In the Still of the Night, Ann Rule
In the Still of the Night, Ann Rule
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In the Still of the Night
The Strange Death of Ronda Reynolds and Her Mother's Unceasing Quest for the Truth

Author: Ann Rule

Narrator: Blair Brown

Abridged: 5 hr 51 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/12/2010


Synopsis

From true crime legend Ann Rule comes this riveting story of a young woman whose life ended too soon—and a determined mother’s eleven-year crusade to clear her daughter’s name.

It was nine days before Christmas 1998, and thirty-two-year-old Ronda Reynolds was getting ready to travel from Seattle to Spokane to visit her mother and brother and grandmother before the holidays. Ronda’s second marriage was dissolving after less than a year, her career as a pioneering female Washington State Trooper had ended, but she was optimistic about starting over again. "I’m actually looking forward to getting on with my life," she told her mother earlier the night before. "I just need a few days with you guys." Barb Thompson, Ronda’s mother, who had met her daughter’s second husband only once before, was just happy that Ronda was coming home.

At 6:20 that morning, Ron Reynolds called 911 and told the dispatcher his wife was dead. She had committed suicide, he said, although he hadn’t heard the gunshot and he didn’t know if she had a pulse. EMTs arrived, detectives arrived, the coroner’s deputy arrived, and a postmortem was conducted. Lewis County Coroner Terry Wilson, who neither visited the death scene nor attended the autopsy, declared the manner of Ronda’s death as "undetermined." Over the next eleven years, Coroner Wilson would change that manner of death from "undetermined" to "suicide," back to "undetermined"—and then back to "suicide" again.

But Barb Thompson never for one moment believed her daughter committed suicide. Neither did Detective Jerry Berry or ballistics expert Marty Hayes or attorney Royce Ferguson or dozens of Ronda’s friends. For eleven grueling years, through the ups and downs of the legal system and its endless delays, these people and others helped Barb Thompson fight to strike that painful word from her daughter’s death certificate.

On November 9, 2009, a precedent-setting hearing was held to determine whether Coroner Wilson’s office had been derelict in its duty in investigating the death of Ronda Reynolds. Veteran true-crime writer Ann Rule was present at that hearing, hoping to unbraid the tangled strands of conflicting statements and mishandled evidence and present all sides of this haunting case and to determine, perhaps, what happened to Ronda Reynolds, in the chill still of that tragic December night.

Author Bio

Ann Rae Stackhouse was born in Lowell, MI in 1931. Her mother taught school, specializing in developmentally disabled children, and her father was a coach. Ann was in law enforcement in her young adult years, as was many in her family. She received various degrees from different colleges and universities, including studying creative writing, criminology, and psychology at University of Washington.

Ann's marriage, and eventual divorce changed her last name to Rule, which she keeps as her author name. Her extensive education and experience as a police woman gave her the perfect credentials to become regarded by many as the foremost true crime writer in America, setting the standards for the genre. For example, while she was volunteering at a suicide hotline center in Seattle in 1971, she met a work study student by the name of Ted Bundy, not realizing until a few years later that it was the same Bundy responsible for a series of murders. To her, he was kind, solicitous, and empathetic. She wrote her first book about him, considered one of the definitive biographies of Bundy.......The Stranger Beside Me (written under her own name, rather than the previously used pen name).

Rule has been a full-time crime writer since 1969, and has published 33 books and 1400 articles, mostly on criminal cases.

Today, she teaches seminars to law enforcement groups, a certified instructor in many subjects such as: Serial Murder, Sadistic Sociopaths, Women Who Kill, and High Profile Offenders. She has consulted with the FBI at their headquarters in Quantico, VA tracking a system to help identify and trap serial killers. She testimonies twice before the Senate Judiciary Sub-committee on victim's rights and the danger of serial killers.

Simon and Schuster currently have Rule under contract. Eight of her books have been made into TV movies, and more are in the works. Ann is in active support groups for victims of violent crimes and their families, in programs to help battered and abused women, and support group.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Gail

I am so disappointed in this book. It really ( in my mind, at least) had a lot going for it: written by Ann Rule right there was a biggie. Love her books ( this one being an exception…) and know that she has an excellent track record. Secondly, I am finally living here in the Pacific Northwest and m......more

This case. This bizarre, baffling, infuriating case. Ronda Reynolds was shot sometime in the early morning hours of December 16, 1998. Somebody made a very clumsy effort to make it look like suicide. And the first police officers on the scene--let's be brutally honest--fucked up. They moved the gun.......more

Goodreads review by Lois

I have been closely following the Ronda Reynolds case for years, ever since Ronda's mother, Barb Thompson, asked me to post Ronda's unsolved case on our Real Crimes Web site at [URL not allowed] Now my good friend, true crime author, Ann Rule, has presented a brilliantly written and fascina......more

Goodreads review by David

5-star story, 1-star writing. A policewoman from the pacific northwest was killed, or killed herself (that's the basic question, resolved by a jury ultimately as homicide, but who killed her remains unclear at the end) in the late 90s. Her Mom never believed it was suicide and relentlessly pursued t......more

My only run-in with the law was a parking ticket in 1975. True crime books, especially stories of murders, have a fascination for people like me. Those of us who can’t imagine slapping a child are chilled at the very idea of taking another life. But once we get over the initial distaste, true crime......more