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Jack Reeves - Serial Killer · Wicked and Grim: A True Crime Podcast

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: In October of nineteen ninety four, a young woman named
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Emilia Reeves vanished from her home in Arlington, Texas. At first,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: her disappearance looked like another troubled marriage coming apart, with
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: a young woman running off with another lover. That is
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: until detectives learned that two of her husband's previous wives
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: were already dead. What began as a missing person's case
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: would ultimately unravel a decades long trail of violence that
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: had gone unquestioned for years. This is the story of
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: how good police work makes all the difference. This is
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: the story of Jack Reeves.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: My name's Ben, I'm Nicole, and you're listening to Wicked
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: and Grim, a true crime podcasting.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: The following podcast intended moan your audience, listeners.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: Guess what I recommended this case?
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: You did?
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: I did?
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: You did two?
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: And are the three cases I recommended were like spousal issues?
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Are you trying to say something?
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: No, they attract me for some reason, just because not
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: that I think they're relatable, but they're relatable in a sense,
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: right because it just people are generate lots of times
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: in relationships and you could.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Put yourself in that position.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So I don't know, I've always been a little
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: bit attracted to spousal dispute ones, I guess, which is
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: kind of weird.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: What are you saying here exactly?
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: You don't know, I don't know. Okay, well, I'm just
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: gonna move on.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: I guess I do find them actually fascinating, because I
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: do find that they would I'm surprised they happen.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, you know what, Actually I kind of think that
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: you and I have a similar mindset, but for different
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: things that we prefer. I like mystery ones because I
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: feel like I could put myself in that position and
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: try and like, well, what happened? I really want to
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: think about it, right m and then so it's almost
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: like you're kind of doing the same thing. You're putting
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: yourself in the shoes, like, well, how could that happen?
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: What if that happened to me? Like that perspective, So
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: it's almost like we're taking on that point of view
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: ourselves in our own preferred Niche does that make sense?
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Or Am I going for a stretch here? No?
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: I mean just no, maybe not a stretch, but in
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: the sense I'm like the other ones I also sometimes
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: get drawn to are the ones like cannibalism.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: That's true.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: That's kind of messed up when you think about that.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: At one point, when the podcast was only in like
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: a year or two old, we were kind of tallying
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: who had done more cannibalism cases because you were doing
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: more of the episodes too. It was kind of fifty
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: to fifty.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: But nowadays, if we were to tally, I've certainly done
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: with more. Well yeah, almost unfair, And I'll be honest,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: I kind of still think about that when I run
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: across the cannibalism.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: One, like Nichole should be doing this.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and like Nicole needs to be doing this one,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: or I don't want to do that one because I
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: don't want to add another cannibalism one to my tally,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, But it's different now it's oh, I
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: still do them, but that initial thought is still there.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I've been indulging in some documentaries lately, and
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: there's some that have been like holy shit, and so
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: I just felt the need to pass them along to Ben.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Has that been the title holy shit? Or that's your
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: reaction or is that the reviews or what or all
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: the above?
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: My reaction?
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, So It's not called holy shit on net flicks.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: You know though, that would probably grab my attad jute probably.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Oh holy shit. Okay, let's watch it. Anyways, I think
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: we're yabbering way too much for this story. It's a Friday,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: and if you're listening on the weekend or listening on
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: another day in the future, mean what, Let's just get
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: to the story and enjoy our day. How's that sound.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: Let's do it?
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: I like it. When police began asking the serious questions
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: regarding Jack Reeves, too much time had already passed. You see.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Years earlier, a woman who was his wife had been
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: found dead in her own bedroom. A shotgun was resting
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: between her legs, with a suicide story that sounded unsettling
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: but complete enough to accept. Another wife would later die
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: in open water on a quiet Texas lake, with no witnesses,
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: no autopsy to challenge the explanation that was offered either.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: In both of these cases, the conclusion came rather quickly.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: Officials recorded what they saw, and they trusted what they
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: were told, and with that they closed the file. Nothing
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: about Jack Reeves triggered any alarm at that moment. He
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: didn't panic, he didn't run. He didn't even contradict himself.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: He presented himself as a man repeatedly touched by misfortune. Now,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: each incident seemed isolated on their own, separated by years, locations,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: and circumstances. That made it easy to treat them as
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: unrelated tragedies rather than a part of a larger story
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: strung together. And so that's how they were handled. The
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: shooting was a suicide, the drowning became labeled as an accident.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: The paperwork was completed, and life well, life moved on.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Whatever doubt existed stayed rather informal and whispered by family members.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: It was dismissed by lack of evidence and just buried
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: with time. It wasn't until October nineteen ninety four, when
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: a twenty six year old woman named Emilita Villa failed
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: to answer her phone. That was when those early deaths
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: were forced back into the light. Now, her disappearance didn't
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: immediately register as a homicide. It looked like another troubled marriage,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: another adult who might have chosen to leave, for example.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: But as detectives began retracing Jack Reeve's past, his marriages,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: his movements, his explanations, a pattern emerged that hadn't been
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: visible before, not because it was hidden per se, but
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: because no one had ever laid it out all at once.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: From there, the story of coincidental tragedy soon became the
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: story of investigators reopening deaths that they believed they understood
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: in order to take a closer look, and how years
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: of accepted answers unraveled when examined together, revealing the truth
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: that no one could explain with coincidence anymore. On the
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: morning of October twelfth, nineteen ninety four, Arlington police received
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: a call from a worried friend. She said she hadn't
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: heard from Emilita Reeves since the night before. Emilita, she explained,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: always returned pages. Remember this is the nineties, so she
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: had a pager and she always answered her phone. Going
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: silent was not like her. Officers were soon dispatched to
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: the Reeves home in Arlington, Texas for a welfare check
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: and to make sure that everything was okay. When they
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: arrived and knocked on the door, there was no answer.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: They waited and knocked again, but still nothing. As they
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: walked the perimeter of the house, shining their flashlights around
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: and looking in through windows, that's when they noticed movement
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: inside a garage. It was a man who was kneeling
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: down near vehicle. Officers called out, mentioning that they had
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: seen him, and eventually he did come to the front
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: door and identified himself as Jack Reeves. The officer explained
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: what they were there for, you know, the welfare check
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: for Emalda Reeves, which was Jack's wife. Now, Jack casually
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: told police his wife wasn't home. He said she'd likely
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: gone out and would return in a day or two.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: According to him, Emlita sometimes disappeared without warning, and so
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: he didn't seem alarm with the situation at all. He
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: didn't even ask officers to help find her. Now, at
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: that moment, nothing about the situation clearly pointed to a crime.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: You see, Jack Reeves was also pretty trustworthy in the
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: eyes of police. He was a fifty four year old
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: retired US Army Master sergeant. That's not an excuse, mind you,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: but it offered some level of credibility to his name.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: For sure. Jack's life living in a quiet suburb of
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: this neighborhood, by all accounts, seemed pretty normal and there
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: was nothing really to question. Now, his wife, Emalita was
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: twenty six years old, and she was an immigrant from
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: the Philippines who had married him through a mail order
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: bride's service. They also had a young son together as well.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Despite his status and credibility, on paper, the situation looked
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: more like a troubled marriage, not an emergency. So police
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: documented the encounter and they left, but Emelita did not
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: come home that night or the next night either, for
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: that matter. When detectives followed up, however, she still wasn't home,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: and Jack repeated the same explanation to them. This time,
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: he even suggested that Emelda may have run off with
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: someone else. He mentioned that she had friends and recently
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: other lovers. He spoke calmly and appeared cooperative. Investigators once
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: again had little reason to doubt him. But it wasn't
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: until police began digging a little deeper, not into Emlita's life,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: but into Jack's that this case began to change. Because
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: this wasn't the first time a woman married to Jack
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Reeves had vanished or died under unusual circumstances. It just
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: took sixteen years and this one missing person's report for
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: anyone to look close enough to notice what's the saying?
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: Three as a crowd.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: So I feel like.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: Looking back upon this, and you know, at one point
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: and you've seen that he had another you know, wife
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: missing or murdered or dead or whatever, it wouldn't have
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: been a big deal. But then all of a sudden,
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: it's a third one. It's like that's I don't know,
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: a little bit more of a red flag. I think.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Oh, and I don't know if this is like a
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: real like saying per se or anything, but I've got
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: something that I kind of go by, like one is
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: an accident, two is a coincidence. Three is a pattern.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: And at this point you're on three and now you
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: have a pattern.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: Mm hmm. It's kind of stupid to me that he
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: would do a third really, because I mean I would
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: I would never murder anyone. I'm just gonna put that
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: out there, but I would hope that I was. I
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: wouldn't be that dumb.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, one is dumb, two is dumb, Three
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: is dumb. But yeah, he's getting dumb as he goes,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: that's for sure.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Like the more it be caught, it's obvious.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're creating that pattern. You're creating a sense of hey,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: look at me, You're becoming a giant red flag and
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: eventually someone's gonna look close enough to analyze and figure
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: out what the fuck you're doing. And I mean, that's
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: that's basically the case of this story. That's how it operates.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: But I mean, honestly, though, with police looking back on
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: his history, though, I think it's time like we should
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: probably do the same.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: So, Jack Wayne Reeves was born on June twentieth, nineteen forty,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: in Wichita Falls, Texas. The city sat near Shepherd Air
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: Force Base and was shaped largely by a military culture,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: also with steady blue collar work and post war patriotism.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Jack grew up in a working class household during the
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: nineteen forties and the nineteen fifties, which is a period
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: defined by very rigid social expectations and also at the
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: time clear gender roles, which are not so much prevalent
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: today but then they certainly were now. Public records from
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: Jack's early life are rather limited, but there's no indication
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: of any sort of criminal behavior or serious trouble during
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: his childhood or even his adolescents. He attended local schools.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: He graduated from high school in which Ta Falls. Friends
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: and family later described him as quiet, disciplined and eager
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: to leave town. Now, at seventeen years old, Jack found
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: himself enlisting in the United States Army, which was a
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: common path for a lot of young men in this community.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: It held patriotism, it offered structure, income, and of course,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: the promise of travel beyond North Texas. As a result,
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: the military would become the central organizing force of his
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: adult life. Just a year later, in nineteen fifty eight,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: Jack married for the very first time. He at the
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: time was eighteen years old and his wife was just
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: fifteen years old. Now, I'm not going to really go
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: on that age discrepancy. I mean, we're all relative aware,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: different time, different time. I'm just gonna say that and
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: move on. The marriage itself, though, was very short lived
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: and rather unstable. In fact, it lasted only a few
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: months before unraveling entirely, and in nineteen sixty the union
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: was formally annulled. No children resulted of the relationship, and
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: it left very little trace beyond you know, court records.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: At the time, it appeared to be a youthful misstep, impulsive,
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: poorly considered, and quickly undone too. I guess you could
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: even consider it a learning situation for a couple of
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: young adults. By nineteen sixty, Jack was focusing solely on
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: his military career and preparing to move forward. But that
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: too was short lived. Not the military career, mind you,
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: but the focusing on himself and his career aspect, because
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty one, Jack Reeves married Sharon Delanne Vaughan.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: He was twenty one years old and still steadily building
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: that career in the US Army, and so Sharon and
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: she joined the relationship. She also stepped into a role
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: that was expected of many military spouses at the time,
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: following her husband from post to post, managing the home
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: and raising a family largely on her own during Jack's deployments.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: Over the next several years, Jack advanced through the enlisted ranks.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: The couple lived both in Texas and overseas, eventually being
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: stationed in Verona, Italy in the mid nineteen sixties. By then,
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: they had begun building what looked like, at least for
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: their lifestyle, a stable life. There was a long term marriage, children,
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: and a career that promised a lot of security. But
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: like before that stability would eventually end abruptly. Now, while
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: stationed in Italy, in the mid nineteen sixties. Still Mary
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: Jack Reeves was living with his second wife, Sharon, near
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: his military posting. In nineteen sixty seven, Jack shot and
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: killed a local Italian man outside their residence. Now Jack
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: told authorities that the man had been looking into the
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: bedroom window of their home and was watching Sharon. According
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: to Jack, he confronted the men during an encounter, and
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: he fired the pistol to try and scare him away,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: but in this encounter he ended up hitting and shooting
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: the guy, killing him. He later claimed that the bullet
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: ricocheted off metal railing and struck the man in the chest.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: Regardless of the situation, Italian authorities did not accept Jack's explanation.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: The incident was investigated through both Italian civilian authorities and
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: the US military channels. Investigators ultimately determined that Jack's account
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: did not justify the use of deadly force, and he
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: was charged with manslaughter. He was convicted and sentenced to
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: time in an Italian prison. Now Jack ultimately served approximately
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: only four months before being released after his mother had
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: organized a petition collecting hundreds of different signatures. The petition
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: was forwarded to the then President of the United States
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: Lyndon B. Johnson, who then intervened diplomatically on Jack's behalf.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: Shortly afterwards, Jack was released and allowed to return to
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: the United States, and he was also allowed to continue
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: his army career. Legally, the case ended there. Jack resumed
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: his military career. He suffered no lasting professional consequences, and
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: continued to serve for nearly two more decades before retiring
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: as a master sergeant. At the time, the shooting was
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: simply treated as an isolated incident, an overseas altercation explained
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: by circumstances, youth, bad judgment, and somewhat accidental. Potentially, no
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: one connected that shooting to anything larger. It did not
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: follow Jack back to Texas in any meaningful way. There
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: were no public warnings, no internal alarms, no sense at
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: this moment, would you know, kind of make sense and
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: matter in hindsight. But it was in fact the first
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: time Jack Reeves had ever killed someone, and the first
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: time a death associated with him had officially been explained away.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: After returning from Italy, Jack and Sharon Reeves settled into
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Copperas Cove, Texas, a small city outside Fort Hood built
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: largely around the rhythms of that same army life. Jack
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: continued his career in service. Sharon raised their two sons,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Ricky and Randall, and managed the household during his frequent absences.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: To neighbors and acquaintances, the family just simply appeared ordinary,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: just another family amongst the rest. Jack was a career soldier,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: Sharon was a homemaker, active in church and social circles.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Nothing about the day to day life suggested that it
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: would end violently, but by the nineteen seventies the marriage
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: had begun to fracture. While Jack was stationed in South Korea,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Sharon started an affair with a retired army officer named
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: John Benneman. She spoke openly to friends about wanting to
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: leave her current marriage, and eventually, in February of nineteen
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: seventy eight, Sharon filed for divorce. Her plan, according to
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: the people who were closest to her, was to finalize
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: the separation and go build a new life. Then Jack
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: returned home from South Korea unexpectedly in early July of
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight. The timing was actually immediately massive and
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: raised some severe tension in the home. Their son even
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: later recalled arguments in the weeks that followed, Sharon appeared
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: anxious and Jack well, he appeared angry, but the divorce
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: while it still proceeded. On July nineteenth, nineteen seventy eight,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: the Coriel County Judge signed the divorce decree. Then the
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: following day, July twentieth, nineteen seventy eight, Sharon Reeves was
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: shot in the chest with a shotgun inside the couple's home.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: So according to Jack, what had happened was he was
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: in the kitchen when he heard a gun shot ring
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: through the house. One of their sons was outside, but
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: the other wasn't home. Jack told police he ran straight
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: into the bedroom and found Sharon on the bed, wounded
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: from the shot to the chest, but still alive, with
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: the shotgun laying between her legs. When the Coppera's Cove
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: police arrived, they found Sharon grievely injured in the home.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: Officer Johnny Smith later recalled that he checked her pulse
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: and she grabbed his wrist in a brief moment right
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: before she died. Jack told the officers Sharon killed herself.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: He even pointed to a cut on her toe, suggesting
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: that she had pulled the trigger with her toe. He
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: handed police a note, he said he found in a
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: China cabinet, a message Sharon had written, he claimed, explain
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: that you know, she was torn between two men and
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: couldn't go on.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: Pretty messed up time, though, definitely for something like that
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: to happen.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: The day after divorce, yeah.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: When really that should kind of almost be like a
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: new beginning of sorts.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Right exactly. There was no autopsy, though that was ordered,
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: as the local Justice of Peace ruled that the death
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: was in fact a suicide. The explanation that Sharon had
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: positioned the shotgun and pulled the trigger with her toe
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: was just accepted, and the note was treated as confirmation.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: The scene was photographed, documented and closed just like that.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: Sharon Reeves was thirty four years old when she died,
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: and within days the case was over with no criminal investigation,
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: no forensic testing beyond what was done at the scene,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: no follow up interviews months later. Nothing. It was as
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: if they just assumed, you know what, this was an
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: open and shutcase. But even though they thought this was
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: so straightforward, the reality was far from different if they
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: only looked just a little bit closer. For example, the
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: shotgun wound was documented, but no detailed analysis was done
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: on distance trajectory or whether Sharon could have physically have
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: fired the weapon herself. The note Jack provided it too,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: was accepted at face value. It was not preserved as
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: evidence per se. He was not subjected to handwriting analysis.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: Either no attempt was made to verify when it he
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: had even been written, or maybe it was written under
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: certain circumstances like duress. And most of all, after the
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: case was closed well, the note went missing. Police took
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: photographs of the bedroom where Sharon was shot too, but
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: the images were filed away and largely forgotten, and over
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: time most of them were lost as well. Only a
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: single crime scene photo would later be found. Witness statements
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: were minimal two and Jack's accounts of the events became
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: the framework for the official ruling. There was no reconstruction
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: of shooting or anything, no follow ups with friends or
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: family about her state of mind in the days even
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: leading up to her death in nineteen seventy eight. None
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: of this stood out as unusual, I mean, for them
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: at the time. The notes seemed to offer motive, and
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: Sharon's recent divorce and emotional strain fit a narrative investigators
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: were accustomed to accepting in situations like this. Less than
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: three years after Sharon Reeves's death, Jack Well he remarried
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: once again. While stationed in South Korea, Jack met a
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: woman by the name of Meunghai Chung, a young Korean
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: woman with limited English and no family ties to the
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: United States. They married on December thirty first, nineteen eighty
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: and soon after Jack brought her back to Texas, where
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: he continued his army career until retiring in nineteen eighty
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: five as a master sergeant. Now after leaving the military,
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: Jack settled into civilian life in Arlington, Texas. He lived
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: comfortably with his military pension and income from a paint
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: contracting business that he had and additional money from family inheritance. Together,
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: the couple also owned a home, multiple vehicles, and some
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: outdoor toys like a fishing boat and a camper. Jack
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: actually frequently went camping and fishing, particularly around Lake Whitney,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: which is a large reservoir southwest of Dallas. To all
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: outsiders looking in, the marriage was stable like every other
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: typical couple, but people closer to Miyanghai Well they later
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: described a far different picture. She struggled to adapt to
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: life in the United States. She spoke very little English
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: and relied heavily on Jack for everyday life. Family members
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: in Korea also said that she feared water and could
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: not swim, so she generally wasn't exactly going out on
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: the boat and enjoying it like Jack was. Some of
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: her close friends and family also reported that she confided
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: in them that Jack was very controlling and abusive towards her.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: In letters written shortly before her death, Miyanghai described being
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: unhappy and wanting to leave the marriage. It was on
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: July twenty eighth, nineteen eighty six when the couple went
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: fishing to Lake Whitney, So according to Jack, the two
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: were using an inflatable air mattress on the lake. He
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: said he stepped away briefly to catch a few grasshoppers
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: for bait to go fishing later. Then when he returned,
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: Mianghai was gone. Her body was later found floating face
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: down in the water. Jack was the only witness. Responding
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: officials noted that Jack appeared calm and rather detached as
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: his wife's body was recovered, and a park ranger later
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: described him as nonchalant. Now When she was recovered, there
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: were visible bruises on Myanghai's face, which raised concerns with
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: her family, her sister seeing her body at the funeral,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: while in fact, she even demanded an autopsy right then
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: and there. Instead, though, Jack canceled the burial plans and
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: arranged from Yanghai to be cremated almost immediately.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: Gosh, it's just all these flags, hey, just but listening
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: to all this after the fact, it's just like wild.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: It is wild, and you have to remember these are
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: taking places a place over different years. Yeah, right, this
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: is so condensed. I mean, yeah, it's a red flag. Yeah,
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: someone probably should have looked at it, but you have
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: to remember with each red flag there was cool off
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: before the next one. Oh yeah, generally speaking.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: But it is very interesting that Cassey she fell off
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: this air mattress, right, Yes, she hates water. She would
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: be completely terrified. You would hear things so like Jack
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: just being like, yeah, I was getting grasshoppers for bait
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: and then I come back and she's just not there,
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: Like you would have heard a huge commotion.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: One hundred percent. It's complete and larky.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: So yeah, it doesn't I mean that would just be
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: so suspicious listening to that, right.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: So with that though, no, autopsy was performed. I mean,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: at this point she's cremated, she can't be. The local
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: Justice of Peace ruled the death an accidental drowning based
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: solely on Jack's accounts and observations at the scene. I mean,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: with no forensic examination, no evidence contradicting, contradicting, I should say,
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Jack's accounts, the case well, it's just simply closed. So
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: with that, for the second time a wife of Jack
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Reeves had died under unusual circumstances, and again for the
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: second time, the official explanation required no further investigation, and
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: just like before after Miyanghai Chong's death, Jack Reeves did
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: not wait long before remarrying once again. In nineteen eighty seven,
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Jack traveled to the Philippines after selecting an eighteen year
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: old woman named Emalita Villa through a male order bride's service. Now,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Emalita grew up in poverty, living with her family in
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: a small hut with very limited resource. Jack was nearly
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: thirty years old when he and her well got together.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: When he appeared to her family as a financially stable
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: and capable person, someone who was able to offer, you know,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: Emelita and her family a better life. He sent money
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: payments to support her relatives and covered medical expenses for
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: her mother. The arrangement well, it created a lot of
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: pressure by several accounts, Primarily, Emelda felt obligated to marry him,
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: so she moved to Arlington, Texas, and the two of
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: them soon married. They later even had a son together.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: Friends described Emilita as outgoing and social. She built a
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: close knit group of Filipino friends in the Arlington area
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: and stayed in frequent contact with them by pager and
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: cell phone. Over time, she began confiding in them about
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: her marriage. According to multiple witnesses, she said Jack was
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: controlling and physically abusive, and that he forced her into
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: very degrading sexual situations, sometimes even photographing her against her will.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: Oh damn okay, I didn't know that.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: She told her friends and family how she felt trapped
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: and afraid in her new marriage, and by nineteen ninety four,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: Emlida was openly talking about leaving the situation. She told
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: friends she plan to divorce Jack and returned to the
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: Philippines with her son. She also issued a very clear
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: warning if she ever stopped answering her phone or pager,
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: they were to call the police immediately because something would
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: be wrong. It was on the evening of October eleventh,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four, when Emelda was last seen by her
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: friends at work. One friend dropped her off at seven pm,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: but she never returned the calls later that night. By
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: the next day, her pager and phone still remained silent,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: and on October twelfth, a friend contact at the Arlington
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: Police Department and requested a welfare check. Officers went to
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: the Reefs home and when they they walked the perimeter
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: and saw Jack inside the garage. He came to the
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: front door and he kind of blocked the entrance and
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: refused to let officers inside. He told them em Alita
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: had likely gone off with someone else and said that
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: she sometimes disappeared for a few days at a time.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: Police noticed his agitation, but had no legal grounds for
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: forced entry.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: I don't feel like for anyone in that situation, his
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: explanation to the police is reasonable in any way.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: No.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: I agree that she, oh, she's just gone like he
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: doesn't care, and that that makes sense because I feel
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: like anyone in a married relationship like that would know
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: where they are when they're going to be back and stuff.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: You know, to a degree most most time.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Correct, You are right. I agree with that. However, there's
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: a different situation here. The situation that police are seeing,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: and the reason why they're believing him is because it's
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: a failing marriage, so they don't have contact. She's running off,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: she has another lover. I have no fucking clue what
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: she's doing. Is kind of the attitude. Yes, So if
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: there's a split and a divide between the couple, they're
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: no longer contacting each other, they're no longer confiding in
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: each other. That's what makes it that believable portion, because
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: police do know, Hey, she's looking at leaving him, right
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: and now he's kind of repeating the same story. So
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: it seems reasonable, seems real, and seems likely.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: And there isn't really anything they can do yet exactly.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because friends are saying, yeah, she's scared of him,
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: she wants to leave. We need to welfare check. We
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: haven't heard from her. Okay, we show up and he says, yeah,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: she left, she's off with some other fucking lover. I
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: don't know where she is.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: It sounds plausible, huh, I guess, I guess. I mean
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: the Yeah, they already knew that there was issues. I
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: suppose yeah, so ah, okay.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: But I see what you're saying. If only they dig
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: a little deeper. But thankfully in this case, they eventually
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: they do.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Now, within days of him giving this bullshit excuse to police,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: Emilita's Nissan Pathfinder was found abandoned at a shopping center
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: that she frequented, and Jack showed very little concern over
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: this revelation too. He told different people different versions of
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: why she had gone, suggesting she had a boyfriend girlfriend,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: or that she simply walked out on him and their child.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Whatever it was, it still painted that picture of he
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: doesn't know what's going on. Right. What unsettled those closest
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: to Emilita, though, wasn't just that she was missing. It
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: was that she'd been planning to leave and then suddenly
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: she just vanishes. And this time investigators did not let
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: the case quietly close, but to start off. In the
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: first days after Emilida's was reported missing, Arlington police treated
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: the case as a possible voluntary disappearance. Right she went
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: off on her own, She was in fact an adult,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: after all. There was no visible signs of violence or
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: her seemingly trustworthy husband being anything other than that. He
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: simply claimed that she had left and that was that.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: But as detectives began speaking with Emilita's friends, that explanation
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: started to fracture. Several of them told the police that
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: Emilita had been afraid of her husband and that she
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: had openly talked about leaving him, and she had given
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: an explicit instruction that has she ever stopped answering her
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: pager or phone, police were to be contacted immediately. That
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: detail stood out big time.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: I do love that she had such a support system, yes,
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: and that really her disappearance was reported so quickly it was,
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: and I think that's freaking awesome.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, massive, massive. If you ever find yourself in
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: a situation where you're not sure of your own safety,
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: confide in those around you. They will be the ones
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: who help you get through this one way or another,
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: whether it's you know, contacting police, whether it's finding you
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: know what a way for you to get out. That's
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: your support system. And she relied on hers, Yes, so
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: props to her for that. Now. Missing persons cases often
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: hinge on ambiguity. You know, people leave relationships and contacts fate, etc.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: That sort of stuff. So basically, when this pattern came
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: out in this case, well, let's just say it meant
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: that Emilida's disappearance basically came with a built in alarm
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: system telling police to look closer because you have those
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: friends saying actually no, she told us to call you
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: if this were to happen, and this is happening. So
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: after all, she had anticipated this possibility that this could happen.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: So fantastic they have this. Detective Tom Lenore was soon
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: assigned to the case, and as he reviewed Emilida's background,
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: he learned that she was Jack's fourth wife, and that
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: the marriage itself fit a very familiar pattern. There was
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: a large gap in age, there was financial dependence, isolation,
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: and escalating conflict in the months before the disappearance. And
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: when Detective Lenoir, well, when he requested Jack's marital history
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: to dig a bit deeper into it, what he found
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: shifted the entire investigation. Jack's second wife, Sharon, had died
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy eight from a shotgun wound to the
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: chest officially ruled a suicide as we know, and his
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: third wife, Meong, had drowned in Lake Whitney the very
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: Lake he goes camping in very often. In nineteen eighty six,
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: Well it was ruled an accident, and now his fourth
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: wife had vanished while telling friends that she had planned
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: to leave. After learning about this, Detective Leonore contacted compress
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: Cove police to review Sharon Reeves case file, and he
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: also contacted Hill County officials regarding Meong Reeves drowning. Neither
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: case had resulted in charges, and both had been closed
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: very quickly, but neither had undergone forensic review before this.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: This would be the first time now. Something that stuck
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: with Detective Leonore was the timing in each death. It
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: seemed that each woman had been preparing to leave Jack.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: In each case, Jack was the only adult present or
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: primary witness to the events, and in each case, the
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: official ruling depended almost entirely on Jack's accounts of what
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: had happened. As investigators began to reinterview Jack, his behavior
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: became another point of interest in the case. He was articulate, confident,
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: and very comfortable speaking at length about his military service,
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: his property, and even his relationships. But when detectives challenged
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: his statements or pressed about specifics. Maybe it was Emilia's
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: whereabouts whatever. He shut down the conversation entirely. It was
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: almost like he was operating only on his parameters, his story,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: whether true or false, and no one else could challenge him.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: He refused a polygraph test, he denied officers entry into
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: his home, and he also declined to provide further explanation
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: for Emilita's disappearance.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: It's almost like he's done this before.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: Almost like he's done this before, Yes, exactly now. During
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: one interview, though, Jack volunteered a detail without being prompted,
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: and it was a very odd one at that. You see,
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: he asked detectives whether he would be blamed if Emilita
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: were found at Lake Whitney. Oh yeah, okay, So he's like, well,
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: if you guys were to find her out there, would
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: that circle back to me because he spends.
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: Time there, right, Yeah, what an odd question to ask, right.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: It was very specific and to Detective Lenore, this question
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: landed very heavily because Lake Whitney was, yeah, not a
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: random location. It's where he camped frequently. But not only that,
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: it's also where his third wife had drowned eight years earlier.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: By the spring of nineteen ninety five, Sharon Reeves's death
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: was no longer a closed case because now it had
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: a well glaringly large question mark above it. Detective Tom
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: Lenore and the other investigators began pulling whatever remained out
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: of the nineteen seventy eight case file. Except what they
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: found was thin, far thinner than they hoped to find,
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: especially for a death that had been ruled a suicide
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: involving a gun. For example, the fact that there'd be
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: no autopsy. It hadn't been done because well one sugg
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: justice the piece determined Sharon's death was self inflicted. Further
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: medical examination was canceled. Also, the suicide note Jack claimed
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: to have found was never preserved as evidence, and no
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: handwriting analysis had ever been done. Most of the original
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: case scene photographs, while they are gone too. In fact,
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: only one photograph remained. It showed Sharon Reeves lying on
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: the bed nude with a shotgun position between her legs.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: The image had been taken very quickly before the scene
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: was disturbed and then filed away for nearly two decades.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: Detective Leonore had this one piece of evidence, and he
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: studied this singular photograph carefully for every single detail he
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: could find, and the placement of the shotgun immediately raised questions,
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: so did Sharon's position on the bed, But that wasn't
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: all the blood pattern visible in the photo. It appeared
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: inconsistent with someone sitting or laying down at the moment
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: a gun was fired. It was honestly all off. Investigators
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: sent the photograph to bloodstained pattern experts, and their conclusion
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: was pretty direct. Sharon would have been standing when she
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: was shot, not laying on the bed like she was
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: shown in the photo. That singular finding unraveled the entire
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: original suicide theory. The explanation given in nineteen seventy eight
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: that Sharon had pulled the trigger with her toe while
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: it was already physically questionable, but now it appeared even
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: less plausible. If she'd been standing, the mechanics required to
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: fire a shotgun in that manner became extremely unlikely, if
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: not impossible altogether. So, with permission from Sharon's family, investigators
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: ordered her body to be exhumed for examination, but there
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: were concerns Sharon had been buried in the Texas heat
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: for sixteen years. Thankfully, though, Jack paid for a sealed,
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: high end metal casket, so when they dug up the
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: casket and it was opened, her remains were actually in
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: remarkably well preserved condition for what they thought they would find.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: Doctor Jeffrey Barnard of the Dallas County Medical Examiner's Office
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: was the one to conduct the autopsy, and he found
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: a lot. He found no evidence of close range firing,
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: such as stippling or powder burns that would have been
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: expected in a contact or near contact suicide. The trajectory
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: of the wound also did not align with a self
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: inflicted shot, and at the angle, while it suggested the
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: gun was fired from in front of Sharon while she
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: was upright so standing, ultimately, doctor Bernard cluded the manner
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: of death was inconsistent with a suicide. Investigators also revisited
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: the original claim that Sharon had been naked at the
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: time of death. Bloodstain analysis indicated she had likely been
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: wearing at least a bra and underwear when she was shot,
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: which directly contradicted the position in which her body had
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: been found when she was found nude. The investigation didn't
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: simply stop at that, though analyzing the image and getting
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: the autopsy were great. However, they took it one step
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: further still, you see, to really test that suicide theory.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: Police conducted re enactments using a woman of similar size
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: and the same model of shotgun, although obviously decommissioned. What
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: they found was that even under controlled conditions, it proved
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: extremely difficult, often impossible, to fire the weapon with a
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: toe while standing in the position Sharon would need to be.
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: In that like, blew my mind.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: Isn't that wild? Right?
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: It's yeah, yeah, it's unreal. I mean, if only they
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: have done that at the time.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: Right, So for sure. By March of nineteen ninety five,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: the conclusion investigators had resisted for years became unavoidable. Sharon
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: Reeves had not killed herself. It was on March thirtieth,
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five, when a Coriel County grand jury indicted
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: Jack Wayne Reeves for her murder, seventeen years after she died.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: For the first time, the case that had quietly ended
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy eight was officially reopened as a homicide
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: and had forced investigators to confront an unsettling possibility that
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: Sharon Reeves was not an isolated incident, and from there
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: investigators stepped back and laid the cases out side by side.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: What emerged was not a single piece of damning evidence,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: but a timeline that kept repeating itself. Sharon Reeves died
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: in July of nineteen seventy eight, just days after finalizing
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: a divorce and while actively planning a future with another man,
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: miong Reeves, while she drowned in July of nineteen eighty
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: six after writing to family members about the abuse and
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: expressing unhappiness in her marriage. And Melita Vila vanished in
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: October nineteen ninety four after telling friends that she intended
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: to leave Jack and had arranged a plan for what
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: to do if she ever disappeared. In all three of
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: these cases, the women were preparing to leave the relationship.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: In all three of these cases, Jack was the last
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: known adult with them or the only witness to what
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: had happened, and in all three cases, the initial ruling
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: depended almost entirely on Jack's version of events. Bigators also
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: began to look closely at Jack's behavior during each one
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: of the incidents. In nineteen seventy eight, officers noticed that
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: he appeared calm and conversational after Sharon was shot, even
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: discussing his sexual experiences overseas while standing near the scene.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty six, Park rangers and deputies described him
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: as detached and unemotional. After Meong's drowning in nineteen ninety four,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: Officers responding to Emalita's disappearance found him defensive, evasive, and
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: unwilling to allow plea police into the home. Each time,
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: Jack offered explanations quickly and often unprompted, painting the scene
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: for investigators how he wanted them to see it. He
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: framed how Sharon's death was a suicide, he framed Meong's
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: death as a tragic accident, and now he framed Emalita's
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: disappearance as a betrayal and abandonment. And not once did
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: he ever appear to actually be grieving. But detectives noted
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: Jack's while his consistent need to control the conversation when
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: speaking with police, neighbors, or friends. He was confident and
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: articulate so long as he was the one to set
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: the topic. The moment questions turned towards contradictions or challenging
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: his narrative, that's when he withdrew, shutting down interviews or
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: refusing cooperation entirely. During the investigation, financial details were also revisited.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: Jack had received significant military death benefits following Sharon's death,
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: he had retained a large sum of money belonging to
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: his father after agreeing to hold it during a divorce,
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: and later refused to return it. But what was really
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: eye opening to investigators was after Emilita had disappeared, he
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: began searching for another mail order bride within weeks.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: Oh dang.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: None of these facts alone proved murder, but together they
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: suggested a very serious motive. They suggested opportunity and a
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: very long standing pattern of behavior that could know no
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: longer be dismissed as hey, a simple coincidence.
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and apparently he just doesn't give a shit about.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: Loss, exactly right. So, by the summer of nineteen ninety five,
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: Arlington Police were no longer operating under the assumption that
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: Emilida Villa Reeves was alive. The investigation had while it
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: installed in terms of locating her, but it had intensified
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: in another direction, reconstructing what had happened in the days
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: immediately after she vanished. And that reconstruction, well, it began
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: with Jack's own son, Randall Reeves, Jack's younger son from
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: his marriage to Sharon, came forward with information he had
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: not initially shared. He told the investigators that shortly after
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: Emilid had disappeared, his father asked him to help dispose
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: of items from the house. One of those items was
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: Emilida's cell phone. Randall said Jack instructed him to hide it. However,
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: Randall decided that he was going to turn it over
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: to police. He also told investigators that Jack had gutted
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: a nearly new sofa and thrown it away, then thoroughly
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: washed the truck used to transport this. The timing stood
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: out immediately this cleanup, while it occurred almost immediately after
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: Emilita was last seen, and Randall, while he also placed
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: his father guess where at Lake Whitney. According to his statement,
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: Jack went camping there on October thirteenth, nineteen ninety four,
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: the day after Emlita was reported missing. This directly contradicted
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: Jack's earlier claims about his whereabouts and movements that he
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: told police, and it further tied Emalita's disappearance to the
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: same location where miong Reeves had died eight years earlier.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: Detectives began to search the area around Lake Whitney, but
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: initially found nothing Without a body, the case remained circumstantial
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: Jack meanwhile continued to insist Emelida had abandoned him. He
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: distributed missing persons flyers, offered a reward, and filed for divorce,
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: claiming that she had left voluntarily. Nearly a year had
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: passed with no sign of her as investigators continued to look,
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: and it wasn't until October nineteen ninety five when a
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: hunter and his young son were walking through the wooded
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: area near Lake Whitney when they noticed human remains partially
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: exposed in a shallow creek bed. The remains were skeletal,
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: with long black hair still visible the grave that was
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: kinda dug while it was very shallow and the location
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: was extremely remote, and it was within the same general
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: area where Jack had camped immediately after she disappeared. Police
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: were quickly called to and investigators recovered the remains. Dental
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: records soon confirmed the identity. The remains belonged to Emelda
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: Villa Reeves. Due to the condition of her remains, medical
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: examiners could not determine a precise cause of death. There
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: were no bullets, no obvious knife marks, and no soft
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: tissue left to examine, but the manner of burial and
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: the location ruled out accident or suicide, and so that
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: only leaves one avenue left, and the case was officially
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: classified as a homicide. On October thirtieth, nineteen ninety five,
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: Jack Wayne Reeves was indicted for the murder of his
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: fourth wife, with Sharon Reeves murderer charge already pending. The
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: investigation that began as a missing person's call had now
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: produced two homicide cases, separated by seventeen years and connected
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: by one man and anchored by the same stretch of
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: land near Lake Whitney, and by the year nineteen ninety six.
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: Early on, Jack Reeves was no longer a suspect living
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: under scrutiny. He was a defendant facing two separate murder cases,
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: and the first case to go to trial was Sharon Reeves.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: Prosecution's case focused almost entirely on forensics and reconstruction. There
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: were no eyewitnesses to the shooting other than you know
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: Jack himself. Instead, the state walked the jury through what
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: had happened and what they had missed the first time,
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: the single remaining crime scene photograph, the blood stained pattern analysis,
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: the autopsy finding from the nineteen ninety five exemption, and
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: the re enactment demonstration using the same model of shotgun.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: Experts testified that Sharon had been standing when she was shot.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: They explained why a tow trigger theory was physically improbable,
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: if not impossible, given the height of the victim and
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: the length of the weapon and the angle of the wound.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: Demonstrations in court even showed how difficult it was to
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: try and fire the shotgun in the manner Jack described,
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: especially while standing. The defense, though, argued that the suicide, well,
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: it was still possible. They pointed to Sharon's emotional stress,
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: the divorce proceedings, and the note Jack claimed she had
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: left behind, and they challenge the reliability of reconstructing a
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: death nearly two decades later, and emphasized that the original
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: ruling had in fact been suicide.
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: Well, even just to sit back and listen to that,
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: it's like, because it was like.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: A long rifle, right, yeah, it was a shotgun.
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And so someone doing that with their foot, I
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: don't know, it almost seems like impossible even just listening
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: and hearing that.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: Definitely, there are cases where people try and do that
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: and a lot of people end up missing the mark,
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: and like, well, I mean, shooting themselves in the chest
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: is that's even more difficult. But people miss and like
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: in shooting themselves in the head suicide wise and they
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: end up like doing it wrong and they still survive.
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: And because those angles they're so difficult. So yeah, it
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: basically just paints a big old picture of malarkey, is
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: what it does.
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: Well. Yeah, especially to be laying down on a bed too,
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: because if you were standing doing that, you would, you
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: know from what I heerd too, and I think you've
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: alluded to this, you'd fall forward.
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: Oh, you definitely would. So what you would have to
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: do for how she was shot standing up picture this.
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: You would have to stand on one leg, hold a
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: long barrel shotgun with the barrel pointed towards you, lift
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: up your one leg and then pull the trigger, all
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: while on one leg. You can't have the shotgun angle
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: down resting on the ground to pull it, because that's
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: not the angle she was shot at. Yeah, the angle
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: was with it up almost. I'm not saying parallel, but
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: about parallel ish, so about parallel with the ground, and
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: then you have to lift your leg up to pull
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: that trigger.
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: Like no way, Yeah, it seems damn near impossible, as
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: you know what they're saying exactly.
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: So if you're going to try and even try and
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: do that, you're going to be falling. After five days
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: of testimony inside the court, the jury retired to deliberate
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: shortly before returning to read the verdict. On January third,
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six, the jury found Jack Wayne Reeves guilty
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: of murdering his second wife, Sharon Reeves, and ultimately he
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: was sentenced to thirty five years in prison. The second
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: trial followed months later and focused on Emelita Villa Reeves.
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: This case, of course, looked very different. There was no
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: cause of death, there was no murder weapon, no confession,
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: nothing like that. The prosecution, while they acknowledged from the
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: onset that this was a circumstantial case and for their side,
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: while they built a timeline, they presented evidence that Emelda
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: had told friends she planned to leave Jack and feared him.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: They introduced testimony about Jack's behavior when police first came
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: to his home, his refusal to let officers inside, and
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: his shifting explanation for why Emelita was gone. They also
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: highlighted his camping trip to Lake Whitney the day after
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: disappearance and his unslicted reference to this location during interviews
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: His son Randall. Reeves, also testified about being asked to
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: hide Emlita's cell phone and bolt the disposal of household
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: items immediately after she vanished. Prosecutors then introduced evidence showing
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: that Jack began searching for another male order bride within
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: weeks of Emlita's disappearance. The defense, when it was their turn,
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: again emphasized the lack of direct evidence. Jack's attorney argued
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: there were no witnesses, there was no forensic proof tying
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: him to Emlida's death, and no definitive cause of death.
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: Even in the end, though it was in the jury's hand,
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: and after just over an hour of deliberation, they came
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: back into the courtroom and read their verdict aloud. On
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: August twentieth, nineteen ninety six, Jack Reeves was found guilty
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: of murdering Emelda Villo Reeves, and he was sentenced to
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: ninety nine years in prison. The sentences he received were
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: ordered to run concurrently. Even after two murder convictions, though
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: investigators not finished asking questions about Jack Reeves because there
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: still was another woman now. Unfortunately, the death of Meong Reeves,
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: his third wife, remained officially classified as an accident. Due
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: to her cremation the lack of physical evidence, no charges
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: were ever filed in that case, and ultimately Jack's versions
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: of events with her drowning still stand as what happened
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: because it can't be proven otherwise. However, that's not the
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: additional woman I mean you see. While Emilide was still
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: living in the Philippines with her younger son in the
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: early nineteen nineties, Jack well he had been with someone else.
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: Neighbors in South Arlington recalled a tall, slim woman with
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: a noticeable accent living in his home for several weeks
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: or months even, and Jack introduced her to everyone only
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: as Natalie. According to neighbors, she appeared educated, she spoke
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: fluent English, and kept mostly to herself. She was seen
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: walking through the neighborhood and occasionally accompanying Jack. Then, without explanation,
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: she was gone. When asked about her, Jack told conflicting
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: stories at different times. He claimed that she had married
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: another man, moved out of state, or left him willingly
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: after seeing another man. Detectives noted that these explanations closely
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: mirrored the same stories Jack told later about Emmalita after
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: her disappearance. What troubled investigators. Most was not simply that
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: Natalie was gone, but that Jack could not or would not,
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: provide a full name, not an address, or verifiable proof
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: that she was still alive. Police even told Jack's attorney
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: they would accept a sworn affidavid confirming her identity and whereabouts,
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: basically you know, saying he wouldn't be convicted. We just
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: want to make sure she's okay. Well, yeah, rightfully. So, However,
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: no affidavid was provided. He spoke nothing on it, and
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: that was that. Unlike Sharon and Emlita, there was nobody.
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: Unlike Meong, there was no documented incident that tied to
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: a specific date or location. Without evidence of a crime,
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: police had no legal ground to pursue charges. She was
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: just gone and that was that. But yet the pattern
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: was impossible to ignore. Each woman entered Jack's life under
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: circumstances that left her isolated. Each relationship became strained as
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: the woman sought independence or potential escape, and when that
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: moment came, the woman either died or went missing. For investigators,
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: Natalie represented a boundary they could not cross. She was
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: the case that could not be proven, the thread that
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: could not be pulled any farther as they reached the
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: end of that reel. Whether she survived Jack or not
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: remains completely unknown, and ultimately, Jack Wayne Reeves was sent
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: to prison not because of one investigation, but because investigators
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: finally took a look backwards. For nearly three decades, each
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: death in his life had been handled in isolation. A
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: shooting in Italy that was explained to me as an accident,
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: a deflecting bullet simply a wife that you know she
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: died as ruled of suicide, another one that was ruled
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: an accidental drowning, and then a missing woman assumed to
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: have just simply run off. Each conclusion made sense on
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: its own, at least enough to close a file. What
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: changed in nineteen ninety four wasn't the disappearance of Emily
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: to Villa Reeves. It was the moment police stopped taking
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: Jack's word as truth, and stopped treating the case as
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: a single event, and instead placed it alongside the others
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: as one as a whole. Once they did this, the
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: timeline began to tell a different story, one that did
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: not rely on speculation, but on documented patterns, forensic re analysis,
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: and sworn testimony. The justice system resolved what it could
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: Sharon Reeves's death was no longer a suicide, a jury
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: ruled it murder, and Malita Reeves did not run away.
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: A jury ruled that she was killed. But the system
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: could not resolve everything. Meyong Reeves's death remains officially accidental,
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: sealed by cremation in time, the woman known as Natalie
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: remains unaccounted for, and the full truth to what happened
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: inside Jack's home may never be known beyond what evidence
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: has survived for investigators like Tom Lenore, the case well,
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: it's not about labels like serial killers or monsters. It's
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: about correcting the record, about acknowledging that earlier answers had
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: been wrong, and that those mistakes had allowed a man
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: to keep moving forward. Jack, as it stands, is now
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: an aging inmate housed in the Texas prison system, with
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: his appeals completely exhausted, and he has continued to maintain
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: his innocence even as courts upheld both convictions. The women
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: at the center of this story do not get the
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: luxury of growing old as he does. Their lives are
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: frozen at the very moment that they tried to leave.
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: Their names are now linked, not by coincidence but by
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: evidence and a heartless human being. Their stories are forever
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: connected now too. Once they were dismissed, misread, or even ignored,
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: but now now they have finally been heard, just late
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: enough to change the ending, but not early enough to
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: save them or even understand the full extent of the truth.
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: That is where this case ends. Solved, but not fully.
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: Jack is responsible for three deaths in total, with two
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: more that could potentially be added to his list. He is,
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: in every sense of the word, a monster. But still,
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: if you've listened to our show before, you know we
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: do not like to give someone like him notoriety. Yes
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: we are talking about him, but in this case, I
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: think we need to give a final mention to the
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: investigators who did their due diligence in the end, after
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: years of failed police work, they stepped in and they
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: did what was right, not for themselves but for the victims,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: victims who were never heard in the first place. It's
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: because of these investigators the truth was found and no
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: one else was hurt. So to people like Detective Tom
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: lenore On behalf of those whose stories you help resolve,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: and people like us who see the good work you do,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: thank you. And that's the story of Jack Wayne Reeves.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, fuck that guy. Hey, yeah, I do. Okay, something
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: I just want to say, and I want to hear
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: your thoughts. So say, if it's Emilita, right, that's how
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: you say her name. Yes, say her body was found
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: like right away, and it was a suicide or like
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: an accident type looking thing.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: Do you think that he would have gotten away with
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: this again or would it at this point like no,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: it's all caught.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: Up to him. No, it would have still caught up
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: with him, I think.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: Because this investigator was good and they and they took
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: the time to like thoroughly look through things. But if
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: she wasn't missing, would.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: They have you know, well, if she wasn't missing, she
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have been dead.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: Well her body wasn't missing.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: Sorry, okay, well no like being missing in her body missing.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: To me, those are the two in the same. But
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: I think regardless of whether she was found suicide or
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: accidental or murder, I think that's that's beside the point.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: The point is more so the pattern and the people
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: who actually spoke up on her behalf, not only the
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: detectives but also the friends who said if something happens
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: to her she's missing. She told us there's a problem, okay,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: which triggers investigators to look deeper.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: So that for sure, the friends alone would have stirred
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: something up.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: Definitely. So even if it was, hey, another suicide situation
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: where she may have shot herself, I guarantee you they
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: would have looked deeper. They would have looked into it,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: and I am almost certain they would have stopped him
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: because they probably would have had more evidence anything that
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: they looked on. On these ones, they didn't have much evidence.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: Old cases with missing evidence, this one where a body
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: was decomposed to such an extent that they couldn't do
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: a proper autopsy. If they had a body with like
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: you know, it's an accident, it's a suicide, same sort
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: of thing, you can perform that autopsy. Now you can
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: do the proper things on angles with a gun and
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: see that sort of stuff. They would have figured it out.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: In fact, I think it would have been easier for
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: them to figure it out.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: Okay, this guy is just such a piece of shit
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: because he, in all these relationships, just treated these women terribly.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: They're disposable to him.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: Is like surprising to him that they want to leave,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: right and he does. He basically he just doesn't allow it,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: which is just such a fucking asshole.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: And to him, it's almost like he's just going to
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: a vending machine, just getting the next one, you know,
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: just like this male order system. Okay, well this one
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: didn't work out, I'm going to just throw it away
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: and on to the next that's fucked up.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: Well yeah, and like in Emilita's case, she was doing
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: she didn't love him, she was just literally doing this
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: to support her family. Well now he's in poverty, right, I.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: Think that's basically the what male order systems rely on.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I don't know. Maybe there's an odd
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: case where.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: They actually are looking for love.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: I don't who knows, And don't marry a complete piece
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: of this jack guy?
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: Well no, okay, let me back up my statement. I'm
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: not saying that the situations are all someone marrying someone
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: because they have to and their relationship sucks. I'm saying
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: the male order system relies on women signing up because
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: they're looking for a better life, whether it's poverty, whether
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: it's you know, a third world country, whether it's medical things.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: They're reaching out saying this is my last Yes, I
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: do believe there are good relationships that can happen from
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: mail order bride. I'm not advocating for it, but I
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: am saying that. I'm sure some of those women find
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: good men too. Oh yeah, it's just not a good
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: way of going about it. Well, yeah, to them, it's
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: their only option.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: Right, based on love per se.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: Right, So I'm not judging the women in the situation.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: I'm judging the system that takes advantage of those women.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: So yeah, And I guess you could just hope that
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: you don't end up with someone like freakin' Jack.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: Reeves, right, what a complete douche Canoe.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't like him.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: He's done.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: He's garbage.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: Fuck you, Jack, that's all you gotta say. But not
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: you guys. You guys are cool. Thank you for being here.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: We totally appreciate you. If you want to take out
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: the or take a look at the description of our podcast,
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: we got some more stuff, website, socials, all that good things.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: We are an independently host owned, researched podcast. There's no
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: big team, Nicole and are the ones doing it. We
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: are the ones who operate this. There's no one pulling
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: our strengths and telling us what to do, how to
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: do it. We just want to tell you good stories.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: We want to make sure we focus on victims when
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: we can, and we honestly are so thankful you're here
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: supporting us, listening to our show because it means the world.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: So thank you, and until next
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: Time, stay wicked.