Kidnapper Will Be Home For Holiday Woman Sentenced To 4-1/2 Years In Prison

A Spokane woman convicted of first-degree kidnapping and sentenced Wednesday to 4-1/2 years in prison will spend Christmas at home.

Rhondi Zyph, 18, was one of two women convicted in October of kidnapping Taunya Gardella, hacking off her hair and beating her.

Zyph has been on home detention, with electronic monitoring, since the trial.

She will remain at home until next Wednesday, when Superior Court Judge Paul Bastine will hold a hearing to decide whether Zyph must go to prison until her conviction is appealed.

Co-defendant Paula Lloyd, 22, has been sentenced to nearly 7 years in prison for the May 17 attack. She was convicted of first-degree kidnapping and second-degree robbery by the same jury that convicted Zyph.

Prosecutors say the kidnapping was motivated by the mistaken notion that Gardella was an informer who had told authorities about a friend convicted of dealing drugs two weeks before the attack.

The jury found Lloyd and Zyph guilty of taking Gardella from her Post Falls home. Prosecutors say they put Gardella in a car, blindfolded her, ripped off her clothes and hacked off her hair. The attackers stole her jewelry and her wallet.

Gardella was driven to a remote spot near Newman Lake, where her attackers marched her into the woods while singing “death songs,” prosecutors told the jury. They beat her and drove away.

The case illustrates the violence that goes hand in hand with the Inland Northwest’s illegal drug culture, authorities say.

Lloyd, as she was being led from the courtroom at the end of the weeklong trial, told Gardella, “I’ll be back.”

Once since then, Gardella said, her life had been threatened by someone who had called her at home.

Defense attorney Pat Stiley said Zyph, who turned 18 three days before the crime, had little to do with the beating.

“This is the weakest first-degree kidnapping I’ve ever seen,” said Stiley, who plans to take the case to the state Court of Appeals. “Plus, I’ve got a child going to the penitentiary for five … years.”

, DataTimes