By Ann Rule

ISBN-10: 1416544607

ISBN-13: 9781416544609

FROM TRUE-CRIME LEGEND ANN RULE comes this riveting tale of a tender lady whose existence ended too soon—and a decided mother’s eleven-year campaign to transparent her daughter’s identify.
It was once 9 days sooner than Christmas 1998, and thirty-two-year-old Ronda Reynolds was once on the brink of shuttle from Seattle to Spokane to go to her mom and brother and grandmother ahead of the vacations. Ronda’s moment marriage used to be dissolving after lower than a yr, her profession as a pioneering woman Washington nation Trooper had ended, yet she used to be confident approximately beginning once more. "I’m really anticipating getting on with my life," she advised her mom previous the evening earlier than. "I simply desire a few days with you guys." Barb Thompson, Ronda’s mom, who had met her daughter’s moment husband just once earlier than, was once simply satisfied that Ronda used to be coming domestic.
At 6:20 that morning, Ron Reynolds referred to as 911 and informed the dispatcher his spouse used to be lifeless. She had devoted suicide, he stated, even if he hadn’t heard the gunshot and he didn’t comprehend if she had a pulse. EMTs arrived, detectives arrived, the coroner’s deputy arrived, and a postmortem used to be performed. Lewis County Coroner Terry Wilson, who neither visited the loss of life scene nor attended the post-mortem, declared the way of Ronda’s demise as "undetermined." Over the following 11 years, Coroner Wilson could switch that demeanour of loss of life from "undetermined" to "suicide," again to "undetermined"—and then again to "suicide" back.
But Barb Thompson by no means for one second believed her daughter dedicated suicide. Neither did Detective Jerry Berry or ballistics specialist Marty Hayes or legal professional Royce Ferguson or dozens of Ronda’s neighbors. For 11 grueling years, throughout the ups and downs of the felony approach and its unending delays, those humans and others helped Barb Thompson struggle to strike that painful note from her daughter’s dying certificates.
On November nine, 2009, a precedent-setting listening to was once held to figure out no matter if Coroner Wilson’s workplace have been derelict in its accountability in investigating the demise of Ronda Reynolds. Veteran true-crime author Ann Rule used to be current at that listening to, hoping to unbraid the tangled strands of conflicting statements and mishandled proof and current both sides of this haunting case and to figure out, probably, what occurred to Ronda Reynolds, within the sit back nonetheless of that tragic December evening.