Judge orders jury review of 1998 suicide ruling

OLYMPIA — Barb Thompson scored a major victory this morning in her quest to prove that her daughter, Ronda Reynolds, was slain in Lewis County in 1998, rather than committed suicide as the authorities there insist.

Thurston County Superior Court Judge Richard Hicks sided with Thompson this morning and ordered that a jury of Lewis County residents review all the evidence in the long-fought case and hear some testimony from key witnesses.

Then it will be up to the jury to decide whether the Lewis County coroner was right to call Reynolds' death a suicide.

A trial was set tentatively for Nov. 2.

"I'm finally speechless; it's everything we wanted," Thompson said after Hicks' ruling. "We've got a jury, which will be our peers of Lewis County. What more could we have wanted?"

Reynolds, 33, was found shot to death in her Toledo, Lewis County, home in December 1998 during a breakup with her husband, Ron Reynolds, the principal of the local elementary school.

The Lewis County Sheriff's Office and the county coroner, Terry Wilson, have maintained for more than 10 years that Reynolds committed suicide. The state Attorney General's Office also agreed.

Thompson has recruited her own experts and allies, including the former Lewis County sheriff's detective who investigated the case and quit over it, to try to prove Reynolds was killed by someone else with a single gunshot to her brain.

They say they have volumes of physical and circumstantial evidence that shows Reynolds couldn't have pulled the trigger and was planning to leave her husband the next day and fly home to her mother in Spokane.

The sheriff's office and Wilson have remained firm on their determination. The current sheriff, Steve Mansfield, accuses Thompson's allies of manipulating her for their own gains. He called them "a bunch of morons," in an interview for a Times story on the case that appeared Monday.

Ron Reynolds has not commented publicly but has maintained in court filings that his wife killed herself.

Thompson sued Wilson in 2006 under a never-before-used state law that allows "judicial review" of coroners' rulings on cause of death. She asked for a full jury trial while Wilson's lawyer said it was appropriate only for the judge to review written evidence available to the coroner at the time he made his ruling.

In making his decision, Hick said the case "calls out" for a jury because of the abundance of disputed facts and evidence in the case, as well as "widespread community interest."

And despite the coroner's urgings, Hicks said he will let the jury consider all evidence in the case, including that which Thompson and her allies have gathered in the years since Reynolds' death.

Thompson has asked to call 22 witnesses, including Ron Reynolds. Hicks said all of them can be deposed, but he will decide later which of them have relevant information to offer the jury.

Wilson's lawyer, John Justice of Olympia, said he had hoped Hicks would limit the case to "something that wouldn't be so wide open."

However, he said, "we respect that the court had to make some tough decisions and we'll deal with what goes on."

Thompson has long said that even if the court overrules the suicide ruling she has little hope that her daughter's killer will be brought to justice. She just wants the public to know that the authorities were wrong.

"I think I just have to have faith and put my confidence in my peers," she said this morning. "I just hope when we present all the evidence to them, they'll come to an overwhelming determination of homicide."

Jerry Berry, the detective who quit over what he calls a coverup by the sheriff's office in the case, threw his arms around Thompson after the judge's ruling.

"She's waited 10 years for this, and maybe we're finally going to get some closure," he said.

Ian Ith: 206-464-2109 or iith@seattletimes.com