Lewis County Sirens.com

More than an hour after author Ann Rule's presentation on her book "In the Still of the Night" the line to get it signed reached the top of Centralia College's Corbet Theater

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CENTRALIA – Corbet Theater at Centralia College was filled to capacity with folks who wanted to hear true crime writer Ann Rule speak on her new book about the Ronda Reynolds’ case last night and dozens more were turned away.

Rule, the Seattle-based author, was joined on stage by Barb Thompson, the mother of the former trooper who was found with a bullet in her head on the floor of a walk-in closet inside her Toledo home in 1998.

“Something seemed hinky to me,” said Rule, as she shared the curiosities that led her to explore the suspicious death.

While she normally doesn’t write about cases without a criminal trial and a conviction to structure her story around, Rule made an exception, according to Thompson.

A civil case a year ago in Lewis County Superior Court ended with a panel of 12 citizens concluding that the coroner’s determination the 33-year-old committed suicide was wrong, as well as arbitrary and capricious.

Thompson, who lives in Spokane, told of her efforts through the years to get the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office and the Lewis County Coroner’s Office to give her answers about her daughter’s death and why she finally turned to the courts for a review.

While a judge ordered elected Coroner Terry Wilson to change the death certificate, he has appealed that, Thompson said.

What happens with the appeal, however, may be moot, Rule said.

“Because he won’t be in office in January, you’ll have a new coroner,” she said.

Her pronouncement was followed with heavy applause and some cheers from the audience of more than 500 attendees.

The draw was so large and so close geographically to the heart of Rule’s story, an off duty officer kept close to the two women throughout the evening.

Rule, whose writing career began penning stories for detective magazines under the pseudonym Andy Stack, offered her twist on the case.

“I don’t think the main suspect in this case is who everybody thinks it is,” Rule told the crowd.

“I put forward in the book anywhere from nine to 12 possible suspects,” she said.

New information in the book tells of an individual who revealed to former Lewis County detective Jerry Berry earlier this year that he and several friends of Ron Reynolds’ sons were partying at the house that night, and that Ron Reynolds wasn’t there.

Berry turned his information over to the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office who interviewed him, according to Rule’s book. The detectives concluded he was too “wishy-washy” to be believable, Rule wrote.

Much of the evening was questions and answers. Audience members had several.

Can the prosecutor do anything to insist the sheriff’s office reopen the case? Can you not go all the way up to the FBI?

Why would someone killing themselves bother to cover their face with a pillow?

What time were the crime scene photos taken? Why are there different accounts of where the gun was found?

Rule told the gathering there is a reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of someone who carried out a plan to murder Ronda Reynolds.

Retired Lewis County Sheriff Bill Logan didn’t have a question, but offered advice to the crowd.

“I’m familiar with these kinds of cases,” said Logan whose two terms as sheriff ended in January 1995.

“The sheriff’s people are not magicians, they don’t have any magic to solve these things,” he said.

Sometimes the only way it happens is if someone talks, he said.

With so many in the room so interested in the case, something good could come out of the renewed attention, according to Logan.

He urged those in the theater, if they know someone who may know something, to encourage them to talk.

“Sometimes it takes awhile,” Logan said. “With your help, maybe we can get this thing figured out.”
•••

“In the Still of the Night: The strange death of Ronda Reynolds and her mother’s unceasing quest for the truth” went on sale early last month.

Read my story about the five days in court last November after which “Jury finds coroner erred in ruling former troopers death a suicide” here

Ann Rule, left, and Barb Thompson sign copies of Rule's book about Ronda Reynolds death

A contractor cuts up a Douglas Fir that dropped across the roof of a home on Middle Fork Road between Chehalis and Onalaska.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – At least three houses in Lewis County were damaged from downed trees during Monday night’s windstorm according to information compiled by early yesterday, and reports continued to come in throughout the day.

Lewis County’s division of emergency management said the wind blew through about 9:30 p.m. Monday and caused widespread damage and power outages from Centralia to Ashford. The strongest gusts of up to 40 mph came between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m., according to a news release.

“We’re getting more damage reports from around the area, mostly in the east end from Packwood, Randle and Ashford,” Sgt. Ross McDowell, deputy director of emergency management said Tuesday evening.

Even Gene Seiber, the former deputy director of emergency management and current chief criminal deputy at the sheriff’s office, was affected. A 20-foot limb the diameter of a baseball punched a hole in the roof of Seiber’s Packwood-area home.

“There’s a lot of damage up there,” Seiber said. “There are trees and limbs all over the place in High Valley.”

He described a neighbor’s porch that was destroyed by a 12-inch in diameter fir tree that just missed the house when it crashed down.

The houses McDowell knew for sure were hit with trees were in Paradise Estates in Ashford, on Crystal Way in Morton and the 300 block of Middle Fork Road near Onalaska.

Susan Burnett, who has lived on the nine wooded acres between Onalaska and Chehalis for 20 years, said she felt really lucky when she saw her house in the daylight.

“It’s not really as bad as I expected, after leaving in a panic and coming back,” Burnett said.

A Douglas Fir, estimated to be as tall as 150 feet, had dropped across her roof, stretching from the front to the back of the house.

Burnett’s electricity and heat was shut off yesterday as contractors took a chainsaw to the fallen tree.

Inside, she said, the tongue-in-groove ceiling was broken from front to back. She was most worried about a collection of art work, painted by her great-grandfather and other relatives, which were among the debris in her dining room.

The manager at Lewis County Head Start said her insurance company got the contractors there by about 1 p.m. and an appraiser would be out by Friday to tally up the dollar damage.

Burnett said she was watching a movie Monday night when she began to hear fir cones and branches hitting the roof. The storm came on really fast, she said.

Then she could hear a tree falling, its branches breaking off as it toppled.

“I just stood there and hoped I was standing in the right place, and I guess I was,” said Burnett, who escaped injury.

She called 911, but the wind was still so strong, she didn’t dare go outside for fear of getting struck by limbs that continued to fall, she said.

When firefighters arrived, they stayed only long enough to turn off the electricity, check Burnett’s well-being and and cut a path so Burnett could get her car out. It had been parked next to the house, beneath where the fir fell but was mostly unmarred.

“The planets were aligned right or something,” she said.

McDowell said he didn’t think the dollar amount of damage in Lewis County was great enough to meet the threshold for disaster assistance.

However, the state Emergency Management Division is encouraging members of the public who received physical damage to their home or business to report it to their local emergency management agency.

Contact information for each county can be found here

A winter storm warning remains in effect through 10 a.m. tomorrow in East Lewis County – on the west slopes of the central and northern Cascade Mountains and passes – and is primarily expected to bring snow.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – By 5:30 this evening, the deputy director of Lewis County’s division of emergency management had moved beyond this morning’s earthquake.

“Earthquake?” Sheriff’s Deputy Sgt. Ross McDowell responded, then launched into how as the day progressed, his people began getting more and more calls about windstorm damage from last night.

And, the region can expect more wind tonight, McDowell said. Then tomorrow into the evening, the amount of rain is expected to be enough to possibly cause surface flooding in some places, and as much as two feet of snow may fall at elevations above 2000 feet, he said. Be prepared, was his message.

On this morning’s magnitude 4.2 earthquake near Mossyrock, he had heard very little.

“Nobody has called with any damage,” McDowell said. “None at all.”

The latest information indicates it hit at  7:51 a.m. three miles northeast of Mossyrock and seven miles west of Morton, according to the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network.

It was recorded at a depth of 9.1 miles.

The information – now reviewed by a seismologist – comes from the University of Washington Department of Earth and Space Sciences.

It made the list of notable Pacific Northwest earthquakes since 1993, compiled by the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network. It is matched during 2010 only by a quake of similar magnitude on June 17 near Yakima.

A sensor at the base of the Mossyrock Dam detected motion, but not enough to trigger an alarm, according to a spokesperson for Tacoma Power which operates two dams on the Cowlitz River in East Lewis County.

They conducted inspections and did not find any damage, spokesperson Chris Gleason said today.

“We feel very confident there was no impact to the dam,” she said.

They checked the Mossyrock Dam – at the west end of Riffe Lake – and also the smaller Mayfield Dam farther west, she said.

What was felt around Lewis County ranged from a jolt to a swaying house.

They felt it good at the Chehalis Police Department.

“It shook the whole building here, the records tech actually ran out of the building,” police detective Sgt. Rick McNamara said.

At the Chehalis Fire Department, “the building just kinda went whooomp,” according to Firefighter Jay Birley.

“It knocked all my taxidermy work (including an elk head) off the wall,” said Lewis County Fire District 5 Firefighter Brad Bozarth, whose home is on Holcum Road west of Napavine.

On Rhoades Road, north of Winlock: “I was at home just about ready to get up for work and the walls were shaking,” Lewis County Fire District 15 Firefighter Kevin Anderson said. “My house was swaying and everything.”

Paramedic Brad Flexhaug was in the new quarters of Lewis County Medic One east of Winlock at state Route 505 and North Military Road.

“Here, it was just one big boom, basically is what it was,” Flexhaug said. “We didn’t know what it was.”

Closer to the apparent epicenter, some folks were less startled.

Dave DeBuhr lives off Justus Road east of Cinebar.

“It wasn’t much of anything here, it lasted maybe two seconds DeBuhr said. “Kind of a little, enough to make the dog’s ears perk.”

A few of the area residents called him – he’s chief of Lewis County Fire District 8 based in Salkum – and an individual who lives on Mayfield Lake “said it rumbled pretty good,” he said. “I kept looking at Mount St. Helens to see if it was smoking. It was not.”

Matt Hadaller was out hunting in the Winston Creek area.

“Did I feel it? You bet,” the chief of Lewis County Fire District 3 said. “I heard a roar, I thought the wind was blowing through the trees, but then the ground where I was moved.”

Morton City Clerk Sherry Claycamp was just arriving at City Hall.

“I was just getting ready to open the door in the back; and just a little tremor, the building shook a little,” Claycamp said. “Enough to know it was a quake, not enough to create panic.”

In Mossyrock, City Clerk Jeanette Miller said she didn’t even hear of anything falling off a shelf.

“In fact here, it was just a jolt, and then it was over,” Miller said.
•••

Look at information from Pacific Northwest Seismic Network here

Check the National Weather Service’s Forecast Office in Seattle here for a winter storm warning in East Lewis County and a special weather statement about coming cold weather for West Lewis County.

Note: a link for the weather forecast website can also always be found on the right-hand sidebar of Lewis County Sirens’ homepage