Ronda Reynolds

Ronda Reynolds was born in 1965. She was the youngest female cadet accepted into the Washington State Patrol in 1985. Ronda served on patrol for almost 10 years. She resigned and later married Ron Reynolds, an elementary school principal in 1997.


On December 16, 1998, Ron Reynolds called 911 and reported that Ronda just "committed suicide." Lewis County Sheriff's Deputies found Ronda dead in her walk-in bathroom closest. She was lying on her left side, wearing pajamas, and was covered by an electric blanket with her head on a pillow. A second pillow covered her head. Her right hand was under the blanket and her left hand was clutching the blanket. She died from a single gunshot wound in front of her right ear. She was 33 years old.


A little over three years ago Marty Hayes called and asked me to meet Barb Thompson, Ronda's mother. Marty is founder and president of The Firearms Academy of Seattle. http://www.firearmsacademy.com/ He had been working on the case for a couple of years and said Barb was looking for a lawyer to help her get some answers about her daughter's death.


The coroner changed his determination three times between 1998 and 2002 — to suicide from undetermined, then back to undetermined, and finally suicide.

The more they explained the case, the more unbelievable it seemed. For example, there were no fingerprints on the revolver. The husband had signed a $50,000 life insurance form and mailed it in with a premium right after Ronda's death. Jerry Berry, the lead homicide detective assigned to the case, believed the death scene was a "staged suicide." Berry kept working on the case but one day was suddenly ordered "off the case" and demoted back to patrol. He never quit working on the case-- even after he resigned from the Lewis County Sheriff's Department because of continuing harassment.

The probate had long been opened and closed and it was too late to file a wrongful death lawsuit against the husband. So, Marty pointed out an unused state law that allowed somebody like Barb to challenge a death certificate in court. It looked a little late for that, too, and although we were thrown out of court, we prevailed on appeal and were sent back to Lewis County Superior Court for a trial. The appeal is reported in Thompson v. Wilson, 142 Wn.App. 803 (2008) . Jury trial began on November 2, 2009.

This is from the Chehalis Chronicle-- http://chronline.com/articles/2009/11/11/news/doc4af9e7e593040796021282.txt

A jury concluded Tuesday that Lewis County Coroner Terry Wilson's suicide determination in a death 11 years ago was incorrect. The unprecedented judicial review is the latest twist in the case of Ronda Reynolds, a former state patrol trooper who was found shot dead under an electric blanket in a walk-in closet at her Toledo home on Dec. 16, 1998.

Reynolds' mother Barbara Thompson has never agreed with the determination that her daughter committed suicide.She first filed a civil suit in 2006. Her case was facilitated by a state law passed in 1987 that allows the determination of coroners and medical examiners to be subjected to judicial review.

Ferguson called a ballistics expert, a forensic pathologist, former Sheriff's Office employees and friends of Reynolds to the stand.




(That's Dr. Jeffrey Reynolds--no relationship-- the reknown forensic pathologist, recalling where exactly in all the evidence he noted lividity, which supported his opinion that Ronda died earlier than when claimed by Ron Reynolds).

Jurors faced three questions, all of which they answered unanimously in favor of Thompson:

Question 1: Was the coroner’s determination of suicide accurate?Jury: No.

Question 2: Did you find the coroner’s determination of suicide more likely than not?Jury: Not likely.

Question 3: Did you find the coroner’s determination of suicide arbitrary and capricious?Jury: Yes.

The judge denied Thompson’s request to ask the jury whether the official cause of death could be changed to a homicide, saying there was no legal authority to make such a determination.









(Jerry Berry, Royce Ferguson, Marty Hayes)

The little guy can fight city hall. It's just not easy.

Law Book

In 1981 or so West Publishing Company (then the world's largest law book publisher) offered me a contract to write a volume on criminal law practice and procedure for use by Washington attorneys. I accepted and started to work, thinking the project would take about 90 days. It took over three years to write the manuscript, which I did while practicing law full-time during the day. The work was published in 1984. It has been cited as authority by both the Washington State Court of Appeals and Washington State Supreme Court.


To get the manuscript finished, I also hired a smart young lawyer named Jeff Gross, who helped quite a bit doing research. West also held the copyright on a lot of criminal law books from other states, so I had access to that material, too. I had been collecting a lot of legal forms from actual cases, which I wanted to include in the manuscript. Midge Wolff helped re-type the legal forms, and Della Wasson typed the manuscript. (Della also typed the manuscript for the 2nd and 3rd editions).


The manuscript resulted in volumes 12 and 13 of the Washington Practice Series. There are several thousand footnotes referring to Washington statutes, Washington cases, United States Supreme Court decisions and other laws and cases. The law is constantly changing through new and amended laws and old case decisions being followed, modified, distinguished or overruled in newer cases.

I now have an arrangement with the publisher to update the volumes each year. The updates are published as supplements to the bound volumes and are inserted into the back cover of the books.

Each year I am to read and summarize the newly enacted state statutes and amendments passed by the state legislature, as well as the Washington State Court of Appeals decisions (contained in the green "advance sheets"), Washington State Supreme Court decisions (contained in the yellow advance sheets), together with the United States Supreme Court decisions for the current session. "Advance sheets" are pamphlets containing the court decisions, available before the same decisions are compiled into bound books.

It's tedious, time-consuming, solitary work, but it's also satisfying-- sort of like taking your kid to get a new haircut and some school clothes before the beginning of a new school year. There is pride invested in the project. Plus, you want it to be accurate and true, as others will be relying upon it. It takes about 80 to 100 hours to do all the reading, summarizing and organizing. A 10-page court decision has to be summarized into a single sentence or phrase to be useful as a foot note. For example, a complex court decision might be summarized like this-- State v. Rathbun, 124 Wn.App. 372, 101 P.3d 119 (2004) (driver jumped out of vehicle and over fence and was 60 feet away from truck when arrested; search of truck was not incident to arrest).

McNeil Island

Washington State's McNeil Island Corrections Center (MICC) is located in southern Puget Sound. McNeil Island is reached by a 20-minute boat ride on one of the facility's passenger vessels.

The main prison facility houses medium-custody offenders in five living units and a segregation unit. It is located on approximately 90 acres and is within walking distance of the island passenger dock.

In 1976, the U.S. government made a decision to close the federal Penitentiary that had operated on McNeil Island since 1875. In 1981, the state signed a lease agreement allowing it to use the Penitentiary, renamed McNeil Island Corrections Center. In 1984, the island was officially deeded to the state of Washington.

http://www.doc.wa.gov/facilities/mcneil.asp

In 2000 McNeil Island had a population of 1,500 residents. The majority of the residents are incarcerated in MICC prison while several hundred are civilly committed to Special Commitment Center (SCC), discussed below. There are about 40 families and about 100 people that live on the island. The non-incarcerated families have at least one family member employed at MICC. There is no commerce or stores on the island and access to the island is strictly controlled by the Department of Corrections making it the most exclusive island in the entire Puget Sound.

While under federal authority, the prison's most famous inmate was probably Robert Stroud, the "Birdman of Alcatraz" who was held there from 1909 to 1912. Chicago gangster Al Capone was transferred to Alcatraz from McNeil Island in 1934. Charles Manson was an inmate from 1961 to 1966 for trying to cash a forged government check. Shortly thereafter he went to California and engaged in "helter skelter," including murder.

http://www.legendsofamerica.com/CA-Alcatraz3.html

Also located on McNeil Island is the Special Commitment Center (SCC)for confinement of "sexually violent predators" (SVP) which is operated by the Department of Social and Health Services. "Residents" are committed for treatment after completing their standard prison sentences.

Under Washington's civil-commitment law for sexually violent predators, a jury has to decide whether the offender is mentally ill and unable to control his sexual behavior, making him likely to engage in predatory sexual violence. If committed, inmates at SCC can seek periodic reviews to determine if they can be released, but they would invariably have to admit to their sex crimes and seek treatment. I've represented a couple of clients committed at SCC and have ridden the ferry and bus to visit them.


Convicted rapist Kevin Coe is to be locked up indefinitely as a danger to the community even though he has already served his full 25-year prison sentence. Coe served his time for the lone conviction among what prosecutors described as dozens of sexual assaults in Spokane's South Hill neighborhood, starting with a fondling case in 1966 and escalating to violent rapes in the late 1970s and early 1980s. (See my post about "Candy Rogers").

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNeil_Island

Candy Rogers

Candy Rogers was 9 years old when she disappeared one evening in March 1959 while selling Camp Fire mints near her home in west Spokane. Her body was found about two weeks later under a pile of pine needles in a nearby abandoned rock quarry after varment hunters found her shoes.

This article by Spokesman Review staff writer John Craig provides the following details of this still unsolved murder--http://www.spokesmanreview.com/coldcase/stories/?id=235056

While the unsolved case is still considered open, there is a prime suspect in the killing-- Hugh Bion Morse, a/k/a "Chris."

It's reported above that Morse was a member of the "Spokane Motorcycle Club." The club was actively assisting police in searching for the missing Candy Rogers. When her body was found, other club members went to Morse's apartment to tell him the search was over. Morse lived within a couple of blocks of Rogers' home. But, Morse was gone.

Morse was arrested in Minnesota in 1961 for murdering a woman in St. Paul. He was listed on the FBI's "Most Wanted List" in 1961. Shortly after his Minnesota arrest, Morse admitted to several violent crimes he committed in Spokane in 1959 and 1960-- beating two women to death and beating a third to near death. Morse lived within a few blocks of each and he vanished after each crime, showing up later at a different address.

(While in custody he also confessed to murder and other sex and violent crimes against women in Georgia, Ohio, Alabama, California and Missouri in 1960 and 1961).

Morse became a suspect in the Candy Rogers murder when police discovered he'd attempted to molest two 8-year-old girls while they sold Girl Scout cookies in California in 1955. Morse had been committed to the California State Hospital as a sexual psychopath, but was released in 1957. He was arrested four months later in California on suspicion of sex crimes. Police also learned that Morse had been dishonorably discharged from the Marine Corps in 1951 after he was arrested in North Carolina on suspicion of assault and indecent exposure.

Morse denied any involvement in the murder of Candy Rogers and he passed two lie-detector tests. DNA identification testing, not available when Rogers was murdered, was conducted in 2002 but it did not match a sample from Morse.

Yet, police investigators are unwilling to rule him out. Morse liked grape gum and chewed it all the time. Police files report that grape gum was found at the three scenes of attacks in Spokane which Morse admitted. Grape gum also was found in Morse’s room when he was arrested. Grape-smelling gum was smeared on Candy Rogers’ clothing. It is reported that police were planning to submit the gum for DNA testing.

Morse died in a Minnesota prison in 2003 while serving two life sentences for that 1961 rape and murder in St. Paul.

What is it about Spokane and serial rapists and serials killers? About Washington? Does every major city and state have a connection of some sort with these criminal types?

How about Spokane's "South Hill Rapist" Kevin Coe? He was born in 1947 as "Fred" Coe. He's been in custody since 1981 for conviction of rape. He was suspected in 43 rapes committed on Spokane's south side between 1978 and 1981. (His mother was herself later convicted for hiring a hit man to kill the judge who presided over her son's criminal trial).

He's served his criminal sentence, but in 2008 the State of Washington filed a civil commitment petition against him as being a "sexually violent predator." A jury agreed, and Coe is to be confined indefinitely at the special offender center on McNeil Island in south Puget Sound. (McNeil Island has also housed at various times such inmates as Al Capone, the "Birdman of Alcatraz" and Charles Manson).

When I was a teenager in the early 1960s living on Spokane's south hill, I vaguely remember one of my buddies pointing out some other guys in another group, and it seems one of the guys was Fred Coe, but that was the end of it until years later when I was reading the paper and thinking about the guy.

And how about serial killer Robert Yates who was born in1952? He’s been convicted of killing at least 13 women in Spokane between 1996 and 1998. All 13 were working as prostitutes along Spokane’s E. Sprague Avenue. The judge sentenced Yates to 408 years in prison. He avoided the death penalty by confessing to the Spokane County murders in exchange for the life sentence. He also pleaded guilty to killing women in Skagit and Walla Walla counties, and was convicted for two murders of women from Pierce County. Yates has been sentenced to death by lethal injection for the Pierce County deaths. He’s currently on death row at Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla.

We might as well add "Green River Killer" Gary Ridgeway to this list (pictured here on the right) even though he's not from Spokane. Born in 1949, he was arrested in 2001 for the murders of four women linked to him through DNA. In 2003 he pleaded guilty to killing 48 women, almost all of them prostitutes. He claimed to have actually killed 90 women. He was spared the death penalty by pleading guilty. He received a sentence of "life without possibility of parole."



And, what list of serial killers who ran through Washington State would be complete without mentioning that psychopath Ted Bundy? Born in 1946, Bundy confessed to killing 30 young women across the United States between 1974 and 1978. He escaped from prison twice before his final capture in 1978. He may have killed as many as 100. He was executed in Florida for murder in 1989.