Latest / The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories / Serial Killer Documentary - Texas Serial Killer William Reece
Transcript
- 0:11Speaker 1: They got me set up like I'm a serial killer.
- 0:14Speaker 2: Right now, are you?
- 0:18Speaker 3: No, I'm not.
- 0:19Speaker 1: I'll pass any polygra if you throw at me, you
- 0:23Speaker 1: know I have no reason to lie.
- 0:27Speaker 4: If you passed him pushing your grocery card, you'd never
- 0:31Speaker 4: know that inside his head he just thought about how
- 0:34Speaker 4: to kill you.
- 0:38Speaker 3: My daughter went on a run in the morning, and
- 0:41Speaker 3: she's been gone a lot longer than I expected.
- 0:45Speaker 5: There's no doubt in my mind he would have continued
- 0:48Speaker 5: slaughtering young women and girls.
- 0:53Speaker 3: The females jumped out of a white Julie.
- 0:55Speaker 6: She needs an ambulance.
- 0:56Speaker 7: She can't walk.
- 0:59Speaker 5: It's like we have a predator in our neighborhood.
- 1:03Speaker 8: You have the capacity to become a serial killer on
- 1:06Speaker 8: a scale that is difficult to even imagine.
- 1:46Speaker 9: Just southwest of Oklahoma City lies the tiny town of Anadarko,
- 1:52Speaker 9: population six thousand.
- 1:55Speaker 4: It's just your average rural Oklahoma town.
- 2:00Speaker 6: I had a real high crime rate. Everybody's pretty laid back.
- 2:03Speaker 4: There's not a lot there to miss or see.
- 2:07Speaker 6: Really, when you meet somebody knew, you ask.
- 2:11Speaker 4: Them who their people are, because you're going to know
- 2:15Speaker 4: somebody in their family.
- 2:20Speaker 9: Everyone in Anadarko knows Kathy Dobrie and her daughter Tiffany.
- 2:25Speaker 7: My name is Kathy Dobrie and I'm the mother of
- 2:29Speaker 7: Tiffany Debrie Johnston. She's always with me before she got married.
- 2:38Speaker 7: She was my shadow everyone, That's what everyone called her.
- 2:43Speaker 7: Tiffany was very energetic, loving, caring, hyper. She cared about everyone.
- 2:54Speaker 7: She liked animals, She liked to play in the dirt.
- 2:58Speaker 7: She wanted to study the plan and see what they
- 3:02Speaker 7: how they were formed, and want to have you because
- 3:04Speaker 7: she could grow just about anything. She said her mind to.
- 3:09Speaker 6: Tiffany and I became friends in junior high.
- 3:12Speaker 4: I was new to town, new to the area, and
- 3:15Speaker 4: uh didn't really know anybody, didn't have any friends, didn't
- 3:18Speaker 4: have much going for me, and uh, Tiffany was the
- 3:22Speaker 4: type of person that was going to take care of you.
- 3:25Speaker 7: Uh.
- 3:26Speaker 4: She just decided she was going to be my friend
- 3:28Speaker 4: since I didn't have any Her and I were friends
- 3:30Speaker 4: from then on.
- 3:33Speaker 9: Shortly after graduating high school, Tiffany marries her childhood sweetheart.
- 3:40Speaker 7: She said she was back madly in love with Ryan
- 3:44Speaker 7: and all girls should marry their first sweetheart. She was
- 3:48Speaker 7: determined to get married, and she did.
- 3:55Speaker 9: The young couple moved to nearby Bethany Ryan is Floyd
- 4:00Speaker 9: did a manufacturing plant. Well, nineteen year old Tiffany works
- 4:04Speaker 9: two jobs so she could afford a new car.
- 4:07Speaker 7: She traded her car, yeah, on her new white Neon.
- 4:12Speaker 7: She was so proud of that. She's always cleaning it
- 4:16Speaker 7: out or washing it or because she was proud of it.
- 4:21Speaker 7: Was something that she worked for that she got.
- 4:26Speaker 9: On July twenty sixth, nineteen ninety seven, the newlyweds planned
- 4:30Speaker 9: to meet at a club after work.
- 4:32Speaker 7: Jiffany had gotten off work and then she went and
- 4:35Speaker 7: cleaned out her car or worceshed her car because it
- 4:38Speaker 7: was hers and Ryan's three month anniversary.
- 4:44Speaker 10: I was actually working patrol at that time and I
- 4:48Speaker 10: drove by the Sunshine car wash. There's about four vehicles
- 4:54Speaker 10: that were there, people still washing their car, and I
- 4:57Speaker 10: did observe a white vehicle in the furthest West stall
- 5:02Speaker 10: that had no one around it. It was about forty
- 5:05Speaker 10: five minutes later I was again driving by that car wash,
- 5:09Speaker 10: and now there were no vehicles other than that one
- 5:12Speaker 10: white car in the far west stall and there was
- 5:15Speaker 10: nobody around the car. We did not see anyone around
- 5:19Speaker 10: the car wash at all. Detective Mobley looked in the
- 5:25Speaker 10: passenger side, and he advised me that the keys to
- 5:28Speaker 10: the vehicle were still in the ignition. That kind of
- 5:34Speaker 10: raised our concern, so we started look into it a
- 5:39Speaker 10: little deeper. Myself and Mobley made entry into the vehicle
- 5:44Speaker 10: to try to find a phone number or name of
- 5:47Speaker 10: someone that we might be able to contact. We did
- 5:51Speaker 10: end up locating the number with the word mom on it.
- 5:58Speaker 7: The police department called around midnight. I wanted to know
- 6:05Speaker 7: Tiff and he had a white car, and if I
- 6:09Speaker 7: knew where she was, I started calling people. I knew
- 6:15Speaker 7: that she might go to. No one had hard from her,
- 6:19Speaker 7: no one had seen her. And this is like at
- 6:21Speaker 7: two o'clock in the morning. So by the time we
- 6:25Speaker 7: got up here at the car wash, they had everything
- 6:29Speaker 7: blocked off down deep. You knew that with all her
- 6:35Speaker 7: personal belongings in her pit her car, that she had
- 6:39Speaker 7: been adopted and she was probably not alive.
- 6:47Speaker 9: A frequent visitor to the car wash is thirty eight
- 6:49Speaker 9: year old William Reese, who Kathy knows from his time
- 6:54Speaker 9: in Anadarko.
- 6:56Speaker 7: He was always in trouble. He he stole vehicles, he
- 7:02Speaker 7: stoved from grocery stores or what have you he.
- 7:06Speaker 6: Had been in jail. He'd already been in prison.
- 7:08Speaker 4: He had just gotten out shortly before this happening.
- 7:17Speaker 8: So William Reese was born in nineteen fifty nine in Oklahoma,
- 7:22Speaker 8: and so it was a pretty depressed area that he
- 7:25Speaker 8: grew up in. He had a difficult upbringing, unstable childhood.
- 7:33Speaker 8: He was one of thirteen children. He was in foster
- 7:37Speaker 8: care system for a while. He was forced to quit
- 7:39Speaker 8: school in the ninth grade and go to work. So
- 7:43Speaker 8: this is somebody, I think who got a pretty tough
- 7:46Speaker 8: start in life. There was probably a combination of neglect
- 7:51Speaker 8: with so many siblings and there being a lot of
- 7:53Speaker 8: financial instability, and I think it would have been a
- 7:56Speaker 8: pretty harsh upbringing in a lot of respects. There was
- 7:58Speaker 8: a lot of suspicions that he was in views at
- 8:00Speaker 8: some point.
- 8:02Speaker 11: Thirteen siblings, a family background, being moved around. You have
- 8:07Speaker 11: lots of negative risk factors in front of Reece.
- 8:15Speaker 8: That marriage does not last very long, and it doesn't.
- 8:18Speaker 8: It fizzles out pretty quickly because of how we and
- 8:22Speaker 8: Racee is treating his wife. He's drinking and he's physically
- 8:26Speaker 8: abusive to her and she ends the relationship. This is
- 8:32Speaker 8: somebody who for whatever reason, doesn't respect women feels entitled
- 8:38Speaker 8: to behave. However, he wants to likely blames everything that's
- 8:42Speaker 8: wrong in his life on other people, and those are
- 8:45Speaker 8: things that do not bode well in terms of his
- 8:47Speaker 8: relationship with other women in the future or his ability
- 8:51Speaker 8: to adjust and adapt effectively to life as an adult.
- 8:56Speaker 8: His ex wife said that he was unusually close to
- 8:58Speaker 8: his mom, and even she'd made the combat at one
- 9:02Speaker 8: point that she felt like his mom was so protective
- 9:05Speaker 8: of him that quote, you know, if he kills somebody,
- 9:08Speaker 8: she would help him hide the body.
- 9:20Speaker 9: It's one day since Tiffany Dobrie went missing with her
- 9:24Speaker 9: car left at a Bethany carwash around fifty miles away.
- 9:30Speaker 9: Oklahoma City police make a gruesome discovery while investigating their
- 9:34Speaker 9: own missing person's case.
- 9:37Speaker 10: As they were investigating that scene, they canvassed the area
- 9:42Speaker 10: and then ended up finding Tiffany's body on that same
- 9:45Speaker 10: road about one hundred yards down.
- 10:00Speaker 7: Ask yourself, who did it? Why would someone want to
- 10:03Speaker 7: kill TiO.
- 10:06Speaker 4: You didn't think about your friend just getting murdered for
- 10:10Speaker 4: no reason out in the middle of nowhere like that.
- 10:12Speaker 6: It just didn't happen.
- 10:14Speaker 10: The thing that always kind of bothered me the most
- 10:18Speaker 10: is that Tiffan and Ryan they just started their lives
- 10:21Speaker 10: together and within three months it got taken away. If
- 10:29Speaker 10: they had their full life together, what would have come
- 10:31Speaker 10: of that?
- 10:42Speaker 7: And so we went down a list of people for
- 10:45Speaker 7: the police to check out because we didn't know what
- 10:50Speaker 7: else to do, and if the first thing that Mama
- 10:58Speaker 7: thought of to so I can't that it didn't enter
- 11:02Speaker 7: our minds, because it did. You don't know if he
- 11:06Speaker 7: was really at work or not. You know, he could
- 11:10Speaker 7: have took off.
- 11:13Speaker 10: In any case where you have someone that has disappeared,
- 11:19Speaker 10: you know, you always you always got to start with
- 11:22Speaker 10: people that are close and family members. So absolutely he
- 11:27Speaker 10: was looked at.
- 11:33Speaker 9: Police soon determined Tiffany was last seen alive shortly after
- 11:36Speaker 9: six pm on July twenty seventh. Her husband was at
- 11:42Speaker 9: work from three pm until eleven pm, and is cleared
- 11:45Speaker 9: of any suspicion. Bethany police conducted a background check on
- 11:56Speaker 9: local sex offenders, including William Or. They find no evidence
- 12:03Speaker 9: linking him to the crime scene. Tiffany's mother knows Reese's mother,
- 12:10Speaker 9: who offers to prepare Tiffany's clothes for her funeral.
- 12:13Speaker 7: Her name with pat She wasn't a friend, but she
- 12:18Speaker 7: was an acquaintance because she did my ironing and what
- 12:22Speaker 7: have you for me? And so we took Tiffany's clothes
- 12:25Speaker 7: down to her for her to press some for us,
- 12:29Speaker 7: because she called and said she would do that.
- 12:46Speaker 8: In nineteen eighty six, he kidnaps a woman and he
- 12:50Speaker 8: rapes her. And at that point, I think he has
- 12:54Speaker 8: taken a hard turn in his life, because now he
- 12:58Speaker 8: is making choices that the vast majority of people would
- 13:01Speaker 8: never make. He's become a criminal, He's become a predator.
- 13:13Speaker 10: He was driving a truck and going to pick up
- 13:15Speaker 10: a load, and he picked her up and rude. Her
- 13:22Speaker 10: car broke down under a overpass, and he stopped and
- 13:27Speaker 10: asked if she needed help. He kept on her and
- 13:31Speaker 10: then she finally agreed and got in the truck with him.
- 13:51Speaker 9: Reese is arrested but released after posting bail. He a
- 13:56Speaker 9: tax agan.
- 13:56Speaker 5: One month later, he rapes one woman while he's awaiting
- 14:03Speaker 5: trial for raping another one. I don't know how you
- 14:07Speaker 5: get any more of a definition of a predator than that.
- 14:11Speaker 9: Both of these victims survive their ordeal and have their
- 14:14Speaker 9: identities protected. Re stands trial on two counts of rape.
- 14:20Speaker 9: He has found guilty and sentenced to twenty five years
- 14:23Speaker 9: in prison.
- 14:25Speaker 11: For an individual who is inside of a correctional institution
- 14:28Speaker 11: for years, that day is filled with border. Our environment
- 14:33Speaker 11: creates our propensity to be involved in crime.
- 14:36Speaker 2: Well, just think of it.
- 14:37Speaker 11: You're surrounded by other people who have committed crimes. One
- 14:43Speaker 11: learns to associate with certain people. One has to protect themselves.
- 14:48Speaker 11: Inside of a correctional institution a lot of time to think.
- 15:09Speaker 9: Reese's attorneys claim errors were made during his trial, and
- 15:13Speaker 9: after serving ten years of his twenty five year sentence,
- 15:16Speaker 9: convicted rapist, Reese is released early. He briefly lives with
- 15:21Speaker 9: his mother and Anna Darko before moving seven hours away
- 15:24Speaker 9: to Houston, Texas.
- 15:35Speaker 3: My daughter went on a run this morning, and she's
- 15:39Speaker 3: been gone a lot longer than I'm perfected in play good,
- 15:42Speaker 3: Bob Feather.
- 15:44Speaker 9: Twelve year old Laura Smither goes for a jog in
- 15:47Speaker 9: her friends With Texas neighborhood and never returns home.
- 15:52Speaker 5: I'd never seen anything quite like this before. I mean,
- 15:56Speaker 5: you had people from everywhere coming out of the woodwork
- 16:00Speaker 5: for this young girl. They were going through the fields,
- 16:04Speaker 5: they were searching in bodies, of water everywhere.
- 16:18Speaker 9: Laura's body is found seventeen days later in a retention
- 16:22Speaker 9: pond in nearby Pasadena.
- 16:25Speaker 5: That today I will never forget because you had a
- 16:27Speaker 5: father and son. They were out there, they were training
- 16:29Speaker 5: a hunting dog. Hunting dog hits on something in the water.
- 16:33Speaker 5: Father and son go out there to see what's going on.
- 16:35Speaker 5: And this is the part that I mean, just so chilling,
- 16:39Speaker 5: because the dad looked at the sun and says, I
- 16:41Speaker 5: wonder what kind of animal that is? And the son
- 16:43Speaker 5: looks back at the dad and says, animals don't wear socks.
- 16:56Speaker 5: William Reese became a suspect early on because he was
- 16:59Speaker 5: a convicted second out of Oklahoma, and that's fairly standard.
- 17:02Speaker 5: When you have a child disappear like this, police start
- 17:05Speaker 5: looking at registered sex offenders in the area. More than that,
- 17:09Speaker 5: Reese had a construction job near this spot. It got
- 17:13Speaker 5: rained out the morning Laura disappeared, so he would have
- 17:15Speaker 5: been going home and that would have put him along
- 17:18Speaker 5: her route about the time she disappeared. There were fibers
- 17:32Speaker 5: that were found that matched formats in his truck. The
- 17:37Speaker 5: fibers were unique, but they weren't so incredibly unique that
- 17:41Speaker 5: It's like, Okay, these fibers could only possibly have come
- 17:45Speaker 5: from William Reese's truck. It wasn't unique enough. And honestly,
- 17:51Speaker 5: fibers are not DNA. A lot of that evidence had
- 17:54Speaker 5: been destroyed because Laura was left in water.
- 17:58Speaker 8: This is a twelve year old child, and what that
- 18:03Speaker 8: tells me is one of two things. Either William Reese
- 18:07Speaker 8: did not recognize how young she was when he grabbed her.
- 18:13Speaker 8: I don't believe that. Number two is that this is
- 18:17Speaker 8: somebody who is sexually interested in this age group and
- 18:24Speaker 8: is willing to take advantage of an opportunity and rape
- 18:29Speaker 8: and murder somebody who is that innocent and that young.
- 18:35Speaker 9: While under police suspicion and within their custody, Reese speaks
- 18:39Speaker 9: with the Texas News Channel to profess his innocence.
- 18:42Speaker 1: Who they gonna look at first, an ex con, especially
- 18:47Speaker 1: if you've done hard time, You're gonna be a number
- 18:49Speaker 1: one suspect.
- 18:50Speaker 6: No matter what.
- 18:51Speaker 1: And if they can't find nobody, you're gonna be their Patsy.
- 19:13Speaker 9: Sandra sa Paul, a nineteen year old pregnant mother, comes
- 19:17Speaker 9: face to face with William Reese just south of Houston.
- 19:24Speaker 5: She goes into a convenience store. And she comes out
- 19:27Speaker 5: of the convenience store. See she has a flat tire.
- 19:30Speaker 5: A supposed good Samaritan comes along. Oh, let me help
- 19:33Speaker 5: you out with that tire. Boom grabs her, tosses her
- 19:37Speaker 5: into the truck, takes off down the freeway.
- 19:43Speaker 8: The fact that William Race acts so quickly after his
- 19:49Speaker 8: race in prison suggests to me that this is somebody
- 19:53Speaker 8: who has thought about this and fantasized about this for
- 19:58Speaker 8: nine years. While behind bars, he tells her to take
- 20:04Speaker 8: her clothes off. She bends down to take her shoes
- 20:07Speaker 8: off and notices that the car door is unlocked, and she,
- 20:11Speaker 8: at that point makes a very important decision.
- 20:15Speaker 11: This may be my last opportunity. The more secluded, the
- 20:19Speaker 11: more away, the more the person is going to their
- 20:23Speaker 11: environment rather than being in my environment, takes the advantage
- 20:26Speaker 11: away from you.
- 20:29Speaker 8: I would rather die jumping out of this car and
- 20:32Speaker 8: leaving my fate in my own hands, than suffer whatever
- 20:36Speaker 8: is about to happen if I stay with this man.
- 20:40Speaker 4: The females jumped out of a white duly unknown LP
- 20:43Speaker 4: left feet headed forty five mark bound.
- 20:46Speaker 7: She needs an ambulance. He can't walk, and we.
- 20:48Speaker 3: Got an Antley.
- 20:56Speaker 9: With Sandra now safe, police begin questioning her, hoping that
- 21:00Speaker 9: can find her kidnapper before he attacks again. Twenty year
- 21:10Speaker 9: old Kelly Anne Cox goes missing in Denton, Texas.
- 21:18Speaker 5: Kelly Cox was a beautiful, single mom college student in
- 21:23Speaker 5: what is essentially kind of a college town of Denton, Texas.
- 21:27Speaker 5: She had just wrapped up a school field trip. She
- 21:30Speaker 5: was studying the area of criminal justice, and she stopped
- 21:34Speaker 5: at this convenience store and unfortunately that's where she crossed
- 21:37Speaker 5: paths with William Race. She has vanished into thin air.
- 21:44Speaker 5: And that's what's again so frightening about all of this.
- 21:49Speaker 8: It's somewhat mind boggling on the one hand that William
- 21:52Speaker 8: Race continues his killing spree after Sandra s Paul manages
- 21:59Speaker 8: to get out an escape. William Race is so focused
- 22:05Speaker 8: on finding young women that kind of fit his prototype
- 22:10Speaker 8: and sexually assaulting them abducting them that he's not even
- 22:14Speaker 8: concerned about Sandra se Paul. He is thinking about his
- 22:18Speaker 8: next victim and finding her.
- 22:22Speaker 9: Kelly Ane Cox's disappearance in Denton, Texas is around three
- 22:26Speaker 9: hours away from Tiffany and Oklahoma. At the time of
- 22:32Speaker 9: Tiffany's abduction, Kathy Doughbrie has no idea of these other cases.
- 22:44Speaker 9: Seventeen year old high school student Jessica Cain goes missing
- 22:47Speaker 9: near Houston, just.
- 22:54Speaker 5: Like the others, had her entire life ahead of her
- 22:58Speaker 5: high school student with friends after a school event. Jessica
- 23:05Speaker 5: was always very well behaved, never violated curfew anything like that.
- 23:08Speaker 5: So when she didn't come home one time, her parents
- 23:10Speaker 5: were instantly worried and her truck was found parked on
- 23:14Speaker 5: the side of Interstate forty five. Like Laura, it was
- 23:21Speaker 5: like she just fell into a hole in the universe,
- 23:23Speaker 5: just vanished into thin air. But the truck was there,
- 23:25Speaker 5: purse was in the front seat, didn't even really appear
- 23:28Speaker 5: there was any.
- 23:28Speaker 6: Kind of a struggle.
- 23:30Speaker 10: Oh, it's terrifying.
- 23:32Speaker 5: It's like we have a predator in our neighborhood. People
- 23:37Speaker 5: in the area were like, who is hunting our children?
- 23:42Speaker 11: What we have as an apex predator an individual that
- 23:46Speaker 11: has opportunity combined with skills and additionally being punished for
- 23:53Speaker 11: the criminal act in the past, but not being deterred.
- 23:58Speaker 8: I have always thought that the killing part of it
- 24:01Speaker 8: for him was more pragmatic that I'm not going to
- 24:05Speaker 8: leave a victim to point their finger at me again.
- 24:09Speaker 8: My needs are more important than anybody else's, and I'm
- 24:12Speaker 8: going to make sure that nobody's left to identify me.
- 24:27Speaker 9: Kathy Doughbray still has no idea who killed her daughter.
- 24:32Speaker 9: Police have no suspects and don't suspect William Reese is involved,
- 24:38Speaker 9: But four hundred and fifty miles away in Texas, kidnapp
- 24:42Speaker 9: survivor Sandra say Paul is now facing him in a lineup.
- 24:48Speaker 9: He's being asked to repeat the lines Sandra heard her
- 24:51Speaker 9: kidnapp or shout, you.
- 24:54Speaker 2: Cannot explain you.
- 25:10Speaker 1: Yah.
- 25:17Speaker 9: The net is closing around Reese and Texas, But will
- 25:20Speaker 9: he be linked to the murder of Tiffany Johnston four
- 25:23Speaker 9: hundred and fifty miles away. Three months after the murder
- 25:35Speaker 9: of Tiffany Johnston, Sandra Sepaul has identified William Reese as
- 25:40Speaker 9: her kidnapper four hundred and fifty miles away in Texas,
- 25:47Speaker 9: As authorities gather evidence to prosecute him, the owner of
- 25:50Speaker 9: the Sunshine car wash where Tiffany was last seen, recognizes
- 25:54Speaker 9: Reese in news reports. He tells Oklahoma police that Reese
- 25:59Speaker 9: is a frequent customer, but investigators still have no way
- 26:03Speaker 9: of linking Reese to the crime.
- 26:06Speaker 10: We checked people that lived in the area that had
- 26:10Speaker 10: serious criminal histories, and none of those came to fruition.
- 26:16Speaker 10: No forensic evidence at that time, and there weren't cameras
- 26:20Speaker 10: in that area that we could rely on for evidence purposes.
- 26:26Speaker 10: So it truly came to where we believed whoever committed
- 26:31Speaker 10: this came from outside of the community.
- 26:36Speaker 9: Bethany Police passed the case to the Oklahoma State Bureau
- 26:39Speaker 9: of Investigation, but still no leads. Nine months passed by,
- 26:49Speaker 9: and Tiffany's mother, Kathy Dobrie, makes a solemn vow.
- 26:54Speaker 7: We had lots of redbirds around that day and were
- 27:00Speaker 7: we live is American Indians, and I'm Party Indians, and
- 27:09Speaker 7: we believe in the redbirds. When the redbirds come to
- 27:13Speaker 7: see you as a visit from your loved one from heaven.
- 27:25Speaker 7: I told her that I would find who murdered her
- 27:29Speaker 7: and get justice for her because what just wasn't right.
- 27:35Speaker 7: They took away my youngest child.
- 27:42Speaker 4: If something were to ever happen to anyone in my
- 27:45Speaker 4: immediate family, Kathy is the first person I'm calling to
- 27:49Speaker 4: start looking into it.
- 27:53Speaker 6: She does not know how to give up. She does not.
- 27:56Speaker 4: Quit and she knew that one day we would get there.
- 28:00Speaker 4: We just didn't know when.
- 28:07Speaker 9: Each anniversary of Tiffany's murder is met with an eerie coincidence.
- 28:14Speaker 7: Every year, on Tiffany's anniversary date, which is July the
- 28:19Speaker 7: twenty sixth, there would be little necklaces, bracelets, and we'd
- 28:29Speaker 7: gather these up. We didn't touch them. We put on
- 28:33Speaker 7: gloves like you're supposed to, and would give them to
- 28:36Speaker 7: the OSBI.
- 28:37Speaker 10: It was concern of members of the department, and I
- 28:40Speaker 10: think it's part of the family that the suspect might
- 28:43Speaker 10: have been the one leaving these trinkets.
- 28:46Speaker 4: They would just show up every year at the same time,
- 28:50Speaker 4: and nobody would ever own up to.
- 28:52Speaker 6: Putting them there.
- 29:02Speaker 9: Cathy's dogged determination finally gets results in her daughter's cold case.
- 29:08Speaker 9: Advanced DNA testing is performed using the evidence collected from
- 29:12Speaker 9: Tiffany's body. It reveals a partial profile of her killer.
- 29:19Speaker 9: Investigators compare this to DNA swabs from her ex boyfriend's husband, colleagues,
- 29:26Speaker 9: and even patron seen at the car wash the day
- 29:28Speaker 9: of her murder. All are excluded. Yet to be tested
- 29:34Speaker 9: is Anadarko resident William Lewis Reese, a known sex offender
- 29:38Speaker 9: and frequent visitor to the car wash. Police also look
- 29:43Speaker 9: for a link between Tiffany's killing and the crimes and
- 29:45Speaker 9: Texas and realize a striking connection the Inner State forty
- 29:51Speaker 9: five corridor.
- 29:56Speaker 11: A perfect formula does come together to allow these criminal
- 30:00Speaker 11: activities to take place. Access very important.
- 30:06Speaker 6: So here you have an area.
- 30:08Speaker 11: South of Houston, Texas before the very end in Galveston,
- 30:12Speaker 11: and which one can be on the Interstate Highway and
- 30:15Speaker 11: quickly be in another state or another part of this
- 30:21Speaker 11: huge state of Texas, very quickly.
- 30:28Speaker 8: In many respects, Texas is a serial killer's dream. You
- 30:33Speaker 8: can go for miles and miles without seeing anybody. There's
- 30:38Speaker 8: actually a part of Texas that is infamous for being
- 30:42Speaker 8: called the Texas Killing Fields because they've discovered about thirty
- 30:46Speaker 8: bodies of young women there that have been unsolved.
- 30:53Speaker 4: Now we have a pattern, we have something to actually
- 30:56Speaker 4: look at. So from this solid we have other cases
- 31:00Speaker 4: that we can study along with ours to help get
- 31:05Speaker 4: closure for all of them.
- 31:08Speaker 5: It's a horribly frightening thing, especially as a father of two,
- 31:11Speaker 5: to think that there are humans out there that walk
- 31:14Speaker 5: around look at another human, go I want that I'm
- 31:17Speaker 5: going to take that and they do.
- 31:28Speaker 9: By January twenty fourteen, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation
- 31:33Speaker 9: is closing in on suspected serial killer William Lewis Reese
- 31:37Speaker 9: and seeks to obtain his DNA. Reese is easy to locate.
- 31:42Speaker 9: He was successfully convicted for the kidnap of Sandra Say
- 31:45Speaker 9: Paul and is serving a sixty years sentence in a
- 31:49Speaker 9: Texas prison.
- 31:51Speaker 5: Sandra Say Paul is the reason the murders stopped. I
- 31:57Speaker 5: give her an amazing amount of credit because she was
- 32:01Speaker 5: brave enough to escape him, and she was brave enough
- 32:04Speaker 5: to never ever waver or never be intimidated, never be
- 32:07Speaker 5: too scared to identify him, and stick through that all
- 32:11Speaker 5: the way to the end. He was convicted and the
- 32:13Speaker 5: only reason no one else was murdered is because he
- 32:16Speaker 5: went to prison, and that was because of Sandra Sea Paul.
- 32:20Speaker 9: Authority Swabberese for his DNA and compare it to the
- 32:24Speaker 9: partial profile taken from Tiffany's body. The results indicate Reese
- 32:30Speaker 9: could be the killer.
- 32:45Speaker 10: We believed that he was probably the person that did it.
- 32:48Speaker 10: It was just finding that link to be able to
- 32:51Speaker 10: put it all together. You want to do everything you
- 32:55Speaker 10: can to find that link, and I mean, look, it
- 32:59Speaker 10: took a decade for that link to finally come to fruition.
- 33:07Speaker 9: Texas authorities discover another critical clue as they investigate the
- 33:11Speaker 9: link between Reese and Tiffany's murder long distance phone cards.
- 33:17Speaker 5: So he had these cards and he used one of
- 33:19Speaker 5: them to make a phone call, and that was still
- 33:22Speaker 5: in his truck when friends with police impounded it, and
- 33:25Speaker 5: that wound up being some very key evidence that Oklahoma
- 33:28Speaker 5: authorities used.
- 33:36Speaker 8: Investigators go to William Rees and basically let him know
- 33:40Speaker 8: that the gig is up and that you know, they
- 33:43Speaker 8: have DNA linking him to Tiffany Johnston. And I think
- 33:46Speaker 8: that at this point William Reese is somewhat panicked because
- 33:50Speaker 8: he is well aware of the fact that Oklahoma has
- 33:52Speaker 8: the death penalty, and so he is in prison in
- 33:56Speaker 8: Texas at this point, and so I think he decided
- 34:00Speaker 8: that if I'm cooperative with some of these other unsolved murders,
- 34:06Speaker 8: perhaps I can avoid the death penalty in Texas and
- 34:09Speaker 8: won't be extradited to Oklahoma to potentially face the death
- 34:13Speaker 8: penalty there.
- 34:22Speaker 9: With this new information linking Reese to Tiffany's murder, as
- 34:25Speaker 9: a bargaining tool. Investigators questioned Reese about the murders of
- 34:30Speaker 9: Laura Smither, Kelly Anne Cox, and Jessica Kain. He reveals
- 34:36Speaker 9: where police can find the bodies of Jessica Kin and
- 34:39Speaker 9: Kelly Ane Cox. His cooperation means Reese won't face the
- 34:44Speaker 9: death penalty for these murders.
- 34:47Speaker 6: He's a chess player. He knows how to use his ponds.
- 34:52Speaker 4: He knows how to use his pieces, which pieces to sacrifice,
- 34:55Speaker 4: when to get what he wants. And I feel that
- 35:00Speaker 4: he has used his victims as those pieces and played
- 35:04Speaker 4: them against law enforcement to gain favors. And I don't
- 35:09Speaker 4: think that we will ever know how many of those
- 35:11Speaker 4: pieces he has held.
- 35:13Speaker 6: Back to play later.
- 35:15Speaker 11: There's no reason to believe that there are not more
- 35:18Speaker 11: that are out there. This is where further investigation can
- 35:23Speaker 11: take place. But then there becomes a question for the individual.
- 35:26Speaker 11: How much more information am I going to give you?
- 35:28Speaker 11: If I'm already here for the rest of my life,
- 35:30Speaker 11: what advantage do I have.
- 35:34Speaker 9: Reese doesn't confess to any other murders. He claims he
- 35:40Speaker 9: accidentally hit Laura Smither while she was jogging along the
- 35:43Speaker 9: side of the road.
- 35:48Speaker 12: I pick I even really real backwards cut her in
- 35:55Speaker 12: a slowboard, a trip on the pass your side and
- 35:58Speaker 12: the horde.
- 36:01Speaker 2: Like getting a lad. The door took cough. I don't
- 36:06Speaker 2: remember how I got out from where I was some
- 36:08Speaker 2: danger park, the lady in the platter, and I went home.
- 36:15Speaker 9: Reese doesn't say anymore about Kelly an Cox, just that
- 36:19Speaker 9: he got into an altercation with her at a convenience store.
- 36:23Speaker 2: Opened up my door, boom, I run right into her.
- 36:26Speaker 13: Coke went all over me and we got into a chair,
- 36:30Speaker 13: and she hit me with that coke.
- 36:32Speaker 2: When I hit her, she hit her head. You know
- 36:34Speaker 2: how your door opens up. Her head hit terror. She
- 36:38Speaker 2: slipped back. She's out.
- 36:41Speaker 13: I put her in the back seat. She never woke up.
- 36:45Speaker 13: She wouldn't breathe or nothing. She never woke up, and
- 36:48Speaker 13: I dug me at the little home put.
- 36:49Speaker 2: Her in in.
- 36:54Speaker 5: Reese confessed, but they were carefully crafted confessions to where
- 36:59Speaker 5: he upheld his end of the bargain that I'll tell
- 37:01Speaker 5: you what happened. But he never really fully told police
- 37:05Speaker 5: what he did.
- 37:08Speaker 8: When you listen to his confessions or you hear his confessions,
- 37:11Speaker 8: it's just it's just amazing how he just storts clearly
- 37:16Speaker 8: what happened they'll talk about murdering somebody, but they won't
- 37:20Speaker 8: admit to assault sexual assault for some reason. Or they'll
- 37:24Speaker 8: do what a lot of murderers do, which is fine
- 37:27Speaker 8: ways to what we psychologists called neutralize their actions. So
- 37:31Speaker 8: that might mean blaming the victim, which he definitely did.
- 37:35Speaker 8: You know, Oh this person started it. We got into
- 37:38Speaker 8: a match. You know, oh this person we got into
- 37:40Speaker 8: some kind of argument about spilling coke on me. I
- 37:44Speaker 8: can't think of a better description of somebody who has
- 37:46Speaker 8: no compassion, empathy, or caring for his victims. They truly
- 37:50Speaker 8: are objects for him to fulfill his sexual fantasies.
- 38:00Speaker 9: Reese also claims an argument ensued with Tiffany Johnston at
- 38:04Speaker 9: the car wash Nex thing.
- 38:06Speaker 13: I know this girl is yelling at me that sprager.
- 38:09Speaker 13: I don't think it's sprager, but she's cussing in everything.
- 38:14Speaker 13: That's when I grabbed you around throat, he choking. She
- 38:17Speaker 13: wouldn't move no more, and I shut the door and
- 38:20Speaker 13: I backed out.
- 38:23Speaker 2: They try to out such funny victims. I don't think so. Okay,
- 38:28Speaker 2: I guess I don't think so kind of opens up.
- 38:30Speaker 2: I mean, where spoil I mean for I know now.
- 38:46Speaker 7: My bow was to find who murdered her and get
- 38:48Speaker 7: justice for her.
- 38:51Speaker 9: William Reese is convicted of the kidnapping and first degree
- 38:54Speaker 9: murder of Tiffany Johnston. He is sentenced to death.
- 39:05Speaker 7: The day that we got our conviction on Reese, the
- 39:11Speaker 7: redbirds were lined up outside our house, on the light pole,
- 39:18Speaker 7: off the way across the line, and.
- 39:22Speaker 3: They were everywhere.
- 39:24Speaker 7: Tiffany knew then that mama got justice. I'm persistent and
- 39:32Speaker 7: like I said, she was my baby, and I made
- 39:34Speaker 7: her a promise and I carried it out.
- 39:53Speaker 6: He was ice cold, arrogant.
- 39:56Speaker 4: When they showed the pictures of his victims' bodies of
- 40:01Speaker 4: what he had done, he would smile and lick his lips.
- 40:06Speaker 7: Kidney gave her live to help the parents in Texas
- 40:12Speaker 7: brings some closure to them because if it hadn't have
- 40:16Speaker 7: been for Tiffany's case, Texas wouldn't have had anything.
- 40:22Speaker 9: Rees accepts a plea deal, and in addition to his
- 40:25Speaker 9: current sentence for Sandra Sapau's kidnapping, he is sentenced to
- 40:29Speaker 9: a further three life terms in a Texas prison for
- 40:33Speaker 9: the murders of Jessica Cain, Kelly an Cox, and Laura Smither.
- 40:39Speaker 9: William Reese is currently serving his prison sentences in Texas, so.
- 40:45Speaker 5: He still owes the state of Texas time for Sandra
- 40:49Speaker 5: Sapau's kidnapping and now for the murders of Laura, Jessica
- 40:53Speaker 5: and Kelly Ann. There's an appeal process in Oklahoma. My
- 40:58Speaker 5: sneaking suspicion is when he runs out of appeals in
- 41:01Speaker 5: Oklahoma and they actually set a date for his execution,
- 41:05Speaker 5: he will be extra guided back.
- 41:07Speaker 7: We got justice for Tiffany in the court system that
- 41:12Speaker 7: he's getting to do what he wants to. He can
- 41:17Speaker 7: go to the library, he can work on it, horseshoes, leather,
- 41:23Speaker 7: or whatever he wants to do. And that's not justice
- 41:26Speaker 7: for Tiffany. How could someone that I run across knew
- 41:34Speaker 7: his mom, How could he have done that?
- 41:42Speaker 9: Kathy suspects it was Reese's mother, Patsy, leaving trinkets on
- 41:46Speaker 9: Tiffany's grave.
- 41:48Speaker 7: There's not a doubt in my mind that it was her,
- 41:52Speaker 7: because I think she felt guilty because she knew that
- 41:57Speaker 7: what her son had murdered Tiffany, and so that was
- 42:02Speaker 7: her way of being at peace with the idea that
- 42:04Speaker 7: she wouldn't talk to the police or wouldn't tell them
- 42:09Speaker 7: every year you could guarantee there would be something out there,
- 42:14Speaker 7: and even to this day, when't Tiffany's anniversary date comes around,
- 42:21Speaker 7: we always check on the twenty six to see if
- 42:24Speaker 7: anything has been placed on Tiffany's grave that we don't know,
- 42:30Speaker 7: and nothing has showed up since Pat Diyed.
- 42:39Speaker 4: I just want to know why we haven't been able
- 42:41Speaker 4: to bring him back. I want to know why the
- 42:44Speaker 4: DA will not sign off to have him brought back
- 42:46Speaker 4: and put.
- 42:47Speaker 6: On death row. He took my friend, he took one
- 42:52Speaker 6: of the best people I've ever known in my life,
- 42:55Speaker 6: and he robbed the world of something great.
- 42:57Speaker 4: I don't know what her plans were after college, but
- 43:00Speaker 4: whatever they were, she was going to be great at it.