She spent her career helping the state build criminal cases. When the state came for her, it handed her a lawyer who didn’t show up — and documents that wouldn’t have survived her own professional scrutiny.
By Michael Phillips | Riptide Investigations
First in a series: California’s Broken Public Defense System
“When Rhonda served the system, she was credible. When she needed protection from the system, she became expendable.”
Rhonda Reyna spent years pursuing truth in rooms where the stakes were life and death.
That is the job of a criminalist. Not to build cases. Not to take sides. To analyze physical evidence — blood stains, bullets, controlled substances — and present findings to a jury with absolute precision. A criminalist is a neutral party. When a lawyer tries to paraphrase her testimony, she stops them. Every word matters. The evidence says what it says.
Rhonda did this work for the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Crime Laboratory. She passed extensive background checks. She testified as an expert witness in homicide cases, including a murder trial prosecuted by San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe. She was offered a position in the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Crime Laboratory. Deputies knew her name. Judges relied on her analysis. The system trusted her precision completely.
Then she became a mother trying to protect her daughter from a violent ex-partner, and the system that had trusted her turned its machinery against her. The institutions that once depended on her forensic discipline used defective documents, suppressed witnesses, and two compromised attorneys to secure a conviction she should never have faced.
What happened to Rhonda Reyna is the story of how a person can spend a career in service of truth — and then watch the institutions of justice manufacture a lie about her, bury the evidence that would expose it, and walk away.
It is also the story of what San Mateo County calls efficient justice.
Who She Was Before
Before any of this, Rhonda was known at Woodside Elementary School in Woodside, California, simply as the mother who showed up. She drove children on field trips. She volunteered in classrooms. She founded Glenoaks Stables Pony Club Riding Center. Teachers trusted her. Principals signed off on her background forms without hesitation.
Her professional identity was built on the same qualities. As a criminalist, she analyzed physical evidence and presented her findings to juries — neutral, precise, unambiguous. She resisted every attempt by attorneys to paraphrase her testimony, because paraphrasing changes meaning. When she said something in a courtroom, she meant exactly that, nothing more and nothing less. That discipline was her professional hallmark.
In a 2019 letter to San Mateo County Chief Deputy Counsel John Nibbelin — written while she was still trying to get the school and county to take her domestic violence reports seriously — she described herself: “I am a former Criminalist for the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Crime Laboratory, I passed an extensive background check here in San Mateo County for a position in the Sheriff’s Crime Laboratory and was offered a job. I am in shock at how I have been treated after once being revered by the deputies who witnessed my testimony in the Seti Scanlon homicide trial where I presented as an Expert Witness for District Attorney, Steve Wagstaff. My integrity has always been a hallmark of my personality, both personal and professional.”
That letter was written before the arrests. Before the felony charges. Before the coerced plea. She was still trying, at that point, to work within the system.
“I am a former Criminalist for the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Crime Laboratory. I am in shock at how I have been treated after once being revered by the deputies who witnessed my testimony in the Seti Scanlon homicide trial where I presented as an Expert Witness.”
— Rhonda Reyna, letter to San Mateo County Chief Deputy Counsel John Nibbelin, May 2019
The Dispute That Became a Criminal Case
Rhonda and David Murdoch — a horse trainer more than two decades her senior — separated after years together during which, Rhonda maintains, he was physically and financially abusive. The custody dispute over their daughter, Brooke, began in 2016 under family court case number 16FAM00441 in San Mateo County Superior Court.
What followed was a years-long pattern Rhonda documented relentlessly. She reported Murdoch for strangling her in front of witnesses. She recorded Brooke describing, in a child’s direct terms, violence at her father’s house — a broken finger, blood on the wall, a kicked-in door, hiding on the top bunk while her father and his wife fought. She submitted that recording to the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office. She warned the school, County Counsel, and the State Department about what she believed was a flight risk to New Zealand — Murdoch had obtained a New Zealand passport for Brooke without Rhonda’s presence, and his own family members had confirmed his history of abuse to women.
Murdoch also showed up to at least two of Rhonda’s workplaces. At Santa Cruz Biotechnology, he berated her coworkers — a pattern documented in her January 2020 letter to San Mateo County Sheriff’s Detective Carryn Barker, which named coworker Shannon Anderson as a witness. At a previous workplace, the same behavior was documented. This is not the conduct of a parent concerned about custody. It is the conduct of someone using every available institution to maintain control.
Woodside Elementary School and San Mateo County Counsel were both on written notice of Rhonda’s concerns as early as May 2019. Chief Deputy County Counsel John Nibbelin wrote back acknowledging Brooke’s safety was “of significant concern to the District.” The school framed the issue as administrative. The county framed it as a custody compliance matter. Neither treated it as what the documented evidence showed it to be: a domestic violence and child safety emergency.
On campus at Woodside Elementary, Brooke ran from her father, fled into the church next door, and was later found sobbing in the principal’s office. Staff intervened. The sheriff arrived. Staff told Brooke the court order required her to go with her father. Staff warned Rhonda that if she obeyed Brooke’s expressed fear, she could lose custody entirely. This incident was reframed in official channels as a custody compliance problem. It was never reported as a domestic violence safety concern.
None of Rhonda’s warnings produced the protection she sought. Some were used against her.
The Day the Police Said She Was Right
On May 28, 2021, Santa Cruz Police Officer Parker Rhodes responded to a custody dispute at 422 Woodland Way. He interviewed all parties. Brooke told Rhodes she wanted to stay with her mother. Murdoch confirmed this to Rhodes — and admitted he had taken Brooke out of school on Rhonda’s parenting day and had her vaccinated against Rhonda’s wishes, that Brooke was distraught afterward, and that he had left her with Rhonda at school pickup. The incident was closed as non-criminal. Brooke stayed with her mother. Rhodes’ report was explicit: no signs of abuse or neglect were observed. Child is safe with mother.
A second officer had previously reached the same conclusion. San Mateo County Sheriff’s Deputy Jim Christman spent nearly two hours at Woodside Elementary evaluating Brooke’s safety. He interviewed school staff, observed Brooke, and determined she should go home with her mother. His report concluded: no crime occurred, no child endangerment existed, Brooke was safe, calm, and wanted to go with her mother. Rhonda was capable, coherent, and appropriate. Brooke went home with Rhonda.
Under established federal case law, when a law enforcement officer observes a child with a parent, conducts an assessment, and determines the child is safe, that finding carries significant evidentiary weight. Two officers made that finding independently. Neither report was ever produced in Rhonda’s defense.
The May 28 encounter was captured on body camera. The transcript shows officers telling Murdoch directly that they would not forcibly remove a child who said she did not want to go. One officer stated: “The problem is, if she doesn’t answer the door or your daughter’s there and says no, I don’t want to go, we’re not dragging her out.” Murdoch was told, on camera, that Brooke’s own stated wishes would govern. That principle was abandoned thirty-one days later.
The Missing Child Who Wasn’t Missing
On June 13, 2021, Murdoch filed a missing persons report with Deputy Adam Riddle, claiming Brooke had disappeared. He told Riddle he had driven past Rhonda’s home, noticed accumulated mail, and found her vehicle absent. That same body cam conversation captured Murdoch telling Riddle that Rhonda might have gone to Sherman Island for kitesurfing: “She’s very much into kite surfing. I did think that maybe she went to Sherman Island.” He named her regular spot. He filed the missing persons report anyway.
Riddle never contacted any of Rhonda’s neighbors — one of whom regularly cared for her cat while she traveled for kitesurfing. He never physically verified the mailbox claim. Body cam footage from officers who visited the home during this period shows no overflowing mailbox, directly contradicting Murdoch’s claim. He never called anyone else in Rhonda and Brooke’s community to check whether they were actually missing.
The problem, as the documentary record makes plain, is that Rhonda and Brooke were out of town visiting a friend. This was not a secret. On June 24, 2021 — eleven days after the missing persons report was filed and nine days after a warrant was issued — Rhonda texted Cindi Kuhn, Brooke’s horse trainer, with the mundane logistics of a normal family life: “We are good for Monday. We are out of town for the weekend so will have to be a late ride time. If Brooke and I change plans, I’ll let you know as soon as possible.” Kuhn replied: “Great!!! Have fun this weekend! Going anywhere fun?” Three days later, on June 27, Kuhn texted Rhonda again to check in.
These are not the communications of a woman kidnapping her child. They are the communications of a mother scheduling her daughter’s riding lessons while on a weekend trip. These texts were never produced in Rhonda’s defense.
Three days before June 28, on June 25, Santa Cruz officers were conducting surveillance at Rhonda’s home. Body cam footage from that visit captures officers discussing her whereabouts: “The Sankris jump line at night, no luck at the house.” They knew she was at a kitesurfing location. Three days before arresting her, law enforcement already understood she was living her normal life and was not in hiding.
DA Inspector James Haggarty filed his declaration for the Protective Custody Warrant on June 14. His declaration relied entirely on Murdoch’s unverified account. It did not mention Officer Rhodes’ May 28 exonerating report. It did not mention Deputy Christman’s evaluation. It did not mention that Brooke had told officers she wanted to stay with her mother. It did not mention the documented history of domestic violence. It did not mention that Riddle had never physically visited the address or contacted any neighbors. On June 15, a warrant was issued.
June 28, 2021: A Domestic Violence Call. Then an Arrest.
The video was filmed by a neighbor on a cell phone. It shows David Murdoch with his hand around Rhonda Reyna’s neck, fully restraining her, while witnesses stand and watch. It has been publicly available on YouTube since at least October 2022. It was cited in formal correspondence submitted to the Santa Cruz City Council. It was viewed thousands of times. No charges were filed against the man in the video.
Three neighbors called 911 that morning. The certified transcripts of those calls — obtained by Riptide — document what was happening before police arrived. Neighbor Laurie Mount told the dispatcher in real time: “There’s a disturbance next door to me, and a woman is screaming and a man is trying to hurt her.” She told the dispatcher the woman “can’t breathe.” She told the dispatcher the man was “trying to take her daughter away from her.” And she told the dispatcher: “This man is holding her by the neck and arms.”
The dispatcher asked: “You can see him holding her?”
“Yes, I can,” Mount replied.
A second caller reported the situation had turned physical before police arrived. A third neighbor, Loretta Quick at 418 Woodland Way, made two calls. In her second, escalating in panic: “Oh my god. Hurry up. Hurry, hurry.”
Under California Penal Code § 273.5, what those callers described — a man holding his former domestic partner by the neck — is felony spousal battery. Under California law, strangulation during a domestic violence incident is an aggravating factor that can elevate a charge to attempted homicide.
Thomas Zuniga, the postal carrier for the street, witnessed Rhonda telling him she could not breathe. She screamed for him to help. He is documented as a witness in Rhonda’s formal complaint. A FOIA request for his interview records and any body camera footage has been submitted and has not been fulfilled.
When Officers Deady and Badeo arrived, Rhonda told them: “Thank God you’re here, get him off of us.” That statement is documented in Rhonda’s formal submission to the Santa Cruz City Council — a public record filed the night the city’s Independent Police Auditor report on this incident was being voted on.
David Murdoch was never handcuffed. He was never charged. The 911 calls documenting his assault on Rhonda were not used to arrest him. The officers did not treat the scene as a domestic violence call.
Instead, they arrested Rhonda.
On the afternoon of June 28, 2021, around 4 pm, David Murdoch arrived at 422 Woodland Way with Kristin Hardin. Rhonda was backing her vehicle into the driveway with Brooke. Murdoch attempted to violently pull Brooke from the back seat of the car. Brooke hid behind her mother. Murdoch and Hardin circled them. Rhonda screamed for help. Neighbors came out of their houses. Murdoch pushed into Rhonda and grabbed for Brooke. They were cornered between the vehicle and the trailer hitch.
Kristin Hardin called 911 during this. She told dispatch that Rhonda had kidnapped her own daughter.
Her neighbors told the truth.
Private investigator Frank Estrella of Atlas Investigations — licensed PI-25991 — interviewed Mount and Quick in August 2021 on behalf of Rhonda’s own attorney, Travis Whitfield. His reports are detailed and consistent. Mount told Estrella she filmed two video clips on her phone and watched police arrive, separate everyone, and handcuff Rhonda — while the man who had physically accosted them was never detained or arrested. She expressed astonishment. Quick physically placed herself between Murdoch and the two of them. She saw blood on his arm. She also filmed the police interaction on her phone.
When police arrived, Officer David Deady took charge of the scene. He did not detain Murdoch. He did not arrest him. He handcuffed Rhonda.
The man who had strangled her in front of multiple witnesses — who had driven from three counties away to do it — stood and watched. He was not detained. He was not arrested.
What Police Did to Brooke
Officer David Deady grabbed Brooke by the arm and pulled her away from her mother. When she resisted, he grabbed her by the hair and threw her face down to the ground. As she tried to crawl away, Officer Ruben Badeo jumped on her head and neck. She screamed; she couldn’t breathe. Deady continued forcing her face down. Murdoch helped restrain her at points. Then more officers arrived — Tori Zimmerman, Mark Eleveth, Tien Nguyen, Ryan Kiar, Brian George, and others — and dog-piled the thirteen-year-old girl as she screamed for her mother and screamed that she did not want to go with her father. They hog-tied her, shackled her legs, handcuffed her, covered her head with a helmet, injected her with a sedative, and forced her into an SUV. She later said: “I thought I was going to die.” Not because of her father — because of what the officers were doing to her.
Officer Sergio Venegas had painfully wrenched Rhonda’s hand behind her back. Rhonda watched all of it happen from handcuffs. An officer told her: “She’s hyperventilating. We’re not going to make her go home with her dad.” They then transported Brooke to a psychiatric facility and held her for three days in isolation — away from her mother.
What Officer Deady did next is documented in the public record: he issued an Emergency Protective Order against Rhonda — the woman who had just been strangled in front of multiple witnesses — and in favor of David Murdoch, the man who had committed the assault. The same night. Officers Adam Riddell and Angel Serrano are alleged to have fabricated false evidence against Rhonda in the reports filed that evening, supporting Murdoch’s account over the documented witness evidence.
A criminal court judge later reviewed all of the evidence and watched the video. The judge terminated the Emergency Protective Order. Not one Santa Cruz Police officer was disciplined, suspended, or prosecuted.
The criminal court judge, the district attorney, and Rhonda’s defense attorney all watched the video. All three were described as horrified. Deputy Chief Jonathan Bush separately refused to provide body cam footage he had secretly recorded of Rhonda and her advocate’s formal complaint — a distinct act of suppression documented in Rhonda’s public filings and named in the federal lawsuit.
Dr. Rebecca Bailey was the court-appointed therapist assigned to treat Brooke. Bailey operates Transitioning Families out of Sonoma, California, billing approximately $500 per hour. She has appeared on CNN, ABC’s 20/20, Anderson Cooper, and Good Morning America, and co-created a framework with Jaycee Dugard and Dr. Stephen Porges that reframes Stockholm Syndrome as “appeasement” — a physiological survival response to life threat. She sits on the advisory board of Dugard’s JAYC Foundation. Her public profile presents her as a specialist in helping survivors of abduction and high-conflict families.
David Murdoch paid for a year of Bailey’s sessions — an arrangement that, at her rates, cost tens of thousands of dollars. During that year, Bailey treated Brooke without contacting her mother for eight months. When Rhonda finally reached her on March 10, 2022 — a session Rhonda recorded with Bailey’s knowledge — Bailey declined to watch the video of Brooke’s violent removal, withheld the DSM-5 assessment from Rhonda, cited David’s custody as her basis for withholding records, and repeatedly redirected to Brooke’s expressed desire not to see her mother as the governing fact. The January 23, 2019, custody order in case 16FAM00441, signed by both parties, states in Clause 9 that both parents shall be notified of all medical appointments and have the right to be present. California Family Code Section 3025 further provides that a non-custodial parent’s access to a child’s records cannot be denied absent a specific court restriction — no such restriction existed in this case. Bailey’s refusal violated the standing court order. In that same session, Bailey told Rhonda: “That was one of the most traumatic experiences I’ve ever heard.” She said she had seen Brooke’s bruises. She had read the police report — the report that did not include the 911 transcripts, the neighbor witness statements, or the Atlas Investigations reports. She did not ask for any of them.
Rhonda filed a formal complaint against Bailey with the California Board of Psychology in May 2022 — case number 6002022000490. She filed a second complaint in September 2022, documenting that advocacy groups had been tracking Bailey’s practices since at least 2017, that multiple other families had reported similar outcomes, and that the Board had still taken no action. The Board dismissed the complaint. Senator Susan Rubio’s SB 616, introduced specifically to ban dangerous and unproven reunification programs, was driven in part by testimony from California families describing outcomes consistent with what happened to Brooke. That legislation acknowledged the problem but did not stop Bailey from continuing to practice.
Bailey’s website states that she reunites families. Rhonda’s case — along with the documented complaints of other families going back years — argues that her methods achieve the opposite: the systematic separation of children from protective parents, accomplished under court order, at rates that only well-resourced litigants can afford, with no effective oversight. A dedicated examination of Bailey’s practices, her network, and the institutional protections that have shielded her from accountability appears later in this series.
What They Did to Rhonda
At the jail, Rhonda was subjected to a strip search. Her prescription glasses were taken. She could not make a phone call for several hours. She was coerced into providing a DNA sample. Her DNA was entered into the CODIS national database as a violent offender profile — on the basis of charges that would shortly be classified by the state itself as stemming from a non-arrest.
She was released after five hours, having paid $6,000 bail on a $100,000 warrant. The bail amount is confirmed in the federal court record.
A woman who spent her career in forensic laboratories — who understood chain of custody, who testified about what DNA could and couldn’t prove in homicide trials — had her own DNA coercively entered into a violent offender database on the basis of a charge stemming from a state-certified non-arrest and a warrant that bore no identifiable judge and no clerk’s filing stamp.
The blacklisting had already begun. By the time the charges were filed, Rhonda had applied to numerous crime labs after separating from Murdoch and received no offers. She had been persuaded by others to file a sexual harassment complaint against a colleague in the forensic community — and as is common for women who file such complaints, she found herself effectively frozen out. Her career in forensic science, built over years and recognized by the same law enforcement community that was now prosecuting her, was gone.
A Pattern That Began Years Earlier: The Destroyed X-Ray
The institutional erasure Rhonda experienced in 2021 was not the first time documentation involving Brooke disappeared.
In April 2017, Rhonda took Brooke to her pediatric dentist, Dr. Grace Kwon, for a routine cleaning. Dr. Kwon recommended an orthodontic evaluation and referred her to Dr. Jenny Yoo-Park, an orthodontist at the same Menlo Park practice. An X-ray would be needed. Rhonda notified David Murdoch in writing and asked how they would handle the cost.
What happened next is documented in a contemporaneous email chain, a formal complaint filed with the California Dental Board, and a written confirmation from the dental office itself.
On or about April 23, 2017 — without notifying Rhonda — Murdoch and Robin Chapman took Brooke to a dental office where Chapman worked as a registered dental hygienist. Chapman had been employed at the Palo Alto practice of Dr. Whitney A. Lorenz, DDS — where she first met Murdoch when Rhonda sent him for a cleaning in April 2014 — since at least January 2007. As of the date of this publication, Chapman, now Robin Murdoch, remains listed as an active member of the Low-Lorenz DDS team on the practice’s public website. She also worked at United Dental Group in Burlingame, the practice that later became a named federal defendant. According to Brooke’s own account, documented in the Dental Board complaint Reyna filed on April 28, 2017, Robin directed Brooke to hold the X-ray stick herself and took a panoramic X-ray — possibly on a Sunday when no one else was present. The X-ray was never provided to Brooke’s dentist, her orthodontist, or her mother.
Reyna wrote to Dr. Lorenz directly on April 26, 2017, objecting to the unauthorized X-ray and flagging the conflict of interest. In a follow-up the next day, she asked: “Does Robin Chapman no longer work for you? Could Robin have done this as a freebie to David without your knowledge?” Dr. Lorenz replied on April 27: “I have never met your daughter, Brooke, nor was she treated in my office. Your concerns are unfounded.”
Whether or not Dr. Lorenz was aware, the x-ray was never produced to Reyna, to pediatric dentist Dr. Grace Kwon, or to orthodontist Dr. Jenny Yoo-Park. The exchange with Dr. Lorenz is documented in the Dental Board complaint file and is part of the documentary record underlying this series.
When Rhonda called Murdoch on April 24 to object, he told her he could do whatever he liked and that she could “let the judge tell him not to.”
On April 28, 2017, Rhonda filed a formal Consumer Complaint with the California Dental Board, naming Robin Chapman and the dental practice. The desired outcome she listed: termination of Chapman’s dental hygienist certification.
On April 30, Murdoch emailed Rhonda that Brooke “definitely needs urgent orthodontic attention” and referred her to a specific orthodontist. Rhonda’s handwritten annotation on that email reads: “How would David know this if Robin had not ‘evaluated’ taken X-rays and kept them herself?”
Rhonda visited Dr. Yoo-Park’s office on May 1. Staff told her they had never heard of Brooke and had not seen dental X-rays. During that consultation, Rhonda asked Dr. Yoo-Park directly: “If this was your daughter, would you want her to have a second X-ray?” Yoo-Park replied to both Rhonda and David: “No.” She then consulted Dr. Kwon, who confirmed that Brooke should not have another X-ray for six months due to radiation exposure concerns — and that without the prior X-ray, proper orthodontic assessment would be delayed by exactly that long.
On May 5, 2017, a staff member at the shared Menlo Park practice emailed Rhonda: “David called yesterday to let us know that Brooke’s X-ray had been destroyed and she would need to still come in on Monday for a new one.”
David Murdoch had called the dental practice to report that the X-ray had been destroyed — the same X-ray Brooke told her mother had been taken on a Sunday when the dental office was closed. The same X-ray that Rhonda had been told did not exist. The same X-ray that the dental office denied ever taking.
A second Dental Board complaint, filed May 1, 2017, stated the core issue plainly: Robin Chapman had taken an X-ray of Brooke’s face without parental consent, was refusing to produce it to qualified dentists and orthodontists, and it was unknown whether Chapman was licensed to take X-rays, how many exposures had been taken, or at what radiation dose.
The destroyed X-ray was never recovered. Brooke required a second X-ray — the radiation exposure Dr. Kwon had explicitly warned against.
This was four years before the events of June 2021. Four years before the “protective order” with no judge’s signature. Four years before Rhonda’s PDP complaint disappeared without acknowledgment. The pattern of evidence disappearing — and institutions failing to act when Rhonda documented it — did not begin with her criminal case. It had been underway for years.
Four Years Later: The X-Ray After the Assault
On August 21, 2021 — seven weeks after Officers Deady and Badeo slammed Brooke’s face repeatedly into the pavement and held it there — Brooke was seen at United Dental Group in Burlingame. The practice specializes in restorative dentistry. An X-ray was taken of her teeth.
Rhonda learned of the appointment through the medical bills that Murdoch’s attorney, Julia Ferguson, sent her in the fall of 2021, demanding reimbursement for Brooke’s care costs. When Rhonda contacted United Dental Group to request the records and X-ray, the office — run by Dr. Tseng — refused to produce them. She followed up by phone and by email. The office did not respond.
Rhonda served a formal litigation hold letter on United Dental Group. USPS tracking number 70210350000228343389 shows delivery to Burlingame, CA 94010 on September 28, 2022, at 11:10 am. The X-ray was not produced.
In a Yelp review posted January 4, 2023, Rhonda documented the refusal publicly: “Dr. Tseng’s Office has refused to provide me all dental records and an X-ray taken of my daughter on August 21, 2021. I sent certified letters for a litigation hold since the X-ray is evidence in a multi-million, possibly billion-dollar lawsuit against Police Officers. Family Code 3025 states specifically that parents are entitled to all dental records, which begs the question, why is Dr. Tseng withholding critical evidence in a criminal matter of a multi-million dollar lawsuit?”
In supplemental correspondence submitted to Santa Cruz City Council on May 8, 2023 — filed as part of the official public record for Agenda Item 21, the council meeting at which the Independent Police Auditor’s Third Annual Report was being considered — Rhonda stated directly:
“I forgot to mention that I served a spoliation letter upon the Dentist who xrayed my daughter’s teeth after the incident referred to in Case No. 16 of the auditor’s report. Had the ‘independent’ auditor spoken to me, he would have known the evidence exists of permanent and severe damage to my daughter’s teeth as a result of Ruben Badeo and David Deady slamming her face repeatedly to the ground and holding it there with extreme force. The video evidence clearly shows them doing this.”
The auditor, Michael Gennaco of OIR Group, never spoke to Rhonda. His report, which exonerated all officers in Case 16, was produced without knowledge that a dental X-ray documenting the physical consequences of the use of force existed — and was being withheld by a provider Rhonda had already served with a litigation hold. Gennaco’s Case 16 narrative characterized Murdoch’s behavior as “benign and cooperative” — a characterization Rhonda’s formal City Council submission calls “categorically refuted by the video evidence seen worldwide.”
United Dental Group is named as a defendant in Rhonda’s federal civil rights lawsuit, Reyna v. City of Santa Cruz et al., Case No. 23-cv-03121. The X-ray has not been produced.
The Warrant With No Name
The Protective Custody Warrant that authorized all of this was issued on June 15, 2021, based entirely on Haggarty’s declaration. That declaration relied on Murdoch’s unverified missing persons report and a June 11 court order. It did not mention Officer Rhodes’ exonerating report. It did not mention Deputy Christman’s evaluation. It did not mention Brooke’s stated wishes. It did not mention the documented DV history. It did not mention that Riddle never verified Murdoch’s mailbox claim.
The warrant itself carries three documentary defects a forensic scientist would identify immediately. The judge’s printed name is blacked out — a warrant without an identifiable judicial signatory cannot be authenticated or challenged on its face. There is no clerk’s filing stamp — without which the document’s official status in the case record cannot be confirmed. The felony complaint it supported was itself unsigned, bearing no printed name of a complainant, no statement under oath, no officer of record. Under California law, a criminal complaint must identify the complainant, be verified, and be signed under oath.
In the courtrooms where Rhonda once testified, documents like these would not have survived a challenge. She knew that. Her attorney did not act on it.
A Non-Arrest Becomes Two Felonies
The day after the June 28 incident, the District Attorney’s Office released Rhonda. DA Records Manager M. Patzke signed a DOJ Detention Certificate under California Penal Code 851.6, stating: “the taking into custody of Reyna, Rhonda Elaine on 06/28/2021 by the Santa Cruz Police Department was a detention only, not an arrest.” Under PC 849.5, the record shall not be deemed an arrest.
San Mateo County Deputy District Attorney Anastasia Cooper filed a felony complaint anyway: Count 1, PC278.5 — child detention with right to custody. Count 2, PC278 — child stealing.
Note the dates: the felony complaint had been filed on June 17, 2021 — eleven days before the June 28 detention that became its factual basis. The originating event was classified by the state as a non-arrest. The charges proceeded regardless.
The legal significance of the detention certificate was understood by advocates who reviewed Rhonda’s case: the certificate issued under PC 851.6 effectively nullified the basis for the San Mateo charges. A detention classified as a non-arrest cannot be the foundation of a felony prosecution. Bethani Jackson, her PDP attorney, never raised this. She never mentioned it. She took it to a plea.
Two Attorneys, Neither Working for Her
San Mateo County’s Private Defender Program assigned Bethani Jackson of Jackson Law in Redwood City to handle the criminal charges. Travis Whitfield was Rhonda’s family law attorney. Both attorneys were simultaneously communicating about her case. An email chain from September 8, 2021 — two months before the plea — is now on record.
Rhonda had been pulled over by police because the old warrant was apparently still active in the system. She called Whitfield. Whitfield emailed Jackson. Jackson contacted the DA. Jackson’s reply to Whitfield: “I just spoke with the district attorney handling the matter, and she confirmed with Paso Robles PD that they contacted her regarding a camping ordinance; the police department says they did not say anything about a missing person.” Whitfield replied: “Thanks.” The warrant remained active. No one moved to challenge it.
This email chain is significant for two reasons. It shows both attorneys were in direct communication with each other and with the DA about Rhonda’s case — using her as the subject of back-channel coordination. And it shows that even when the warrant’s continued activity was raised as a problem, neither attorney moved to challenge it, vacate it, or address its defective foundation.
Whitfield had also commissioned the Atlas Investigations witness interviews in August 2021. He had Frank Estrella’s reports — two independent eyewitness accounts documenting the June 28 strangulation and the wrongful arrest of the victim. He received them before the plea. He did not produce them.
Rhonda alleges that both attorneys colluded to coerce her plea. Jackson told her that entering a nolo contendere plea was “no big deal” and would “default to Not Guilty” after one year of probation. That is not what nolo contendere means. It means no contest to the charges as filed. It produced a felony conviction on her record — a conviction that was entered into her family court record and used to further restrict her access to Brooke.
Jackson presented no exculpatory evidence. She challenged no document defects. She submitted neither the Rhodes report, nor the Christman evaluation, nor the 911 transcripts, nor the Atlas witness accounts, nor the Cindi Kuhn texts, nor the body cam footage, nor Brooke’s recorded disclosures. She did not challenge the unsigned complaint. She did not move to suppress. She did not go to trial.
In November 2021, Rhonda entered the plea. Time served, one year of probation, and a fine.
Two years later, Rhonda wrote to Jackson requesting the expungement she had been promised. Jackson’s reply was three sentences directing her elsewhere.
“Best of luck, Bethani.”
What a Forensic Scientist Sees
A criminalist does not speculate. She does not ask who did it. She analyzes what the physical evidence shows and presents her findings to a jury. She resists every attempt to have her words paraphrased, because paraphrasing changes meaning. Every word matters.
Rhonda applied that discipline to her own case. She looked at the warrant and identified what was missing: no judicial name, no clerk stamp. She looked at the complaint and identified what was absent: no complainant signature, no oath, no verification. She looked at the 911 transcripts — which her own attorneys never submitted — and saw what they proved: three independent witnesses, including one on the phone with dispatch while watching Murdoch strangle her, directly contradicting Hardin’s false report. She looked at the Cindi Kuhn texts and saw what they proved: a woman and her daughter living their normal life while a missing persons report was being filed about them. She looked at the body cam footage and saw what it proved: Murdoch himself named her kitesurfing location to the officer filing the missing persons report.
The evidence was there. All of it. It was suppressed — by a DA Inspector who withheld exonerating reports from his warrant declaration, by two attorneys who received investigation results and did nothing, and by a defense system that took a fee and delivered a plea.
That is the story of San Mateo County’s Private Defender Program. And it is what the rest of this series will examine.
What Came Next
In June 2023, Rhonda filed a federal civil rights lawsuit — case 23-cv-03121 — in the Northern District of California. She named more than forty defendants: the City of Santa Cruz, San Mateo County, DA Inspector Haggarty, Judge Franchi, Dr. Rebecca Bailey, Bethani Jackson, Travis Whitfield, Kristin Hardin, Deputy Urena, Officer Venegas, and others. She filed it herself, pro se, without an attorney, because she had no money for one.
What followed was its own kind of procedural collapse.
Judge Charles Breyer was assigned and immediately recused himself — the same day he granted her application to proceed without paying filing fees. Recusal at that stage, in a family-court civil rights case, is rare. The case was reassigned to Judge Susan Illston, who vacated Breyer’s order directing the U.S. Marshals to serve the defendants, dismissed the complaint with leave to amend, and then recused herself. Two senior federal judges had now removed themselves from the same pro se case. Neither recusal was explained.
The case was reassigned to Judge William Alsup, who gave Rhonda a compressed window to file an amended complaint. When she filed it, Alsup dismissed it without leave to amend under the Heck doctrine, holding that her claims would necessarily imply the invalidity of her nolo contendere conviction. The Final Judgment was entered on August 9, 2024. The case was closed before a single defendant was served.
The Heck bar is precisely what makes the PDP’s failure so consequential. Without vacating the plea, the federal courthouse door stays shut. Scott Newbould, the PDP attorney assigned after Jackson, was notified of this repeatedly. He filed a petition. When Rhonda asked for status updates, his replies stopped. He never completed the expungement. He remained on record as her attorney without meaningful action.
Meanwhile, Rhonda filed a formal complaint against Dr. Bailey with the California Board of Psychology — case number 6002022000490, May 26, 2022. The Board acknowledged receipt and opened a review. She filed a formal complaint against both Jackson and Newbould through the PDP’s online complaint system, documenting exactly what both attorneys had failed to do. She has pursued every institutional channel available to her.
The record that could have been examined in federal court — the 911 transcripts, the Atlas witness reports, the Cindi Kuhn texts, the body cam footage, the exonerating police reports, the unsigned complaint, the unstamped warrant — was never examined. No defendant was ever required to answer. No DA was ever compelled to produce records. No officer ever had to explain the discrepancies between their reports and the documented evidence.
That is not a coincidence. It is the architecture.
Rhonda has not seen her daughter in years. Brooke competes at horse shows under her father’s name, in the same equestrian world where Rhonda once built her own life. Kristin Hardin — who called 911 on June 28 and falsely reported that Rhonda had kidnapped her own daughter — has appeared at those same shows alongside Murdoch and Brooke.
Rhonda’s DNA is still in CODIS, classified as a violent offender. The expungement has never been completed.
She spent her career in the service of truth — analyzing evidence, testifying with precision, refusing to let attorneys put words in her mouth. The system used her expertise when it needed her. When she needed the system, it handed her Bethani Jackson, a defective warrant, and a nolo contendere form.
“My integrity has always been a hallmark of my personality,” she wrote to the county counsel in 2019, “both personal and professional.”
The county knew that. It convicted her anyway.
Next in the series: The Private Defender — how San Mateo County outsourced the Sixth Amendment to a bar association, and what it bought instead.
Documents on file with Riptide: Parker Rhodes police report 21S-03038 · Deputy Christman evaluation · DOJ Detention Certificate PC 851.6 · Protective Custody Warrant 16FAM00441 · Felony complaint 21SF007198A · Atlas Investigations witness reports (Frank Estrella PI-25991, August 2021) · Certified 911 transcripts SCPD cases 21S03661/21S03665 · Cindi Kuhn iMessage thread June 24-27 2021 · Axon body cam transcripts 20210528, 20210613, 20210625 · Jackson correspondence · Whitfield-Jackson email chain September 8 2021 · Board of Psychology complaint case 6002022000490 · Federal case 23-cv-03121 including all docket entries through Final Judgment.
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