Copyright 1990 by Scott Hays
Magazine: Orange Coast
Topic: Better Off Dead
Byline: Scott Hays

It was a tragic, indefensible accident that could have happened to almost anyone. But as a result, 28-year-old Michael Wesley Reding is terrorized by ghastly nightmares of dead children.

When a jury found him guilty of second-degree murder for the 1984 drunk-driving collision that killed Pamela Trueblood and her three children, and injured two others, Reding tried to act manly in front of the press, but inside he wept. "Haven't I been punished enough? he thought, as he hugged his grieving mother and father and told them not to worry before he was led away in handcuffs. "Is sending me to jail going to serve society? Bring back the Trueblood family?"

During the climatic closing arguments of the two-week trial, the prosecuting attorney had tried to brand Reding as a coke fiend, murderer. Reding loathed the indignant name-calling. The local newspapers ate it up like starving sharks. But what could he say? I'm sorry? I'm sorry Robert Trueblood that I killed you wife and three children? No, he was too guilty for sweeping apologies. But he was no cold-blooded killer, either. "If I had thought I posed a danger to others, I wouldn't have driven that night," he insists.

In his defense, Reding blood alcohol level was only .108, slightly above the level at which a person is considered legally drunk in California. Most drunk drivers are nearly twice that amount. It wasn't as if he maliciously aimed a loaded pistol at four people and pulled the trigger, although Robert Trueblood thinks otherwise. Reding was only a social drinker, at worst, who had no prior drunk-driving arrests. Okay, so he occasionally slugged down a few beers after work, before driving home. Reding was just one of every 10 drivers who on any given night is legally impaired by alcohol.

If he had been arrested for driving under the influence before the accident occurred, he might have spent the night in jail, paid a $390 fine and surrendered a Saturday to one of those sobering alcohol abuse programs. But he wasn't, he didn't, and now he's a murderer. Since the California Supreme Court decided four years ago that prosecutors could file second-degree murder charges in fatal drunk-driving accident, the Orange County District Attorney's Office had tried at least half a dozen such cases. Reding was their first conviction.

When the coroner testified in graphic detail about the mutilated bodies of the Trueblood children, Reding buried his face in his hands and wept and thought about maybe committing suicide. "It made me want to shut my eyes once and for all," he says, remembering how he used to look over the ninth floor balcony of the Orange County Courthouse and wonder what it would be like to jump.

Once, shortly after the accident, when he was still being held in the infirmary of the Orange County Jail in Santa Ana, Reding had a "genuine opportunity for self-murder." It seems the guards had forgotten to lock the dayroom one night, which gave him access to a high, beamed ceiling, where he easily could have hanged himself with his bed sheet. "I sat there worrying about the mechanics of the situation," he recalled. "I didn't know if the fall was long enough to break my neck. The last thing I wanted to do was attempt suicide and live through it, paralyzed the rest of my life." He decided against the "dishonorable, cowardly" act.

Since his conviction in June, however, Reding has reconsidered suicide, especially now that his days are even more terrifying than his nightmares, as he spends the next 15 years to life in a maximum security prison with serial killers, rapists, psychotics—the dregs of society.

And to think it all started so innocently.

A beer at Laredo's.

On the morning of October 23, 1984, Reding's digital alarm clock went off, as usual, at 7. His left leg was hurting again from an accident two months earlier, which had left him on crutches and partially disabled. It happened in the parking lot of Northrop in Hawthorne, where he worked as a computer engineer on sophisticated aircraft guidance systems. He and a friend had just returned from lunch when a co-worker, driving a Toyota Celica Supra, sped into the driveway and struck Reding, sending him flying across the pavement.

Left with a dislocated shoulder and serious ligament damage to his left knee, Reding was placed on disability for six weeks, and both he and the driver of the Toyota were reprimanded for horseplay. "It certainly demonstrated for Mr. Reding the damage that can be inflicted on the body by a car," Deputy District Attorney Michael A. Jacobs would say later. Reding had only been back to work three weeks when he decided to take the day off without pay because his leg was in a "great deal of discomfort" from a new phase of physical therapy he'd endured the previous day. The alarm went off again at 10.

After breakfast, he drove to the Brea Mall, about 10 minutes from the two-bedroom condominium his parents owned in Fullerton. He spent the afternoon hobbling around on crutches and buying clothes for a Halloween costume.

Later that afternoon, around 4, he stopped for a beer at Laredo's, a small yet elegant tavern at the mall. "Michael was in a constant state of depression because of his leg," recalls Don Beyer, Reding's best friend. "He didn't have a lot of positive things going for him so we started visiting Laredo's more often. He didn't like the high-intensity bars, mostly because of his lack of success with women, so we would wind up at Laredo's and buy a pitcher of beer and play Centipede or darts." When Beyer wasn't around, Reding went alone.

Laredo's was empty except for bartender Scott West. Reding sidled up to the bar and sat on a stool in front of the television. He ordered a draft beer and paid for it with his father's MasterCard. He and West exchanged small talk, mostly about Halloween costumes.

Reding had been in Laredo's the night before to watch a Ram's football game. At home later that evening, he and his roommate snorted cocaine. Reding's use of the drug had gone "way up" since his Northrup accident. "I didn't have much else to do and it lifted my mood a great deal," he says. That's why there was so much benzoyl ecgonine, metabolized cocaine, found in his blood when police later took a sample to determine that alcohol level; evidence the DA later used to attack Reding's character.

Around 5:30, when Bill Metzler relieved West as bartender, Reding started buying rounds of kamikazes, a potent vodka drink served in a shot glass. After a while, Metzler noticed Reding was getting uncharacteristically talkative. Nearsighted, skinny and reserved, Reding was not the type of person to push himself on others. He was a physics major from Cal State Fullerton who enjoyed trivia games and quiet times with friends. So when Metzler noticed he was "being a little more extraverted than usual, talking to people at the bar, he decided he'd had enough. "He wasn't getting loud, boisterous or obnoxious, just simply talking to people," Metzler later told police.

After Reding had consumed five beers and four kamikazes, Metzler finally told him, "I'm not going to serve you any more. I think you've had enough."

"Aw, come on," Reding said, thinking Metzler was referring only to the kamikazes.

Metzler shook his head. "No, I'm serious. I'm not going to serve you any more."

Reding was stunned but amenable. "I certainly wasn't exhibiting any of the 'classic symptoms' of overindulgence," he recalls. "And there was no suggestion by anyone that I was in no condition to drive." It's true that no one, not even Metzler, offered to call Reding a cab. So he paid his tab and left before finishing his last beer.

It was nearly 8 p.m. when Reding stepped out into the crisp evening air and noticed he had a "mellow buzz," that warm, pleasant sensation one can get from alcohol. He crutched his way to his car, a 1972 Mercury Cougar that had more than 100,000 miles and was still registered to his mother and father, who lived in Milpitas. He had been thinking about buying a new silver Camaro because "my professional standing required some sort of status symbol," but had decided to wait until he could afford it. Besides, the Cougar did have one amenity Reding treasured—an AM/FM eight-track stereo with a Pioneer supertuner, a 25-watt per channel graphics equalizer, and Jensen Triac speakers.

He popped in a Peter Gabriel tape and headed down State College Boulevard past Lark Ellen, the residential street which leads to his condominium. "I really don't want to alone tonight," Reding thought, as he headed up the darkened hill at a pretty good clip. The D.A.'s expert witness later placed his speed at 71 mph, although the defense claimed it was closer to 48. As he neared the signal at the corner of Bastanchury Road, he came up too fast on the tail lights of a much slower Blazer. Panic-stricken, he cranked the steering wheel hard to the right toward a dirt shoulder, then hard to the left to avoid going over a 30-foot embankment. The last thing he remembers is screaming as the car skidded across three lanes into an oncoming 1980 Chevrolet Citation.

Robert Trueblood had just returned home from work when the phone rang. It was Priscilla Rector, a friend of the family.

She was frantic that her son, Brian, had not come home. Generally on Tuesday evenings, Robert or his wife, Pamela, would take their three children and Brian Rector to Cal State Fullerton for gymnastics lessons. Rector told Trueblood that she had gone out looking for them but had come home later after running into a police barricade on Bastanchury Road and State College Boulevard. Trueblood told her not to worry, he'd try to find them.

He and his wife, Pamela, had been married for 15 years and had lived in the same house in Fullerton for the past seven. They met in 1967 while aboard Chapman College's Seven Seas, a floating campus program that sailed around the world. Their first date was in Buenos Aires. Because Robert's younger brother had later married Pamela's younger sister, and because they had three children close to the same ages as Robert and Pam's, "Our families became extremely close," Trueblood says. "My life consisted of work, church and family."

After Pamela received her bachelor degree in anthropology from Cal State Fullerton in 1982, her life revolved mostly around their three children and a day-care center she'd begun. Her son, Eric, 11, was bright and athletic. Kerry, 9, was adopted, but extremely affectionate. Scotty, 8, was brilliant. During the summer of 1983, the Truebloods vacationed in Yellowstone. In 1984, they bought a tent trailer for vacations, but canceled their plans in order to help build a hospital in the jungles of Mexico on a work furlough program sponsored by their church, The Crystal Cathedral in Orange. "Most of our time, however, was spent watching the kids grow up," says Trueblood.

The night before the fatal accident, Robert took Pamela and her parents out for her birthday dinner at the Rusty Pelican in Brea, across from Laredo's. At home later that evening, Pamela pulled out her wedding dress from underneath their bed and slipped on the veil. "She hadn't done that in 15 years," recalls Trueblood. "I'm sure it was the good Lord's way of allowing her to tell me goodbye."

As Trueblood headed up State College Boulevard, keeping his eyes peeled for their 1980 Chevrolet Citation, he bumped into the same police barricade Rector had mentioned. Instead of stopping, however, he proceeded straight to Cal State Fullerton, where he was hoping to find Pamela and his three children. When he came up empty-handed, he drove back down State College Boulevard and this time stopped at the barricade.

He parked his car and walked up to the nearest Fullerton police officer, telling him who he was and who he was looking for. The officer immediately started asking pointed questions about their ages, sexes. "Then he told me there had been an accident, and that Pamela was dead. Eric was dead. Kerry was dead," Trueblood says. He then saw their Chevrolet Citation. The steering wheel had been pushed back to the left rear seat. "It was the most awful moment in my life. I went numb. I didn't scream, I didn't shout,, I didn't feel any pain. I just went numb."

Brian Rector, 12, and Shawn Ratcliff, 2, whom Pamela had been babysitting, had miraculously survived the head-on collision; Brian with a broken left femur, Shawn with a ruptured spleen. Scotty, Trueblood's youngest son, had been taken to UCI Medical Center in Orange where paramedics worked feverishly trying to save his life. The police transported Trueblood to the hospital where he was told upon arrival that Scotty had died only minutes earlier.

"I was devastated. I just broke down and cried," Trueblood says, explaining that he was taken into a hospital room to identify his son's body. "That was the first time I saw what Michael Reding did to my son," he recalls. "I couldn't even identify him. He was the right size. He had the right color hair. But I couldn't identify him. A car doesn't make a nice clean hole like a bullet. There was no reason for me to go on living," he remembers thinking, "except to let people know how my family had died and why."

Meanwhile, at St. Jude's Hospital and Rehabilitation Center in Fullerton. Michael Reding was bring treated for broken ribs, a partially collapsed lung and severe lacerations on his chin and tongue. He lapsed in and put of consciousness and remembers only a "strong feeling of horror." As doctors tended to his injuries, a Fullerton police officer stood dutifully nearby, waiting for the opportunity to interview him. When Reding was finally coherent, the officer asked him if he could take a blood sample. "Go ahead. Send me to jail," Reding lashed out, before agreeing and signing the release form "Michael 'Better Off Dead' Reding." While the technician worked away, Reding turned to her and asked, "Can you put some cyanide in there to get it over with?" He then turned to the police officer and said, "Can you lend me your gun so I can end it now? I'm dead meat."

A few hours later, Reding was transferred to the Fullerton police station for questioning. During the interrogation, he got fed up with the officers' insistent manner and eventually threw out some choice obscenities. "Hey come on!" he raged. "I've already given you enough to send me up the river." The interview was terminated and Reding was booked at the Orange County Jail in Santa Ana, where he was placed in the "psycho ward."

"I just wanted out at that point," he said. "A final escape. I should have trusted my instincts back at the hospital. That would have been the best solution to the entire problem." He drifted in and out of sleep that night and stayed two days before being released on bail. His parents took him back to Milpitis.

"We had never run into anything like this," says Kathleen Reding of her only son. "I've had one traffic violation over a lifetime. Michael's father has had maybe two. We've never had any drunk drivers. We aren't drinkers. We'd maybe have wine with our holiday meals. Very seldom did we go to New Year's Eve parties, because we always felt that was too dangerous. Michael's a gentle man. I've never known him to intentionally hurt anyone."

Three days later, Reding was arrested by Milpitis police, flown to Orange County and again booked, this time on murder charges. It took eight weeks before his father could finally raise enough money to post his $250,000 bail.

The nightmare had only begun.

All three of the Trueblood children were buried with their favorite stuffed toys near the Fullerton baseball field where they played on weekends. After the funeral, attended by more than 800 people, Robert Trueblood went back to work for his father-in-law as a linen supply manager.

The first few months after the accident, he spent his evenings alone mourning his family's death and reading from hundreds of sympathy letters. Six months later, he was remarried to a women he'd met at church whose husband had died of cancer. Diane has a 13-year-old daughter, Anjanette, who lives with them, and the Truebloods have a new 1-year-old son named Robert Henry.

"The main thing wasn't necessarily to take Michael Reding and punish him," Trueblood says of his unrelenting court vigil. "But to let people know that you don't drink and drive in this country. If you kill somebody with a car, they're just as dead as if you'd shot them with a gun. I would have much rather given Michael Reding a gun with one bullet in it and said 'go out and shoot one member of my family,' than to have all of them die in a car accident.

"Whatever his faults, whatever he did wrong, Michael Reding didn't premeditate a deliberate death," he adds. "But his actions were avoidable. If he had taken a different course, my family would still be alive. But when he loaded himself up with alcohol and shot himself down State College Boulevard, that one Mercury bullet killed four innocent people."

Michael Reding's situation was miles apart from Trueblood's, and he received no letters. He went into a bottomless black depression. After he was fired from Northrop, his parents sold their home in Milpitis to help pay his living expenses for the next year and a half until the trial. They've also sold their condominium in Fullerton to help cover legal costs totaling more than $50,000.

Reding's life was stripped of anything positive or productive, so he started chain-smoking as he and his friends slowly drifted apart. To compensate, he bought a dog and named it Disaster. "My friends couldn't really relate to what I was going through, and for me it was just too painful to listen to other people's success stories. I didn't want to be reminded of the contrast between my situation and theirs."

He hired Santa Ana attorney Heidi Mueller to defend him because "she seemed the sharpest, and I was hoping a woman might defuse some of the emotional explosiveness of the case." On Mueller's advice, Reding was willing to plead guilty to any charge less than second-degree murder. That could have included manslaughter with gross negligence, which carries a maximum penalty of eight years. Murder carries a penalty of 15 years to life.

"Unfortunately, the D.A. felt that given the nature of the victims, this was the case to win a murder charge," says Mueller. "Their objective was to set a precedent."

Deputy District Attorney Jacobs, who has tried two other vehicular-related murder cases, disagrees. "When Reding got cut off by the bartender, it should have put any reasonable person on notice that he was in no condition to drive," he contends. "The fact that his blood alcohol level was low said to me that he wasn't so drunk that he didn't understand what he was doing. He was able to perceive the risks involved."

But did Reding's alcohol consumption cause him to lose control of his car, or "did he just lose control and happened to have been drinking?" asks Mueller. "And when do you know if you're at the .10 blood alcohol level?"

More than 1 million people were arrested last year for driving under the influence of alcohol. According to the National Commission Against Drunk Driving, two out of every three Americans drink. When jurors on the Reding case were asked if they had ever driven while intoxicated, a few had said yes, but that they had never been stopped or picked up. "It's the mood of the country," say Mueller. "Those same jurors got swept up in all the publicity and decided that they needed to put a message out there to people who drink and drive. These same people go see movies like Author with Dudley Moore, and they're rolling in the aisles."

Meanwhile, Michael Reding is trying to find some way to even the tally sheet for the four headstones that rest in his bed. "Twenty-eight years of trying to be a decent human being, it doesn't seem like it could be invalidated by a single incident," he says from prison. "But the magnitude of this tragedy is just so overwhelming. I can't deal with it any more."

Reding will be almost 40 before he becomes eligible for parole.