In the Still of the Night by Ann Rule Read Free Book Online
Authors: Ann Rule
them know more than they have told.
T HE L EWIS C OUNTY S HERIFF'S COMMUNICATIONS
dispatcher had received a call on the 911 line at 6:20 on the cold morning of December 16, 1998. The man calling in identified himself as Ron Reynolds and asked that an emergency vehicle respond as soon as possible to his home on Twin Peaks Drive. When asked what the situation was, Reynolds said that his wife had committed suicide with a pistol.
He spoke in a flat, oddly calm voice as he explained that he wasn't sure just what had happened because he himself had been asleep for the past "few hours." "I didn't hear the shot," he said. "She must have muffled it with a pillow or something."
"Does your wife have a pulse?" the dispatcher asked.
"I don't know--I can go check."
The dispatcher heard him set the phone down and return a few minutes later.
"I can't find any pulse," Reynolds said.
Lewis County deputy sheriff Gary Holt was dispatched to the Reynolds home just a minute after the school administrator called 911.
The Lewis County road deputies were spread thin in the county at that time of day, patrolling many miles from one another. It took Holt twenty-one minutes to arrive at the ranch-style home in Toledo. He wasn't quite sure what to expect, although, from the dispatcher's instructions, it sounded like a cut-and-dried suicide. At any rate, something was terribly wrong at Ronda and Ron Reynolds's house. When Holt walked up to the residence, he was directed to the master bedroom at the end of a hall to the left of the front entrance. Emergency medical technicians were working over a woman who lay on her left side on the floor of a closet that was just off the bedroom. There was a bathroom adjacent to the closet.
Holt noted a pistol lying across her forehead. She appeared to have suffered a head wound, and had bled profusely.
Ron Reynolds was quite well-known in Lewis County because of both his teaching career and his leadership in the Jehovah's Witnesses. But he was no longer connected with the church; when he left his wife, Katie, and moved in with Ronda, he left the Witnesses.
He spent a lot of money on Christmas gifts for his sons in December 1998--it was to be his sons' first Christmas with presents since they were very young. Josh hadn't even been born until his parents spent fifteen years in the Jehovah's Witnesses.
As the first deputy on the death scene, Gary Holt, surveyed Ronda's body, he noted that Ron seemed unnaturally calm, perhaps in shock. Ron told Holt that he had fallenasleep about 5 A.M. He was exhausted, he said, from trying to keep Ronda awake all night because she had been "thinking about suicide."
When his alarm clock jolted him awake at 6 A.M. , she wasn't in bed beside him, and Ron said he'd searched their home and couldn't find her. He told one officer that he'd checked the living room couch, and another officer who arrived shortly after that he had gone to the kitchen, thinking Ronda might be in there feeding her dogs.
Only when he returned to their bedroom had he thought to push open the door of the walk-in closet off the master bathroom and look inside. He recalled moving a pillow from over his wife's head to check for a pulse. When he detected none, he called 911. (This was his second version of events; earlier he'd told the emergency dispatcher that he had
not
tried to find a pulse in his wife's wrist or neck arteries.)
The EMTs who were now kneeling beside the shooting victim in the closet found her body was still warm--but that could be accounted for by the electric blanket that covered her. It was turned on, powered by an extension cord stretching across the bathroom.
Ronda Reynolds wore white flannel pajamas with a pink rosebud pattern. The paramedics checked for lividity--the livor mortis that occurs when the heart stops beating and blood sinks to the lowest part of the body, eventually leaving fixed purplish-red stains or striated marks there. Where the weight of the deceased rests on a hard
T HE L EWIS C OUNTY S HERIFF'S COMMUNICATIONS
dispatcher had received a call on the 911 line at 6:20 on the cold morning of December 16, 1998. The man calling in identified himself as Ron Reynolds and asked that an emergency vehicle respond as soon as possible to his home on Twin Peaks Drive. When asked what the situation was, Reynolds said that his wife had committed suicide with a pistol.
He spoke in a flat, oddly calm voice as he explained that he wasn't sure just what had happened because he himself had been asleep for the past "few hours." "I didn't hear the shot," he said. "She must have muffled it with a pillow or something."
"Does your wife have a pulse?" the dispatcher asked.
"I don't know--I can go check."
The dispatcher heard him set the phone down and return a few minutes later.
"I can't find any pulse," Reynolds said.
Lewis County deputy sheriff Gary Holt was dispatched to the Reynolds home just a minute after the school administrator called 911.
The Lewis County road deputies were spread thin in the county at that time of day, patrolling many miles from one another. It took Holt twenty-one minutes to arrive at the ranch-style home in Toledo. He wasn't quite sure what to expect, although, from the dispatcher's instructions, it sounded like a cut-and-dried suicide. At any rate, something was terribly wrong at Ronda and Ron Reynolds's house. When Holt walked up to the residence, he was directed to the master bedroom at the end of a hall to the left of the front entrance. Emergency medical technicians were working over a woman who lay on her left side on the floor of a closet that was just off the bedroom. There was a bathroom adjacent to the closet.
Holt noted a pistol lying across her forehead. She appeared to have suffered a head wound, and had bled profusely.
Ron Reynolds was quite well-known in Lewis County because of both his teaching career and his leadership in the Jehovah's Witnesses. But he was no longer connected with the church; when he left his wife, Katie, and moved in with Ronda, he left the Witnesses.
He spent a lot of money on Christmas gifts for his sons in December 1998--it was to be his sons' first Christmas with presents since they were very young. Josh hadn't even been born until his parents spent fifteen years in the Jehovah's Witnesses.
As the first deputy on the death scene, Gary Holt, surveyed Ronda's body, he noted that Ron seemed unnaturally calm, perhaps in shock. Ron told Holt that he had fallenasleep about 5 A.M. He was exhausted, he said, from trying to keep Ronda awake all night because she had been "thinking about suicide."
When his alarm clock jolted him awake at 6 A.M. , she wasn't in bed beside him, and Ron said he'd searched their home and couldn't find her. He told one officer that he'd checked the living room couch, and another officer who arrived shortly after that he had gone to the kitchen, thinking Ronda might be in there feeding her dogs.
Only when he returned to their bedroom had he thought to push open the door of the walk-in closet off the master bathroom and look inside. He recalled moving a pillow from over his wife's head to check for a pulse. When he detected none, he called 911. (This was his second version of events; earlier he'd told the emergency dispatcher that he had
not
tried to find a pulse in his wife's wrist or neck arteries.)
The EMTs who were now kneeling beside the shooting victim in the closet found her body was still warm--but that could be accounted for by the electric blanket that covered her. It was turned on, powered by an extension cord stretching across the bathroom.
Ronda Reynolds wore white flannel pajamas with a pink rosebud pattern. The paramedics checked for lividity--the livor mortis that occurs when the heart stops beating and blood sinks to the lowest part of the body, eventually leaving fixed purplish-red stains or striated marks there. Where the weight of the deceased rests on a hard
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