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