[1]Laura Reynolds was joined at the courthouse by her longtime companion when she testified in the inquest into her son's wife's death. / Courtesy photo by Bradd Reynolds
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – Although Toledo Elementary School Principal Ron Reynolds has refused to testify in the coroner’s inquest into his wife’s December 1998 death, his elderly mother took the stand yesterday and spoke of her last contact with her daughter-in-law.
“She called me three times that day,” Laura Reynolds said. “She told me she could not go on living without him.”
Laura Reynolds said she met Ronda Reynolds a short time before the couple was married, less than a year earlier.
Her daughter in-law- was crying, she said, saying she couldn’t give up her husband to another woman, she loved him so much.
The following morning, the 33-year-old former trooper was found dead on the floor of a closet, with a bullet in her head and covered up by a turned-on electric blanket.
The couple were separating and she had purchased a ticket to fly home to her family in Spokane later that day.
As the inquiry in a Chehalis courtroom nears the end of its first week, a similar question has been posed to most of the witnesses by Lewis County Coroner Warren McLeod.
Did she ever say she was going to hurt herself? What do you think happened?
The Lewis County Sheriff’s Office admits some responsibility in what has come to be known as an error-plagued first investigation.
At the urging of Barb Thompson, the dead woman’s mother, the sheriff’s office requested a well-known New York homicide expert to review the case.
Vernon Geberth was highly critical of their work and their conclusion of suicide.
Geberth concluded it was a staged crime scene, with only one individual interviewed who said they believed she killed herself.
“The only person who stated suicide was the husband, whose gun was used and discovered her body,” Geberth wrote in his report.
Later the same year, then-Sheriff John McCroskey sought another review, from a trio of homicide experts in the state Attorney General’s Office. The case file by then included new interviews conducted by then-detective Sgt. Glade Austin, who supervised the sheriff’s detectives.
George Fox testified yesterday he and his partners at the Attorney General’s office concurred it should be classified as a suicide.
Missing evidence did not and would not alter their findings, Fox said.
Among those who knew Ronda Reynolds and testified was Mark Liburdi.
Their eight year marriage ended a year before her death, Liburdi said.
“Yes I was surprised about the suicide, I remember saying to others, ‘no way’,” Liburdi said.
The woman he called “tough as a pistol” never conveyed such sentiment in words or behavior, he said testifying by telephone.
However, the relationship between the two state troopers was less than close in some ways, according to his testimony. They didn’t mingle their finances and he didn’t learn until after their divorce her medication was for bi-polar disorder, he said.
“Here and now, do you have an opinion, suicide or murder,” Coroner McLeod asked.
“You know, I really don’t know,” Liburdi said. “Sometimes I think no and sometimes I think she could have been killed.
I don’t know. I hope you guys find out”
[2]Barb Thompson, mother of Ronda Reynolds. / Courtesy photo by Bradd Reynolds
[3]Lewis County Prosecutor Jonathan Meyer / Courtesy photo by Bradd Reynolds