New York Times bestselling true crime author Ann Rule, left, speaks with Barb Thompson, the mother of Ronda Reynolds, during a break in the Lewis County Coroner’s inquest into Reynolds’ 1998 death. A key witness, Catherine Huttula, accuses the two of visiting her home and intimidating her as they pushed her to give testimony about Reynolds’ death. Huttula declined, giving only 10 minutes of testimony on Thursday.
In an Oct. 3 letter sent to Lewis County Coroner Warren McLeod, Ron Reynolds’ ex-wife accuses true crime-author Ann Rule and Barb Thompson of intimidating and harassing her at her Ocean City home to name a suspect in the death of Ronda Reynolds, Ron Reynolds’ second wife.
On Wednesday, Catherine Huttula testified at the coroner’s inquest into the 1998 death of Reynolds, noting that she had known the 33-year-old woman to talk about suicide before she died.
After Huttula was subpoenaed to testify Sept. 21, she wrote McLeod to notify him about the alleged harassment and add that Rule and Thompson had offered her a $30,000 reward in December 2010 to name a suspect in Reynolds’ controversial death.
“All you have to do is produce the shooter,” Huttula writes of Rule and Thompson telling her in the letter. “The killer has killed once, he will kill again.”
On Friday, Thompson took the witness stand and accused Ron Reynolds and Huttula’s son Jonathan Reynolds of either murdering her daughter or forcing another person to do it.
“He either pulled the trigger himself or coerced someone else to do it,” Thompson said.
Outside the courtroom an hour later at the Lewis County Law and Justice Center, Thompson denied pressuring Huttula into naming her son a suspect in the case.
“I have never offered anyone a bribe of any kind,” Thompson said.
On Wednesday, the coroner’s office brought Huttula’s letter to the attention of the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office, according to Chief Civil Deputy Stacy Brown.
Because the alleged harassment took place outside its jurisdiction, the sheriff’s office alerted the Grays Harbor County Sheriff’s Office to the matter for its own investigation of any wrongdoing on the part of Rule and Thompson, Brown said.
A spokesman with the Grays Harbor sheriff’s office who had just returned from vacation said Friday evening that he was not aware of the matter.
Huttula did not return calls to comment.
Rule brought national attention to Reynolds’ death with her October 2010 publication of “In the Still of the Night: The Strange Death of Ronda Reynolds and Her Mother’s Unceasing Quest for the Truth.”
In November 2010, Rule and Thompson visited Centralia College and spoke before a standing-room-only crowd in Corbet Theatre about the writing of the book and the ongoing investigation.
Both Thompson and Rule said they visited Huttula to alert her to the $30,000 reward that’s offered at the back of the book regarding information that leads to the arrest of a suspect in the Reynolds case.
Rule said the reward is now up to $40,000.
Rule said they last visited Huttula this past spring; Thompson said they have visited her about three separate times.
“She stopped short of admitting her sons could have done it,” Rule said Friday.
Huttula had five sons with Ron Reynolds. Three of them lived with their father after he married Ronda in January 1998.
Huttula writes that when Rule and Thompson visited more than a year ago in Ocean City, they had “new facts” about the case: “Their story involved Ron (Reynolds) spending the night of Dec. 15, 1998, with me at my apartment in Tumwater. They also said a call came to my apartment, from my boys in Toledo that night. None of this is the truth.”
Ronda Reynolds was found dead of a gunshot wound to her head as she lay at the bottom of her bedroom closet in her Toledo home Dec. 16, 1998.
Her husband Ron Reynolds, principal of Toledo Elementary School, called 911 at 6:20 a.m. that morning to report his wife had committed suicide.
Over the years the case has proved controversial, mainly because of a poor initial investigation of Reynolds’ death, which former detectives who worked the case admitted to during the inquest this week.
Key questions still remain in the case, mainly because photographs weren’t initially taken of Reynolds and the handgun before the gun was moved from the scene.
The end of Rule’s book reports a theory that a party had taken place at the house Ronda shared with Ron and that one of Ron’s sons’ friends shot and killed Ronda Reynolds as she lay at the bottom of a closet.
Although Rule said she’s heard new information into the inquest of Reynolds’ manner of death — natural, homicide, suicide, accidental or undetermined — she still believes it was homicide.
“I would say someone who attended the party on the night of the 15th,” Rule said.
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Adam Pearson: (360) 807-8208
