The Fight

Hi Park enthusiasts, I'm your host, Dilia DeAmbra, and the case I'm going to share with you today takes place at Arches National Park in Utah. This case is one of those stories that I initially wasn't sure I'd ever be able to tell. When I first heard about it, there wasn't much news coverage out there, so I knew it was going to take some good old-fashioned reporting to be able to get to the bottom of what really happened, and why. So I've spent the last six months interviewing the victim's family members and reviewing court records and investigative reports. And what I've learned is both heartbreaking and maddening. A note upfront, this episode discusses incidents of domestic violence, so I've listed several resources in the show notes and blog posts for this episode, because if there's anything I've learned from this story, it's that domestic violence is something that should be taken very seriously. And not just by law enforcement and the criminal justice system, it's something each and every one of us should be paying attention to. The woman at the center of today's story was as vibrant, colorful, and ever-changing as the stone wonders in Arches National Park. But she came up against someone she couldn't overcome. Someone she loved, but wasn't always loved by. The fallout of their world's colliding left a mountain of grief and unanswered questions for her loved ones, who are still haunted by a tragedy that should have never happened. This is Park Predators. Around 8.30 p.m. on Tuesday, August 10th, 2004, a man named Jesse Smith was sitting in his truck at Moab Fault viewpoint in Arches National Park with his wife and toddler. When he noticed something happening, just up the road ahead of them. He saw a man and a woman in a heated argument, standing next to a 1983 Buick Riviera. The couple spat seemed to be escalating quickly, because they were cursing at one another, and then the man physically pushed the woman against the vehicle. Not long after spotting the pair, Jesse was about to get out of his truck and help the woman, but right before he headed that direction, the woman started running up the road. She was crying and screaming, and according to what Jesse later told investigators, she actually went uphill right past him and his wife's truck. Then, the guy who she'd been arguing with got into the Buick and chased after her. Within seconds, the man swerved into the woman, which caused her to go off the roadway and fall into the dirt. The couple continued to argue, and eventually the driver punched the woman in her stomach. As she fell over in pain, the man who'd thrown the punch got back into the Buick and drove off. While terrified by what they just watched, the Smiths started up their pickup truck and threw it in reverse. Jesse honked his horn to signal to the woman that they were coming to check on her, and then he hollered out his window for her to get in the back. The woman realized the family was trying to help her and began running towards them. But while she was on her way, the man who just attacked her turned his car around and headed back down the hill. He was driving fast and swerving back and forth between the lanes. So Jesse drove quickly to try and close the distance between his truck and the woman. But he wasn't fast enough. Just as she was about 10 feet away from the bed of his pickup, the guy in the Buick struck both the woman and the back of Jesse's truck. The impact was so great that the truck ended up diving about 20 feet down an embankment with him and his family still inside. Thankfully though, the Smiths vehicle was stocked by a tree and they were mostly uninjured, but the same could not be said for the man who crashed into them or the woman they tried to help. The driver and the Buick had been knocked unconscious and his vehicle was on fire. The woman he'd hit was dead. The Grand County Sheriff's Office that investigated this incident provided me with several photos of the aftermath of this scene, and they're pretty jarring. The front end of the Buick was completely charred and destroyed. The Smiths truck was also banged up, where it had come to rest down the embankment. And the woman, she was left lying dead in the roadway. It's unclear what happened next, but as far as I can tell from the available source material and investigative reports, it seems Moebs City police officers were the first to arrive on the scene. Then, shortly after that, more first responders got there. And that's when the Grand County Sheriff's Office was notified. He didn't take that agency very long to identify the driver of the Buick as 26-year-old Ricky James Cunningham, Jr., who most often went by the nickname "Ricky." The woman he'd killed was his 34-year-old girlfriend, Rhonda Ann Rosenbaum. After being transported to an area hospital, the Smiths and Ricky were treated for minor injuries and samples of Ricky and Jesse's blood were provided to officials. Ricky's blood work showed he had twice the legal limit of alcohol in his system. And to make matters worse, he had two previous DUI convictions out of Texas. He was not supposed to be driving a vehicle at all. So deputies from the Grand County Sheriff's Office took him into custody and booked him on suspicion of first degree felony homicide, domestic violence, driving under the influence, three counts of attempted homicide, aggravated assault, and a few misdemeanor traffic violations. Stuff like speeding and improper usage of lanes. Now, those attempted homicide charges were for each member of the Smith family, since they'd been in their vehicle when they went over the embankment. Right before booking Ricky, investigators had taken statements from Jesse Smith and his wife Mindy, who'd recounted in detail what they'd witnessed in the park. Mindy told deputies that she genuinely believed she and her family were going to die when their truck was launched off the roadway. A few hours later, around 2.15 a.m., a sergeant with the Sheriff's Office interviewed Ricky to get a better understanding of what had happened. Ricky's story was that he and Rhonda had been on the road since about 10 a.m. Tuesday morning. They'd taken Rhonda's Buick from where they were staying in Grand Junction, Colorado, and headed west on Interstate 70. Their plan was to site C for a few days before he had to report back for work on Thursday night at an oil drilling company. After leaving Grand Junction, they'd made some stops in Fruida, Colorado, and Thompson Springs, Utah, before eventually deciding to travel to Arches National Park, which for context is only like an hour and 45 minutes west of Grand Junction, about 2 hours tops. Anyway, around two or three o'clock, they'd gotten off the highway in Moab and gone to a bar called Woody's. Ricky said it was super hot outside, so he and Rhonda decided it was best to get out of the heat and cool off versus going into the National Park in the middle of the day. For the next few hours, they hung out, played pub games, and drank. He set around 5 p.m. they left and went to get a burger at a fast food chain while they discussed whether they were going to stay the night in a motel or try to finish their site seeing that evening. At one point, he said they pulled into a motel six parking lot to maybe get a room, but Rhonda ended up not wanting to stay there because some girls in the parking lot had made comments to them that made her feel uncomfortable. According to investigative reports from the Sheriff's Office, the three girls that talked with them had remarked, quote, "Welcome to motel 666," end quote. And it was that comment that made Rhonda want to leave, which, like I'm with Rhonda on this one, I wouldn't have wanted to stay there either after having an encounter like that. Anyway, according to Ricky, after that, they ended up going to the National Park. Rhonda asked him several times to stop along the way so she could take pictures. His version of what happened between them near the Moab fault viewpoint went like this. Rhonda got out, took some photos, kept walking up the road, and then he lost control of their car and hit her. But the sergeant interviewing Ricky wasn't buying that version of events. He pressed the 26-year-old for more details and emphasized that the Sheriff's Office had two witnesses whose version of events was very different from his. But Ricky denied ever pushing or hitting Rhonda. He admitted that they'd argued and she pushed him, but in the midst of their spat, he decided to just leave her behind for a little bit while she cooled down. When the investigators specifically asked him why he'd turned the Buick around after leaving Rhonda, Ricky said that he'd done that because he'd changed his mind about going back to get her. He stated he believed he was driving between 30 and 45 miles per hour when, according to him, something must have gone wrong in the Buick's steering which caused him to lose control of the car and hit Rhonda. He was adamant that he did not intentionally kill her. When the sergeant interviewing him straight up asked if he'd been mad at Rhonda and that's why he'd done what he'd done, Ricky said, quote, "Hell no, I wasn't mad at that girl," end quote. But authorities doubted his response. The problem was, though, both Ricky and Rhonda had been drinking prior to the incident. Ricky said that while at Woody's, he'd had more than six beers, some whiskey, and several shots of 99 proof banana schnops. He claimed Rhonda had also taken whiskey and the core shots while at the bar. So when answering the sergeant's questions, Ricky said it was possible another reason why he'd lost control of the car was because he'd been drunk. He explained that after the crash, things had been hazy. He remembered people yelling at him to get out of his vehicle because it was on fire and he remembered injuring one of his feet to do so. He also remembered seeing Rhonda's badly injured body on the ground. But he swore that he'd never meant to hit her. According to what he told the sheriff's office in his interview, he said, "I did lose control. I lost control and I ran off the road and I faced the fact that I ran over her. And because of my drunk and stupid irresponsibility, she's dead. But by no means that I try to kill her at a national monument. That's just, there's no way." He later continued, "Because I was drunk, I lost control. I lost everything. You know, I lost everything. So I can sit here right now and I can tell you what you want to hear. I can tell you what you think you know. I can tell you what you think is going to save me or help me. But it doesn't matter because the fact is she's dead and I didn't kill her on purpose. It was totally, it was selfish. It was a selfish act. I didn't do that shit on purpose." When reminded that witness said they'd seen him punch Rhonda and fight with her, Ricky still denied doing so. When pressed further, he clarified that he hadn't really punched Rhonda. It was more of a shove. And as far as the witness's accounts, well, he claimed they were lying and should have been minding their own business. He said they weren't telling the truth about what happened because they were likely upset that he crashed into them. And with that, his interview ended, some 45 minutes after it began. Several hours later, around 10am on August 11th, authorities met with Jesse Smith at a campground he and his family were staying at. He agreed to join investigators at the Moab Fault Viewpoint and explain how everything had gone down the night before. Basically, he provided them with a play-by-play re-enactment while investigators videotaped him. Authorities also impounded his pickup truck and Rhonda's Buick as evidence. At Ricky's arraignment on August 17th, a few days after the crime, a judge had his bond at $250,000, which was $200,000 more than Ricky wanted it to be. The judge explained that his reason for setting the amount so high was because he considered what happened to Rhonda to be a "vicious act." And he'd also been informed that the witnesses who'd come forward were worried Ricky would retaliate against them if he was release pending trial. So for the time being, the 26-year-old remained behind bars. In addition to the Smiths, there were other tourists in Arches National Park the evening Rhonda was killed who'd come forward and told authorities they'd seen Ricky and Rhonda arguing right before her death. There was also something else, something really important, physics. On August 30th, a few weeks after the crime, two Utah State troopers and a person from the State's Department of Public Safety's Vehicle Safety Inspection Team looked over Rhonda's Buick top to bottom. They were searching for any signs of malfunction. They scoured the car's front end and tested its steering system in brakes, but they didn't find a single issue. There was nothing that supported Ricky's initial claim that it might have been a mechanical failure in the car which caused him to lose control and strike Rhonda. In fact, the inspectors concluded that the vehicle's emergency brake was operable, the front brakes, rear brakes, and steering mechanics were in good condition, and the tread on all of the tires was fine. Those findings solidified the mounting case against Ricky. Meanwhile, Rhonda's family grieved their loss and had her body flown from Utah to Texas for her funeral. In early September, Ricky had a preliminary hearing which required Jesse Smith to testify about the things he'd seen leading up to Rhonda's death. A Utah Highway Patrol trooper also took the witness stand and discussed the results of his agency's post-crash investigation. The trooper said that Ricky had been driving at least 60 miles per hour when he struck Rhonda, which caused her to be thrown more than 100 feet. After hearing the state's evidence and testimony, the presiding judge decided there was probable cause to move the case toward trial. That was originally scheduled to get underway in early February 2005, but later postponed to mid-May after Ricky's defense attorney requested more time to hire experts. What's wild to me is that in the meager news coverage I could find about this case, very few articles discussed who Rhonda was. The report's mostly focused on the basic details of the crime and Ricky's charges. But I have to imagine that behind the scenes, while authorities and prosecutors were building their case against Ricky, they sought to understand who their victim was and what it caused her to end up with him in the first place. What I learned from interviewing Rhonda's older brother Eric, younger sister Lynette, and her daughter Karina, is that she was the middle child of three siblings who all grew up in LaPort, Texas. Lynette and Rhonda in particular were best friends for the first 18 years of their life and even shared a bedroom together. Their parents raised all three of them in what was described as a good home. The family went to church three times a week and lived in a modest house. Eric told me that Rhonda was always their dad's favorite, and as she got older she became very involved in hobbies like art, music, and cooking. However, when it came to her interest in men, well, that's where her brother says things weren't so great. He told me that it seemed like she always chose to be with men who in his opinion were not good guys. He said she either dated or got involved with men who were irresponsible, rowdy, or into partying, sometimes all of the above, and those behaviors would rub off on Rhonda. Lynette told me that her sister eventually got married, but the marriage didn't last. Then she met another man with whom she became pregnant and had her first daughter, Brittany. But that relationship didn't last long either, and eventually Rhonda met another man with whom she had her second daughter, Karina. In 1994, Rhonda, Eric, and Lynette's dad died of cancer, and Eric told me his death hit everyone super hard. He said their father was the glue that held their entire family together, and when he passed away, nothing was the same. Not long afterwards, the siblings scattered. Eric moved to Louisiana, Rhonda stayed in Texas, and Lynette went to live in California. By the early 2000s, though, the sisters had reconnected and began living next door to one another in Kingsland, Texas, which is about an hour and fifteen minutes northwest of Boston. Lynette had a home there, as well as another smaller house right behind it, and the smaller structure was when she rented to Rhonda and her girls. It was honestly a great setup, because Lynette's sons and Rhonda's girls all played together, went to school together, and shared meals together almost every night. But after a while, things began to change. According to Lynette, on her birthday, about eighteen months prior to Rhonda's murder, she Rhonda and two of their friends attended a concert in Austin. Afterwards they went out for drinks, and while hanging out at a bar, Rhonda met Ricky, and they ended up staying out together the rest of the night. The following day, he dropped her off at her house in Kingsland, and according to Lynette, never left. Initially, the couple got along, but then after the first year or so of them being together, Lynette began to notice large bruises on her sister's body. When she'd asked Rhonda where they'd come from, she claimed that they were a result of her falling in the shower. But concern that her sister was lying or hiding potential abuse, Lynette went to Rhonda's daughters, Karina and Brittany, and she asked them what was going on inside their house. According to Lynette, the girls told her that their mom and Ricky would fight. Lynette then confronted Rhonda about her suspicions, and after that, things between Rhonda and Ricky improved. But then, after some more time passed, Lynette began to suspect that Ricky was abusing Rhonda again. After that, Lynette went straight to Ricky and told him that if he hit her sister again, she'd kick him out of the rental house, since she was the one who owned it. And after that, things got better, but then one night, Rhonda came to Lynette's back door frantically claiming Ricky had hit her. There was a big confrontation between all three of them, and by the end of it, Lynette gave Ricky an ultimatum, three days to leave the property, or else. When those three days were up, he left to go live in Victoria, Texas. But Rhonda, determined to make their relationship work, followed him, and she took her daughters with her. Lynette told me that her sister blamed Ricky's abusive behaviors on the fact that he'd been raised poorly and needed someone like her to show him how to be loved. Lynette strongly disagreed with her sister's choice to move to Victoria, but there wasn't much she could do to stop her. After leaving, Rhonda and Ricky's relationship continued to be up and down. And things reached a boiling point in April 2004, when the two of them got into a violent altercation in Victoria. She actually shared details about this incident with the Grand County Sheriff's Investigator who first interviewed him after his arrest. According to Ricky, on his birthday in late April 2004, which was almost four months before Rhonda's death, he and Rhonda had been drinking and celebrating his birthday. He claimed that after she got into a fight with a waitress at a bar, they left to head home. But then, while in the car, she'd stabbed him in the chest three times, before eventually calling 911. However, when I spoke with Rhonda's siblings, Eric and Lynette, they told me a very different version of this story. According to Eric, it was Ricky who'd grabbed Rhonda's hands. put them around a knife and then stabbed himself in the chest multiple times. Lynette told me the same thing, that it was Ricky who forced Rhonda to stab him. What the truth is, will likely never know. Eric did share with me that Rhonda had struggled with substance use disorders, particularly with alcohol and cannabis use. But he firmly believes that this stabbing incident that happened between his sister and Ricky was orchestrated by Ricky. Anyway, in the end Rhonda was the one who wound up in jail with charges related to that offense, not Ricky. In his interview with the Grand County Sheriff's Office, Ricky claimed he had been the person who'd gone and gotten Rhonda out of jail afterwards. But Eric and Lynette's recollection of that part of the story is the total opposite. They told me it was Eric who picked Rhonda up from jail. He then took her to his home in Louisiana to try and help her get back on her feet. As a result of being arrested, though, Rhonda lost custody of her girls. They each went to live with their respective dads. And Rhonda basically lost everything at that point. Lynette told me that effectively the stabbing case against Rhonda never went anywhere. And apparently, this incident with Ricky was not a breaking point for her. Because despite everything that had happened, the worst was still yet to come. After Ricky recovered from his injuries, post stabbing in Victoria, he moved to Colorado for work and continued to stay in touch with Rhonda while she was living in Louisiana. Rhonda's brother Eric told me he tried to encourage his sister to start over, but she wouldn't. She couldn't let go of Ricky. After a few weeks of living in Louisiana, Rhonda left to be with him in Colorado. Eric told me that the last memory he has of Rhonda is her standing in his living room, giving him a big hug and him telling her he loved her. After that, she boarded a bus and left. A few weeks later, it's when he learned from Moab police that she'd been killed. Rhonda's daughters didn't go with her to Colorado, but she would call them and check in from time to time. Karina, her youngest, told me that she remembers her mom leaving voicemails about wanting to move out west and raising animals on a ranch. Lynette told me that she would also get calls too. She said that whenever she spoke with her, Rhonda would talk a lot about how beautiful the landscape was and promise to send pictures, but she never got the chance to. Within a year of the crime, Rhonda's family got to see justice served after Ricky decided to take a plea deal. In exchange for pleading guilty to first degree felony murder and a third degree felony count of driving under the influence, Ricky was sentenced to a maximum term of five years to life for the murder and up to five years for the DUI. He was also ordered to pay nearly $153,000 in restitution to Rhonda's family. The Times Independent reported that during his sentencing hearing, Ricky emotionally apologized to Lynette and Rhonda's mother, who'd both traveled from Texas to attend the proceeding. But Lynette rejected Ricky's apology, saying, quote, "It didn't matter who started it. You always finished it, always. If you really truly loved her and really cared, after the first time, the fifth time, the tenth time, you would have quit hitting her," end quote. In her interview with me, Lynette explained that while trying to give her victim impact statement, Ricky kept interrupting and trying to blame Rhonda for not doing enough to stop him from what he claimed were bad behaviors derived from his own drug use. Lynette said the fact that he continued to try and blame others for his own actions enraged her, to the point where she had to hold herself back from jumping over the courtroom partition and confronting him. In 2010, Ricky submitted a petition for post-conviction relief, but that was denied in 2011 for filing it too late. He appealed that decision to the Utah Court of Appeals, but lost again. Today, he remains incarcerated at a Utah State Prison, according to a State Department of Corrections Public Information Officer. Since 2009, his inmate record reflects that he was investigated for committing at least three different infractions while behind bars, including being found guilty of assault and fighting. The earliest he scheduled to go before the Utah Board of Pardons and parole is August 2029. During our interview, I asked Rhonda's sister Lynette what her first impression was of Ricky, and she told me that from the get-go, she did not like him. There was just something about him that rubbed her the wrong way. And from the moment he and Rhonda began talking, Lynette said she tried everything to get her sister away from him. She told me, quote, "He was the last person that I would have ever wanted to speak to, but I don't know why, because I had just met him, but I guess sometimes when you know, you know. Sometimes people have that bad thing coming off of him." Karina told me something similar. She said that even though she was young when Ricky lived with her and her mom and sister, she remembers not being comfortable around him. A major heartbreak for Rhonda's sister Lynette is that Rhonda was killed in a place she was seemingly so happy to be in, a place that she'd found to be beautiful and great. Lynette told me that she genuinely believes Rhonda was happy in Utah because she thought that she was actually going to be able to show Ricky what it meant to be special to somebody and to be loved. Lynette believes that her sister wanted Ricky to see the most beautiful sides of life, but in the end, Rhonda paid the ultimate price. Her murder forever changed her daughter's lives, too. Karina told me that for the rest of her life, she and Brittany were kept apart by their respective dads. On rare occasions, they'd see one another for visits or talk on the phone, but as they grew older, things just didn't get easier for them. Lynette told me that the girls are basically strangers to one another now. Karina ended up on her own at just 17 years old, and to this day she feels there's so much she missed out on because her mom wasn't around. She told me she gets cagey whenever Mother's Day rolls around, it's a really painful time of year for her. She shared with me in part, quote, "I wish I could have grown up with my mom, I mean I wish I could have learned things about her. I wish I could have learned what she could have taught me. She was a cook. I didn't learn to cook until the last couple of years, and that's very sad. I know she would have taught me all that information." End quote. Karina told me she believes the reason her mom continued to chase Ricky was because she likely just wanted to have a man around to help her raise her in Brittany. She thinks her mom so desperately wanted a family that she was willing to stay with her abuser. Karina said that if there's one message that everyone listening to her mom's story should know, it's this, don't seek out other people for your own personal validation. If you love yourself and care for yourself, you're not going to accept anything less. When Net emphasized the same thing, she said, quote, "If you're not on the same page with somebody, if somebody doesn't treat you right, just walk away. You know, there's so many other people in the world, like that doesn't have to be your person. If that person is not good to you, leave them alone. Just get away." End quote. A story she shared with me that I want to leave you all with involved a discovery Lynette had while packing a parental car before Ricky's sentencing hearing back in 2005. She told me that while getting into the car, she looked down and saw a heart-shaped rock sitting at her feet. She kept it. And now has about 2,000 other heart-shaped stones that she's collected at various places she's visited over the years. She believes the stones are Rhonda's way of telling her, "Everything is going to be alright." Park Predators is an audio-check production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website ParkPredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram @ParkPredators. I think Chuck would approve.