Current Lewis County Sheriff's Office detective Sgt. Dusty Breen
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – Even as the coroner’s inquest in Ronda Reynolds’ death has unfolded, the current detective’s supervisor at the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office has been taking notes on “things to follow up on.”
Detective Sgt. Dusty Breen said learning the name of the first arriving emergency medical technician to the Toledo home almost 13 years ago was new to him and just last week he talked with her.
When Breen testified yesterday, he spoke of he and his people looking at possible new leads and the frustration of learning all the physical evidence was gone.
It’s like a puzzle with a lot of pieces missing, he said.
“A lot of it came down to the initial investigation,” Breen said.
Belle Williams, the longtime director of evidence at the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office, said yesterday evidence was destroyed or returned in the year following the death, after the request of the then-detective sergeant. More evidence was cleaned out again in 2002, she said.
She was in the midst of implementing a new procedure requiring written authorization.
“At that point, all we could do was stop it,” Williams said.
The seven-day inquest in Chehalis into the former trooper’s December 1998 death is concluding, with jurors scheduled to return to the courtroom with their decision at 4 p.m. today.
The four women and one man who deliberated yesterday afternoon and again this morning were asked to determine if the death was suicide, homicide or something else.
They are using the standard of a preponderance of evidence or “basically 51 percent, according to Lewis County Coroner Warren McLeod.
McLeod told jurors he’d like it to be unanimous, but a majority agreeing would be sufficient.
If they return with a conclusion of homicide, he has said he would send them back to decide who they believe killed Reynolds. Under state law, if the jury names someone, the coroner is required to issue an arrest warrant.
What Lewis County Prosecutor Jonathan Meyer would do in the situation, he has said he doesn’t know.
The inquest jurors have heard testimony from those who believe Reynolds’ death was suicide and those who think murder.
The 33-year-old was found dead on the floor of a small walk-in closet, with a bullet in her head and covered up by a turned-on electric blanket.
A new story inquest jurors heard yesterday was from a man Reynolds’ mother, Barb Thompson, had learned might have been at the Reynolds’ house the night before the death.
He lived with Joshua Williams, an individual who claimed one of the teenage friends of the Reynolds boys shot Reynolds, but later recanted his story.
Richard Melton told Breen of a time Williams borrowed his truck and then returned it spotlessly clean, Breen recounted. Melton denied ever being inside the Toledo house, according to Breen.