Rule
But were there only two victims? Orla Fay, yes. Margie Hunter, yes. But deputies and troopers looked closely now at the still unsolved Cowden case.
Dwain Lee Little had long been the prime suspect in the deaths of Richard, Belinda, David, and Melissa Cowden on Labor Day weekend, six years earlier. He was out on parole at that time and living with his parents in Ruch, Oregon—eighteen miles downstream on the Applegate River. He was found carrying a .22-caliber pistol a few months later and returned to prison. The California tourists had seen two men and a woman who resembled the Littles in the Cowdens’ campsite area after their family disappeared. Even their description of the strange trio’s pickup truck matched the one Stone and Pearl owned. An old miner who lived in a cabin farther up Sturgis Fork Creek said that the Little family had stopped at his place on Monday morning, the day after the Cowdens disappeared. The Littles had even signed a guestbook the miner kept to remind him of his visitors.
When questioned, the Little family members all denied any knowledge of the Cowdens’ disappearance. Dwain Lee said he had been away on “business” that weekend on the southern Oregon coast, and had returned to meet up with his parents for a trip “into the mountains” on Sunday morning.
Dwain Little had refused to take a lie-detector test. If he had, and if he passed it, the charges against him for “felon in possession of a firearm” would have been dropped. But he had chosen to go back to prison rather than submit to a lie-detector test.
Why was he so afraid of the polygraph test? Maybe he had something more to hide, something that was far worse than the gun charges. …
The tiny town of Ruch, where the Little family lived in the fall of 1974, was the closest town to Copper. And yet when asked what route he’d taken from the Pacific coast to Ruch, Dwain repeatedly said he took the road that did not go through Copper, even though that would have been the shortest way.
Investigators had seized the Littles’ truck and processed it for any possible evidence linking it to the Cowdens. They found it was as clean as if it had just rolled off the production line in Detroit. They had never seen a truck so meticulously cared for.
Dwain Little had been back in the Oregon State Pen for almost a year when there seemed to be a break in the Cowden case. A convict who had shared a cell with Little sent a message through the corrections staff that he needed to talk to detectives.
Rusty Kelly* had a story to tell. He swore that Dwain Little had admitted to him that he was the one who killed the Cowdens. He had given him details. Moreover, Little was spearheading an escape plan that involved sixteen prisoners. Kelly said he was one of those, but he’d never really intended to follow through. He offered to show officials a cache of weapons that were being saved to use in the mass escape.
Jailhouse informants aren’t the best source of information, and they can be reduced to mincemeat by defense attorneys, but the detectives gave Kelly a polygraph test regarding the escape details—and he passed easily. They deliberately didn’t ask him any questions on the Cowdens’ massacre during the lie-detector test.
He led them to the hidden arms.
The media announced that the grand jury in Jackson County would consider this new information, and a “true bill” indicting Dwain Lee Little in the four murders would be handed down any day.
But it never came.
Lawmen in Jackson County still had no physical evidence that would absolutely link Little to the murders of a family who met a monster as they camped out. He was already in prison for what would probably be the rest of his life. Unless he escaped, he wasn’t a danger to anyone—except, perhaps, to Rusty Kelly, who had snitched on him.
Today, the handsome, slender youth of 1964 is an old man, barely recognizable. He is overweight, with skin the greenish gray of prison pallor, and thinning hair; the lines on his face have solidified into a sullen stare. The charm he evinced in his youth no longer works. While laymen in Oregon may not remember him, there are few police officers—working and retired—who don’t recall him instantly. Their first comment is always: “Yeah, I remember him. He’s the one who killed the Cowden family.”
But that has never been proved. The circumstantial evidence against him is voluminous; the hard evidence is still missing. No one had heard of DNA matching back in 1974. Today, there is nothing left to use for comparison.
Little continues to file requests and legal papers as he still hopes to be released. His thirty-year minimum sentence is up in 2010, but there is no guarantee that he will be paroled. He could be locked up until 2040, when he will be over ninety years old.
It would be a great kindness to the Cowdens’ extended family if Dwain Lee Little would confess to their murders and ask forgiveness.
It might shorten his sentence somewhat, but it’s not like him to confess. He never really has. Within his family Dwain Lee could do no wrong, and, as Pearl Little said once, “As long as he tells me he’s innocent, I will believe him.”
Margie Hunter impressed her doctors with her sheer grit and determination. She faced many operations, and even after they were accomplished, she was left with a number of permanent handicaps. Her left foot and lower leg had lost most of their sensation, and there was some atrophy that might get worse. Margie’s right hand and wrist had been slashed to the bone, and with all the tendons severed, she had a profound lack of feeling there—a far more difficult situation in a hand than a foot. Her thumb was trapped in her palm because the muscles at its base were cut. She could tell the difference between hot and cold, sharp and dull, but her finer dexterity and motor skills would be compromised.
“I anticipate,” one of her surgeons wrote, “in the future, she will become left-handed and use her right hand only as a ‘helping hand.’ ”
Margie also had some scars that were not crippling but were cosmetically damaging.
She worked hard at physical therapy to make her hand and leg as strong as they could be. She would need them more, soon. Her baby was still alive and well inside her. She gave birth just before Christmas 1980.
She would never forget Dwain Lee Little or his cruelty, but she was ready to move ahead with her life. One thing that Margie didn’t know was that Dwain might have been stalking her. A Christmas card that Metalcraft sent out in 1979 featured a group of employees. Detectives saw that Dwain Little was standing right beside Margie Hunter in the photo on the card. She may not have noticed him—but it was quite possible that he had noticed her, learned where she lived, and made a practice of driving the roadways near her apartment. On June 2, 1980, he had no business at all there as he drove up and down the Old Highway 99. No business, perhaps, but watching Margie.
Wes Cowden, Richard’s brother, has gone over endless possibilities of what might have happened to Richard, Belinda, David, and Melissa, or why anyone would target them. It was possible someone had been watching Belinda while Richard and David were at the country store—and Richard walked in on an attack on his wife. More likely, he had looked first at the killer carrying a .22 rifle as just another camper. Wes described Richard as “trusting” and thought he’d probably struck up a conversation with a stranger.
“You don’t want to get in my brother’s situation,” Wes said. “Because I’m sure things were out of control before he even knew there was a problem.
“My brother was different than me,” he continued. “On an outing like that, he wouldn’t have been carrying a weapon. And I wouldn’t think about being up there without one.”
Wes Cowden’s children and other members of their extended family still live with the threat that someone might have a grudge against them. Someone who walks free. Wes Cowden isn’t convinced that Dwain Lee Little killed Richard and his family. “I’d still like to know for sure who did it, and that if Little did do it, he’ll never be freed from prison.”
It is a terrible legacy for Wes and his sister, Susan, to live with. And it’s a chilling fear in the small communities and homes near Carberry and Sturgis creeks and the Applegate Valley are
a, especially when the Spanish moss droops from the trees, ground fog covers the forest floor in autumn, and old memories come back.
Some old-timers there say the campground is haunted.
There is still the chance that some infinitesimal evidence or a rusted .22-caliber gun is up there, and that elk hunters, loggers, or campers who have never heard of the Cowden family will find it.
If they do come across something that seems useless to them, but which might be purer gold than any amateur miner could find there, they should contact the Oregon State Police.
Free Press
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IN THE STILL OF THE NIGHT
Ann Rule
Available in hardcover
May 2010
from Free Press
Turn the page for a preview of In the Still of the Night . . .
IN THE STILL OF THE NIGHT:
THE STRANGE DEATH OF RONDA REYNOLDS
Even those who view a glass as half-full have moments when they wonder if their lives are too perfect to last. For some, the warm wafting breezes of spring redolent with the fragrance of flowers are difficult; there is too much nostalgia to deal with. For others, a new love can bring with it a fear of losing something more precious than we ever could have imagined. Similarly, holidays are times fraught with tension for many people.
Everyone hopes for a warm and loving gathering of family and friends, doors locked against the outside world once everyone arrives. And yet there is an almost subliminal fear that someone we love could be in an accident on the way to Grandmother’s house or wherever the celebration is to be held.
At Thanksgiving and Christmas, weather conditions can be icy and stormy, making roads dangerous to traverse and weighing down the wings of planes.
We worry, usually silently, and watch the clock until our roll call is complete. To lose someone on a holiday means that every anniversary that comes after will be marked by sorrowful remembrance.
I suspect that mothers agonize the most. Even when our children are grown, we would much prefer them to be safe beneath our wings, and sometimes we long for the days when we could tuck them into cribs and know that we were there to protect them from any harm.
Barb Thompson was like that, even though she rarely betrayed her concern. She wanted her two children to grow up, realize their dreams, and fly free. Like all good mothers, she had let go of her babies, confident that they were independent and fully capable adults, able to take care of themselves.
And they hadn’t let her down; her daughter, Ronda, thirty-three, was a Washington state trooper for almost a decade, for heaven’s sake, responsible for the safety of others as well as herself. If she couldn’t take care of herself, what woman could?
Barb’s son, Freeman, was almost a decade younger than Ronda. Barb was very young when Ronda was born, only twenty-one, and it probably was just as well that she had only her daughter to raise then. It hadn’t been easy for Barb. The responsibility of bringing up her children on her own much of the time was a challenge. Nevertheless, Barbara always put them first, and she often worked two jobs to support them.
Although she and her mother, Virginia Ramsey, had tangled often when she was a child and a teenager, it was Virginia who became Barb’s strongest support. Virginia had been married for more than twenty years to the only man she had ever loved, bringing up three children on “less than a shoestring,” when Barb’s father deserted her for another woman. She was totally devastated.
“Somehow,” Barb recalled, “Ronda’s birth gave her a reason to go on, and I sure did need her. She took care of Ronda while I worked as many jobs as I could, helped me raise my little girl. She never complained. My mom was always there—and Ronda cherished her grandmother.”
Although Barb would have romantic relationships from time to time, the core of her family would always be her children—Ronda and Freeman—her mother, Virginia, and Barb herself. They had seen one another through so many hard times and always emerged together.
Ronda was a lovely-looking child with a face like a rose, something that would never change. She was Virginia’s first grandchild, and her “Gramma” often said she was “an angel in disguise.”
“She never caused us any trouble,” Barb Thompson said. “She had perfect attendance and straight As all the way through the ninth grade. She was never rebellious, and she never touched drugs or alcohol. Gramma taught her to sew and cook and do all the girly stuff, and if she got in trouble for not doing her homework or chores, she went to Gramma for comfort. My mother was there to share her dreams and plans and her crushes with. She was Ronda’s ‘safe place.’ ”
Ronda had many dreams, and she managed to carry out a lot of them. She loved dogs and horses, and she was a champion equestrian before she was a teenager. She shared her love of horses with her mother, who was often up before dawn to take care of the horses on her land near Spokane.
When Ronda was seventeen, she had her own quarter horse, a gelding she called Clabber Toe. She and Clabber Toe managed to travel to the 1984 Quarter Horse Youth World Show in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where they cleared jumps as easily as if Clabber Toe had wings. Ronda had saved her money and two local trainers in Spokane had helped. They’d recognized Ronda’s innate talent and admired her devotion to practice that took many hours.
Ronda had another dream. She wanted to grow up to be a Washington state patrol trooper. That was a tall order; there were no female officers when Ronda was a little girl. There weren’t even any short troopers. The image of the state patrol was one of tall men, wearing blue-gray uniforms and wide-brimmed hats.
That didn’t daunt Ronda. She had taken on challenges all of her life and she knew that women were beginning to take their place beside men in law enforcement. She never gave up on her plans to be a trooper, although she could not have imagined some of the problems her femininity in a male world would bring.
The pretty girl from eastern Washington wanted it all—as people tend to say about women who work and hope to have a family/ home life, too.
She wanted to marry one day, and, especially, to have children.
She almost achieved it all.
It was Wednesday, December 16, 1998. Christmas season. Ronda lived over on what Washingtonians call “the coast,” and the rest of her family lived three hundred miles away in Spokane. Barbara was looking forward to a five-day visit from Ronda, as were her grandmother and brother. It wouldn’t exactly be a Norman Rockwell Christmas, although Spokane could count on snow. It was far colder in eastern Washington than it was in Seattle.
Ronda’s visit wasn’t really to celebrate the holiday; she was going home to those who loved her for comfort and advice. After eleven years as a Washington state trooper, she had resigned from the force. Her life seemed to be crashing down around her like boulders breaking free of unstable cliffs in the mountain passes, which often happened. Her first marriage—to a fellow trooper—had ended in divorce, and her second marriage of less than a year’s duration was almost over. She was far from giving up; she was too strong for that, but she needed to come home to her center while she decided what to do next.
Ronda never spent much time weeping about her misfortunes in life. Rather, she got mad, and she had always managed to come back wiser, but not more bitter. In that, she was like her mother. The two of them would talk, and weigh different options, and Ronda would rise like a phoenix from the ashes of her marriage to Ron Reynolds.
Although Barb Thompson had kept her mouth shut, she had never understood Ronda’s attraction to Ronald Reynolds. He was at least twenty years older than she was, a school principal, and a very active Jehovah’s Witness. He wasn’t nearly as handsome as Mark Liburdi, the trooper who was her first husband.
And when Ronda met him, Ron was married with five sons, three of them still living at home!
When Ronda was grieving for the loss of her first marriage, the career she had loved, and her failure to carry a child to term, Ron Reynolds had offered himself as her spiritu
al counselor and her concerned advisor. Long before she fell in love with Ron, he had divested himself of his wife.
And Ron and Ronda were married in January 1998. She had high hopes for them. Always generous, Ronda brought her furniture to Ron’s house and put almost all of her $15,000 retirement pay from the Washington State Patrol into the house they now shared on Twin Peaks Drive in Toledo, Washington.
Ron moved his three youngest sons into the house, and Ronda brought her beloved Rottweillers. If there had only been room, she would have brought Clabber Toe, too.
It was a new year and a new life for her, and for her husband.
Chapter One
It was 1:40 a.m. on Wednesday, December 16, 1998, when Barb Thompson was jarred from sleep by the sound of her phone ringing. Groggy, she reached across her bed for it, knowing after it rang five times that her answering machine would pick up. She grabbed it on the third ring, muttering, “Hello.”
She heard only the buzz of the dial tone.
She lay awake, wondering if she had been dreaming—but she was sure it really had rung. Expecting it to ring again, she waited. There was nothing more.
Barb had talked to Ronda less than two hours earlier. Her daughter had been calling from her home in Toledo, Washington, a tiny town located halfway between Seattle and Portland, Oregon. Ronda said then that she would be flying to Spokane on that Wednesday, scheduled to arrive at 12:59 p.m. She had debated flying out of Portland, but had decided to take an Alaska Airlines flight from SeaTac Airport in Seattle. A longtime friend, a police officer in Des Moines, Washington, whom Ronda had once almost married, had offered to drive the seventy miles to Toledo to pick her up and drive her back north to SeaTac Airport.
The two, mother and daughter, had talked for a long time. Ronda was actually quite upbeat in her attitude when she said she didn’t mind walking away from her short marriage, but that she was determined to recoup the thousands of dollars she had put into the house, along with all her efforts in painting, decorating, and making it a home.