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Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder, The most Shocking
Speaker 4: Killers in True crime History and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about him Gaesy Bundy Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK Every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 4: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 7: Good Evening. Laura Smither twelve was taken from the road
Speaker 7: in front of her home in the small suburban Texas
Speaker 7: town of Friendswood. Sandra Sapal barely escaped with her life
Speaker 7: when she was abducted from a waffle house parking lot
Speaker 7: in the tiny Texas coastal town of Webster. Kelly Cox
Speaker 7: vanished from the police department parking lot in the Texas
Speaker 7: college town of Denton. Anjeanette Sorrentino fled into woods in
Speaker 7: Harris County trying to escape a man with murderous intentions.
Speaker 7: He caught her. Tiffany Johnston was raped and murdered in
Speaker 7: the Oklahoma City suburb of Bethany. She was washing her
Speaker 7: car when she disappeared. Jessica Kane was on her way
Speaker 7: home from dinner with friends to the village of Tikey Island, Texas,
Speaker 7: population seven hundred and seventy eight. Within five months in
Speaker 7: nineteen ninety seven, all six, most likely more some say
Speaker 7: many more suffered the same fate. They met a monster
Speaker 7: wearing the face of a man. The book we're featuring
Speaker 7: this evening is What Evil Lurks, The Good Samaritan Killer,
Speaker 7: with my special guest journalist and author, Donna Fielder. Welcome
Speaker 7: to the program, and thank you so much for this
Speaker 7: inner Donna Fielder.
Speaker 3: Hi, Dan, it's nice to talk to you today.
Speaker 7: Nice to talk to you. Thank you so much for
Speaker 7: this interview. This is among extraordinary stories. This is even topsac.
Speaker 7: This is one incredible, credible story. End book. Let's get
Speaker 7: right to that, because we have so much to cover
Speaker 7: in this extraordinary tale. You have so much information, you
Speaker 7: had access to everything. So we get to hear from
Speaker 7: everyone's survivors, victims, and then later on from the killer himself.
Speaker 7: Let's get to April twentieth, a pardon me, April third,
Speaker 7: nineteen ninety seven, and Laura smither As we introduced in
Speaker 7: the introduction, a twelve year old in Friendwood, Friendswood Texas,
Speaker 7: a suburb of Houston. Tell us about Laura's Smither and
Speaker 7: what happened that day.
Speaker 3: Laura Smither was twelve years old. She was going to
Speaker 3: be thirteen in about about a week, but she did
Speaker 3: not make it that far. Laura had her life already
Speaker 3: planned out. She and her parents and her younger brother
Speaker 3: lived outside of Houston in a little bitty suburb. They
Speaker 3: lived down a country road. Their parents were very concerned
Speaker 3: about Houston, Houston which has it had a reputation for
Speaker 3: being a rough place, but that's where her father worked,
Speaker 3: so they moved them out into the country and they
Speaker 3: homeschooled them to keep them safe. That did not work
Speaker 3: out very well. La Laura had her entire life planned out.
Speaker 3: She was going to be a ballet dancer. She was
Speaker 3: already a member of the Houston Ballet. She practiced, she
Speaker 3: took lessons, and she knew that ballet dancers had to
Speaker 3: have very song legs, So even at twelve years old,
Speaker 3: she was working toward that future. And that morning of
Speaker 3: April third, it was it's kind of drizzling rain, but
Speaker 3: Laura wanted to go for a run because she did
Speaker 3: every morning, and her mother said, you know, I'm cooking breakfast.
Speaker 3: Why don't you wait? And she said, no, I need
Speaker 3: to go now, but I promise I'll be back in
Speaker 3: twenty minutes. Laura didn't come back in twenty minutes, she
Speaker 3: didn't come back in two hours, she didn't come back
Speaker 3: in two days. Laura never returned home. She met a
Speaker 3: man somewhere on that short run on the road that
Speaker 3: ran in front of her house. She somehow met a man,
Speaker 3: was kidnapped, raped and murdered, and her body was dumped
Speaker 3: in a retention pond in Pasadena, which is another suburb
Speaker 3: of Houston. About It only took a number of hours
Speaker 3: for her parents to realize there's something terribly wrong. Laura,
Speaker 3: even at twelve, was a very responsible young woman. She
Speaker 3: did what she was told to do, She did what
Speaker 3: she said she would do, and this time she said
Speaker 3: she'd be home in twenty minutes. Since she wasn't, they
Speaker 3: called the police, and the police immediately believed that something
Speaker 3: bad had happened to Laura. They begin looking looking for her.
Speaker 3: The community began looking for her. A tremendous turnout of
Speaker 3: people yes left their jobs, left whatever they had planned
Speaker 3: to do, and began looking for Laura. It took seventeen
Speaker 3: days to find her, and when they found her, her
Speaker 3: body was in a retention pond in Pasadena. It had
Speaker 3: been dumped there, and she was wearing only a pair
Speaker 3: of socks. The medical examiner did an autopsy and said
Speaker 3: that her cavs showed they had been bound to the
Speaker 3: back of her legs. So she had been tied up
Speaker 3: in a horribly hurtful way, and she was riped and strangled.
Speaker 3: They did not know who did this to Laura. They
Speaker 3: had their suspicions, but they had no proof. And so
Speaker 3: for a very long time, a monstro got away with murder.
Speaker 7: You say a long time. But May sixteenth, three weeks
Speaker 7: after Laura's body is found, and her body is found,
Speaker 7: like you say, in seventeen days, So in short order,
Speaker 7: twenty one days after Laura's body's found, there's a woman
Speaker 7: named Sandra Sapal and she's living with the father of
Speaker 7: her two kids. It's not a good situation whatsoever. She
Speaker 7: meets another person, nas James Sapal, and they get married
Speaker 7: and she's in another bad situation. Tell us about Sandra Sapaw, Well,
Speaker 7: what happens one day? What are the circumstances in which
Speaker 7: she sees a man in a white pickup truck.
Speaker 3: Sandral was trying to survive. Basically, she had dropped her
Speaker 3: She had two children, she had dropped them off with
Speaker 3: her parents, and she was basically living from motel room
Speaker 3: to motel room, trying to just trying to find a
Speaker 3: way to make her life ride again. She had she
Speaker 3: had found a man who was willing to help her
Speaker 3: move her things out of the apartment she shared with
Speaker 3: her husband. She drove to a she she was living
Speaker 3: in a motel room. She she drove to a convenience
Speaker 3: store and she made a telephone call to this man
Speaker 3: to tell him she was ready, she needed the help,
Speaker 3: and he said he would come. She went to a
Speaker 3: waffle house and had dinner, and when she came out,
Speaker 3: she just going that she had a flat tire. So
Speaker 3: she was trying to figure out what to do when
Speaker 3: a man in a white pickup truck drove in behind her.
Speaker 3: She basically blocked her way out of there, and he said,
Speaker 3: looks like you've got a problem. She said yes, and
Speaker 3: he said, I'll be glad to help you with that.
Speaker 6: I'll help you.
Speaker 3: Change your tire, and she said, okay. The man went
Speaker 3: around to the front of the vehicle and she said,
Speaker 3: look in my truck. I need a rag. There's a
Speaker 3: white rag on the There's a white rag on the
Speaker 3: seat of my truck. Well, she leaned in and she
Speaker 3: couldn't find any white rag. And she said, there's no
Speaker 3: white rag here, and he said, oh, yeah, maybe it's
Speaker 3: on the floor.
Speaker 6: On the floor.
Speaker 3: Well, she began to get worried. This didn't seem like
Speaker 3: the kind of thing that white rag wasn't something you
Speaker 3: needed to change a tire, right, So she turned around
Speaker 3: and stood up and the man was standing right in
Speaker 3: front of her, invading her personal space. And he had
Speaker 3: a knife, and she said, get in the truck, bitch. Yeah,
Speaker 3: she didn't really have any choice, and he forced her
Speaker 3: into the truck and he took off down. This happened
Speaker 3: in Webster, Texas. He took off down Highway I forty
Speaker 3: five with her in the truck, and she knew that
Speaker 3: if she didn't figure something out really quick, she was
Speaker 3: going to die. She felt that she knew that m
Speaker 3: So she figured out a way to out with this
Speaker 3: man and he told her take off all your clothes.
Speaker 3: So she looked at the at the buttons on the
Speaker 3: truck and decided that her door was not locked. So
Speaker 3: she told him, well, I need to take my shoes
Speaker 3: off before I can take my pants off, and he said, okay.
Speaker 7: Do it.
Speaker 3: When she bent over, she grabbed the handle of the truck.
Speaker 3: She pulled on the door, and going at highway speeds
Speaker 3: on an interstate highway, she jumped out of that truck.
Speaker 3: When he realized what had happened, he was already a
Speaker 3: little way ahead of her, and he pulled over. She
Speaker 3: ran out onto the highway, waving her arms, hoping she
Speaker 3: wasn't going to get run over, and a woman stopped
Speaker 3: and helped her and took her back. She just wanted
Speaker 3: to go back to her car, but the woman called
Speaker 3: nine one one and paramedics came, and police came. They
Speaker 3: took her to the high spittle. The man in the
Speaker 3: white pickup truck drove very quickly away and so they
Speaker 3: did not know who he was. But she saved her
Speaker 3: own life that day.
Speaker 7: You say that she gave a description to police. Finally
Speaker 7: that was she.
Speaker 3: She She had been pretty badly injured and was was
Speaker 3: on pain medication. There was a woman who was the
Speaker 3: police chief of Tiki Alan, which is a tiny little
Speaker 3: island just off the tip of Texas, right, And this
Speaker 3: police chief was a She had learned hypnosis, So the
Speaker 3: Webster police asked her, would she hypnotized Sandra and see
Speaker 3: if she could remember, because she really couldn't remember very
Speaker 3: much at all. This woman's name, I'm sorry, I've lost her.
Speaker 6: Name, Sue Ditrich.
Speaker 3: That this police chief in time did hypnotize Sandra. She
Speaker 3: remembered an amazing amount of detail. Under hypnosis. She could
Speaker 3: describe the man, she described the truck. She actually could
Speaker 3: read numbers that she had seen just briefly, and did
Speaker 3: moments of terror. She could remember part of a police
Speaker 3: part of a telephone number that she saw on a
Speaker 3: post it note on the on the truck.
Speaker 6: Incredible that man's description.
Speaker 3: Matched that of a man that police were already looking
Speaker 3: at in the death of Lord Smither.
Speaker 7: But let's laun more that. Yeah, before we get to that,
Speaker 7: we're in at that you talk about. They turned this
Speaker 7: criminal case over to the Criminal Investigation Division of the
Speaker 7: Webster Police Department, but short orders. In July fifteenth, nineteen
Speaker 7: ninety seven, Lawrence Harris, a man is in Denton, Texas.
Speaker 7: He's at the police department parking lot and he's waiting
Speaker 7: for his girlfriend. Tell us about this again, another incredible
Speaker 7: chapter of this extraordinary story.
Speaker 3: Yes, it was July fifteenth, nineteen ninety seven. Kelly Cox
Speaker 3: was a student at the University of North Texas in Denton.
Speaker 3: She was at the police department with a class with
Speaker 3: a criminal justice class that were touring the jail. The
Speaker 3: class teacher had told the students that they would not
Speaker 3: be allowed to bring anything into the jail, which was
Speaker 3: kind of a misunderstanding. They weren't going inside jail sales.
Speaker 3: They were going inside the jail itself, and they were
Speaker 3: allowed to bring things into the jail where they would
Speaker 3: be secured. They had a place that they secured things
Speaker 3: like pursues, things like that. So Kelly was told that
Speaker 3: she needed to leave everything in her car and come
Speaker 3: and empty handed, which she did. She left a little
Speaker 3: bit early because she had a test to take in
Speaker 3: another class, So just about noon she left the Denton
Speaker 3: Police Department. She went to her car. She had she
Speaker 3: had hidden a key to the car in one of
Speaker 3: those magnetic boxes that you hide somewhere like under a
Speaker 3: under a fender or something like that. She got it
Speaker 3: out and it would not work. She could not make
Speaker 3: the key open her car door, so she's locked out
Speaker 3: of her car because her regular car keys are locked
Speaker 3: insider locked inside her car, she first went to the
Speaker 3: Denton Police Department, is then a large building that takes
Speaker 3: up an entire city block. It has other city offices there.
Speaker 3: At that time, it also housed a community college. She
Speaker 3: first went to an office in the community college and
Speaker 3: asked the woman if she could the phone. She had
Speaker 3: another set of keys at her home and her boyfriend
Speaker 3: lived just a few houses down the street from where
Speaker 3: she lived in Carrollton. The woman said, if this is
Speaker 3: a local call, you may use the phone. If it isn't,
Speaker 3: we're not allowed to let people make long distance calls
Speaker 3: on this. So Kelly didn't know what to do, and
Speaker 3: the woman said, well, there's a payphone right down on
Speaker 3: the corner down there. You can go down there and
Speaker 3: use that payphone. So she had a pocket full of
Speaker 3: change and she went to the payphone and called her boyfriend.
Speaker 3: He wasn't very happy about the whole situation. He complained
Speaker 3: to her that he had to make the drive from
Speaker 3: Carleton to Denton, which was twenty five miles. Maybe they
Speaker 3: didn't have a very happy conversation, but he did agree
Speaker 3: to come. When he got there, he couldn't sign Kelly.
Speaker 3: He called Kelly's mother and told her the situation, and
Speaker 3: Kelly's mother immediately knew Kelly had an eighteen month old daughter.
Speaker 3: She adored that daughter right That daughter meant the world
Speaker 3: to her. That daughter was with the babysitter, and Kelly
Speaker 3: did not pick her up that day. Kelly's mother knew
Speaker 3: that would never have happened if Kelly had the power
Speaker 3: to reach her daughter. They called it in police department.
Speaker 3: They explained the situation. Police Chief Jezz immediately knew that
Speaker 3: this wasn't your normal teenage girl doesn't come home story.
Speaker 3: He called in every available officer he had and said,
Speaker 3: this is the real deal. This is a who done it.
Speaker 3: We need to find Kelly Cox, and we're not going
Speaker 3: to do anything else that we don't have to do
Speaker 3: until we find her. The officers worked all the rest
Speaker 3: of that day, They worked all night, they worked all
Speaker 3: day the next day. They continued to work until they
Speaker 3: had run down every single lead, and there weren't very
Speaker 3: many of them. This was a young woman who simply vanished.
Speaker 3: They could not find one clue, not one as to
Speaker 3: what had happened to Kelly Cox, and it remained that
Speaker 3: way for nineteen years.
Speaker 7: Let's use as an opportunity to stop for a second
Speaker 7: for these messages.
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Speaker 7: Now you talked about Kelly Cox, but there wasn't a
Speaker 7: detective named Benny Parky, and he was assigned the lead detective,
Speaker 7: and he did go to that convenience store and did
Speaker 7: talk to that person, so we did get that information.
Speaker 7: But he was involved at that time.
Speaker 3: You talk about yes twenty a detective in the case
Speaker 3: that every single police officer for the City of Denton
Speaker 3: Police actually worked on that case off and own for years.
Speaker 3: Benny was the leading vesta. He was devoted to finding Keilly.
Speaker 3: But he told me later there just aren't any clues
Speaker 3: to follow. In order to solve a crime, you have
Speaker 3: to follow the clues, and there aren't any. She simply vanished.
Speaker 3: There's no blood, there's no sign of struggle, there are
Speaker 3: no witnesses. We've done everything we can, and we will
Speaker 3: continue to do everything we can, but we can't find
Speaker 3: Kelly without some kind of clue somewhere, and one did
Speaker 3: not appear.
Speaker 7: Right now. Five days later, July twentieth, nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 7: Anjeanette Sorrentino, twenty three year old. Her and her boyfriend
Speaker 7: are breaking up, and this is near Tiki Island as well. Anyway,
Speaker 7: tell us about why she ends up at a convenience
Speaker 7: store looking for cigarettes and again notices a man at
Speaker 7: a phone.
Speaker 3: Booth Anginette was very upset. That night she and her
Speaker 3: boyfriend were breaking up. She had gone to a bar.
Speaker 3: He had followed her there and continued in argument with her.
Speaker 3: She left that bar. She was going to go to
Speaker 3: another one, but she stopped to buy cigarettes at a
Speaker 3: convenience store, and when she walked in, she saw a
Speaker 3: man on the pay telephone outside. She looked at him
Speaker 3: and he just looked strange. He had the phone to
Speaker 3: his ear. He pretended to be talking, but she didn't
Speaker 3: think he was really talking to anybody. So she went
Speaker 3: in and used the bathroom and bought her cigarettes. And
Speaker 3: she looked back outside and he's still out there, and
Speaker 3: he's still making talking noises. And she was really afraid,
Speaker 3: but she didn't have any choice. She went out to
Speaker 3: get in her truck. She took off in the truck
Speaker 3: and quickly realized that she was She had a flat tire,
Speaker 3: so she pulled over. And the place she pulled over
Speaker 3: in was it was dark. There were no streetlights. It
Speaker 3: was in a wooded area with no houses. She got
Speaker 3: out of a truck and the man came up and said,
Speaker 3: you look like you're in trouble. I'll be glad to
Speaker 3: help you. She just did not trust this man at all.
Speaker 3: It was the same man in the white pickup truck
Speaker 3: that she had seen in the parking lot. Of the
Speaker 3: convenience store. She turned and ran, and she ran into
Speaker 3: the woods, thinking that she would find houses on the
Speaker 3: other side of the woods and she could get help.
Speaker 3: But she didn't get that far. This man caught her,
Speaker 3: beat her, strangled her unconscious, and actually threw her in
Speaker 3: the back seat of his car unconscious. She woke up.
Speaker 3: She told Houston police that she saw him murder a
Speaker 3: young man who seemed to be part of the whole story,
Speaker 3: and his name is Joey. Houston police did not believe Enginette.
Speaker 3: They thought that her boyfriend had beat her up. But
Speaker 3: when they checked, he had. He had an alibi and
Speaker 3: it was a good one and it stood. But they
Speaker 3: still didn't believe her story. It's not clear exactly why,
Speaker 3: but they just would not. They would not help Enginette.
Speaker 3: So she and her mother took her story the same
Speaker 3: Kiki Allen police chief because she had a reputation of
Speaker 3: helping young women. That woman's name was Sue dietrich Nance
Speaker 3: and she was still police chief, and Kiki Allen. She
Speaker 3: gathered information, She interviewed Engeanette. She put together a file
Speaker 3: and she took it to the Houston police and was
Speaker 3: told this is not your jurisdiction. We don't believe this woman.
Speaker 3: We think something else happened to her and she's covering
Speaker 3: it up. So you just go on to bag your
Speaker 3: business because this is our case. Well, Sue, she was
Speaker 3: helpless in this case. It wasn't her case. She did
Speaker 3: everything she could. She kept the foul, She followed every
Speaker 3: clue that she could come up with. She independently worked
Speaker 3: that case, and she came to the conclusion that the
Speaker 3: man who attacked a Jeanette was the same man who
Speaker 3: had killed Lors Smither and she was never able to
Speaker 3: the case wasn't her jurisdiction. The Houston police did not
Speaker 3: listen to her. She could not like the case against
Speaker 3: this man, whose name was William Reeves. He was never
Speaker 3: charged in a kidnapping of Engine Anne. The police told
Speaker 3: her that they never found any indication that a man
Speaker 3: named Joey had been murdered. Right, They just didn't believe
Speaker 3: any of this and they never did anything about it. Wow,
Speaker 3: So if William Reese was the man who kidnapped her
Speaker 3: that night, he was never charged with it. He was
Speaker 3: never found guilty of anything that had to do with
Speaker 3: Engine Anne. But she believes and Sue Nance believes that
Speaker 3: he was the man who kidnapped her that night.
Speaker 7: Certainly, certainly, now you write July twenty sixth, nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 7: just a few days later, in the car wash, there's
Speaker 7: six stalls, and this is in Bethany, Oklahoma, and a
Speaker 7: couple of police officers, Detective Daniel Mobley and patrol Officer J. D. Reid.
Speaker 7: It's about near midnight. They spot a white sedan in
Speaker 7: the stall at the car wash. Tell us what happens
Speaker 7: after that.
Speaker 3: Tiffany was a newly win She had plans for her life.
Speaker 3: She wanted to be a nurse. She had just gotten married.
Speaker 3: She and her husband lived in Bethany, which is a
Speaker 3: it's kind of a satellite to the moship of mothership
Speaker 3: of Oklahoma City. She got off work that evening. She
Speaker 3: worked as a waitress. She actually had two waitress jobs.
Speaker 3: She was trying to save money to go to college,
Speaker 3: to go to nursing school in the farm. She and
Speaker 3: her husband were going to go out that night. She
Speaker 3: decided to wash her car, so she went to a
Speaker 3: car wash and began washing her car, and something happened
Speaker 3: that point. No one knew exactly what happened. But something
Speaker 3: happened at the Sunshine car wash that night, and when
Speaker 3: those two police offer two police officers show by on
Speaker 3: routine patrol, they noticed this car sitting there. The doors
Speaker 3: were open, there was no one around it. They didn't
Speaker 3: know at that point that something or anything had happened
Speaker 3: to Tiffany Johnston. About an hour later, they made that
Speaker 3: same trip by that car wash and the car was
Speaker 3: still sitting there, so they investigated. They found the queues
Speaker 3: were still in the car. They found a purse in
Speaker 3: the car, They found a cell phone in the car,
Speaker 3: but they did not find Tiffany Johnson. They called her
Speaker 3: husband and he said, I've been waiting for her to
Speaker 3: come home. We were supposed to go out, but she
Speaker 3: never showed up. And I've called her mother. She doesn't
Speaker 3: know anything about her.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know what to do now. That immediately set
Speaker 3: off a search for Tiffany, and her body was found
Speaker 3: outside of town along at her road the next day.
Speaker 3: She had been raped and she had been strangled.
Speaker 7: What's interesting is right away, as a result of the
Speaker 7: NewsCap asked as a result of the police report, a
Speaker 7: man named George Brown, who was the owner of the
Speaker 7: car wash in Bethany saw the TV broadcast and saw
Speaker 7: his car wash on the news, so he called contacted
Speaker 7: police to tell him what he saw. What did he
Speaker 7: tell police about who he saw?
Speaker 3: He told police that there was a man who hung
Speaker 3: around the car wash. His his name was William Reese
Speaker 3: and that the description of the pickup truck that was
Speaker 3: seen there fit the description of the truck that William
Speaker 3: Rees strove. There was no evidence whatsoever that connected William
Speaker 3: Reeves to Tiffany Johnston on the fact that she disappeared
Speaker 3: from that car wash. So at that point, Oklahoma City
Speaker 3: police believed they had a suspect, but they had no
Speaker 3: evidence whatsoever. There was semen found on Tiffany's body, but
Speaker 3: they didn't have anybody to compare it to. So the DNA,
Speaker 3: which could have been really strong evidence, it couldn't be
Speaker 3: explored because there was no one to compare it to.
Speaker 3: That case went cold, as well as these other cases.
Speaker 7: He was questioned by state uh State police. Did they
Speaker 7: get anything from that other than establishing He said he
Speaker 7: had an alibi, but you said it was no physical evidence.
Speaker 7: But what did he, if anything, say to those police
Speaker 7: at that time?
Speaker 3: At that time, he claimed he had been in Texas
Speaker 3: on the day Iffany disappeared, and the police couldn't prove
Speaker 3: that he had not been in Texas. This is back
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety seven. A lot of things that police
Speaker 3: have available to them now to help themselves cases was
Speaker 3: not available at that time.
Speaker 7: Sir, you talk now, you've read about in August.
Speaker 6: Sorry, go ahead, I'm sorry, Go ahead.
Speaker 3: William Rees had been arrested in the case of Alexandra
Speaker 3: Sapau and he was in jail. I see, so he was,
Speaker 3: he was off the streets. There's no telling how many
Speaker 3: young women's lie were saved because he was in jail
Speaker 3: and he couldn't he couldn't pull his stunts, he couldn't
Speaker 3: kidnap them.
Speaker 7: Before that, you write about August seventeenth, nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 7: Then Jessica Kan who was seventeen years old, ready to
Speaker 7: leave for san for Houston State University in Huntsville to
Speaker 7: study drama. And so she's women with their parents in
Speaker 7: Tiki Island again, Tiki Island comes up. Tell us what
Speaker 7: happens August seventeenth, nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 3: Jessica Kane, Jessica King had her laugh all planned out.
Speaker 3: She was going to be an actress. She was a
Speaker 3: beautiful young woman. All of these young women were beautiful,
Speaker 3: They had long, dark hair, They were all smart. They
Speaker 3: all had plans for theirs, and they were all working
Speaker 3: those plans. Jessica was already packed.
Speaker 7: To move.
Speaker 3: Into her apartment to go to college. She was going
Speaker 3: to major in drama. That night, she had appeared in
Speaker 3: a play and all the people who were in the
Speaker 3: play had gone to dinner together. She had a curfew,
Speaker 3: but her parents told her that she could stay out
Speaker 3: until midnight that night to be with her friends, to
Speaker 3: have dinner with her friends, and then she was going
Speaker 3: to drive home to Tea Yaan. She didn't come home
Speaker 3: that night. Her dad knew something bad had happened, because.
Speaker 6: That was not Jessica.
Speaker 3: She was a very She was a very steadfast young woman.
Speaker 3: She could be depended upon. She was supposed to be home.
Speaker 3: She didn't come home. When her dad looked for her,
Speaker 3: he found her the pickup truck not far from the
Speaker 3: Tiki Islands cut off. She had made it nearly home.
Speaker 3: Her purse, her keys, and her cell phone were locked
Speaker 3: inside that truck. She was not to be found. She
Speaker 3: had vanished, just like these other young women.
Speaker 7: You write that there was a witness emerged though, and
Speaker 7: told the Lsmark police again another little town, that he
Speaker 7: had seen a truck park behind Jessica's truck. What was
Speaker 7: the description of that truck.
Speaker 3: It was a white pickup truck and it had a
Speaker 3: sort of lot bar across the top. This person said
Speaker 3: that when he passed by, that truck was parked behind
Speaker 3: Jessica's truck, and he believed that it was some sort
Speaker 3: of either a law enforcement officer or maybe a tow truck.
Speaker 3: Maybe she had had car trouble. He thought nothing of
Speaker 3: it until he read in the paper that she had disappeared.
Speaker 3: But that truck matched the description of the truck that
Speaker 3: people had described when they had seen William Reese. So
Speaker 3: again we have a suspect, but we have zero clues,
Speaker 3: no clues, no information, nothing. So in all four of
Speaker 3: these cases, William Reese was a suspect, but he was
Speaker 3: not charged with any of these because there was no
Speaker 3: physical evidence whatsoever. Nobody had actually seen him. These young
Speaker 3: women just and were not heard from again.
Speaker 7: Right, you say that the detective Pam Mitchell was the
Speaker 7: lead investigator on the case, in les Mark, but fortunately
Speaker 7: she was friends with Sue Dietrich Nance. Again, no jurisdiction
Speaker 7: in the case. She's been told to beat it before,
Speaker 7: but she teams up with Detective Pam Mitchell. Anyway, let's
Speaker 7: use this as an opportunity Donna to stop for a
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Speaker 7: dollars value. Now, Donna, we were talking about this Sue
Speaker 7: dietrich Nance who gets so thoroughly involved with this that
Speaker 7: you can't let this go. And they know that they
Speaker 7: have this person that is the main suspect is William Reese.
Speaker 7: He fits the bill. He's attacked other people, but he's
Speaker 7: in prison for the attack of Sandrasapow I believe, And
Speaker 7: so now we have different people over the years, after
Speaker 7: this cold case is run for many, many years, what
Speaker 7: happens in the pursuit of William Reese.
Speaker 3: In the mid twenty fifteen twenty sixteen time period, the
Speaker 3: Oklahoma City Police believed that they might have a chance.
Speaker 3: William Rees showed up in the files he was in prison.
Speaker 3: He was in prison for kidnapping. They believed he was
Speaker 3: a viable suspect. They had a little bit of DNA left.
Speaker 3: They had tried DNA a couple of other times over
Speaker 3: the years, but it hadn't worked. DNA was not very reliable.
Speaker 3: At that time. They had a little bit of DNA left.
Speaker 3: They had one more chance, and they decided to ask
Speaker 3: a Texas ranger to interview him and see if they
Speaker 3: could get something that would make them confident in using
Speaker 3: their last little bit of DNA to see if it
Speaker 3: could if the suspect could be William Reese. So they
Speaker 3: contacted the Texas Rangers who had a cold case investigator
Speaker 3: whose name was James Holland Texas Ranger James Holland. They
Speaker 3: asked him if he would interview Reese, and he said
Speaker 3: that he would. At the same time, he was already
Speaker 3: talking to Reese about some of these other murders. Some
Speaker 3: other police detectives on the cases, and at this point
Speaker 3: Benny Parky, the Denton detective, had retired and another detective
Speaker 3: named Eric Beckwith had taken over the case. In the meantime,
Speaker 3: there were many many years that detective I'm sorry, yeah,
Speaker 3: I can't remember his name. Another detective had a case
Speaker 3: for many, many years, Mike Leverton. He had retired and
Speaker 3: so Eric Beckworth had taken this case. It was at
Speaker 3: that point a very very cold case, but he had
Speaker 3: gone through the files, he had done some catching up.
Speaker 3: He wanted to to work with James Holland, the Texas Ranger,
Speaker 3: to see if maybe they could make a case against
Speaker 3: Reese and Achille Cox case. So Holland talked to Reese
Speaker 3: and he told him Reese at firstday night everything and
Speaker 3: he said, well, you know, we have this against you,
Speaker 3: We have that against you. We have people who saw
Speaker 3: your truck. I believe that you committed these murders, and
Speaker 3: I believe that Oklahoma City has DNA they're going to
Speaker 3: use against you, and they want the death penalty. And
Speaker 3: Reese told him if you can get these Texas cases,
Speaker 3: if you can get them to take the death penalty
Speaker 3: off the table, I will tell you things that will
Speaker 3: help you. So Holland went to the other police departments
Speaker 3: and said, will you drop the death penalty? And I
Speaker 3: think we can find these young women. At the time, Kelly,
Speaker 3: talk to Kin, we're still missing. There was still no
Speaker 3: justice for those young women. Their parents wanted to find
Speaker 3: their bodies. They wanted that more than anything else. At
Speaker 3: that point, they agreed, Yes, we'll take the death penalty
Speaker 3: off the table if you'll, if you'll find their bodies
Speaker 3: for us, so we can bury them, so we can
Speaker 3: have a place to go to mourn them, so we
Speaker 3: can have a little bit of closure. And so James
Speaker 3: Holland told Reese, Okay, you tell me what you know,
Speaker 3: and if it leads to finding these young women, we
Speaker 3: will not charge you with the death penalty murder. Right,
Speaker 3: And so Reese told them, yes, I murdered Lauris, Yes
Speaker 3: I murdered Kelly Coals, Yes I murdered Jessica Kine. He
Speaker 3: still at that point denied having murdered Tiffany Johnson because
Speaker 3: they didn't actually have the DNA. At that point, he
Speaker 3: allowed them to do a swab of his mouth to
Speaker 3: get DNA right that came back positive, and they knew.
Speaker 3: They knew that William Lewis Reese had murdered Jesse had
Speaker 3: murdered Tiffany Johnson. Right, So Holland came back and talked
Speaker 3: to Reese again and said, will you show us where
Speaker 3: you hid their bodies, and he said, yes, I will.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 3: In March of two thousand and fifty, the Texas Rangers,
Speaker 3: Denton Police and other officers and other estate officers first
Speaker 3: went to a place that was that was in a
Speaker 3: secluded area, I will say in Brazilia County, Texas. He said,
Speaker 3: I brought this girl. He called her the Denton girl.
Speaker 3: He said, I brought her here and I buried her body.
Speaker 3: It took a little bit of condensing from James Holland,
Speaker 3: but he finally admitted that he spent the night in
Speaker 3: his truck, which had a camper there with Kelly Talks,
Speaker 3: parked in that included area, in some woods in what
Speaker 3: had once been a rice field, and he told them
Speaker 3: that he killed her and he buried her body, and
Speaker 3: he knew sort of he knew sort of where the
Speaker 3: body was buried, but he unfortunately things had changed in
Speaker 3: that field. The trees had grown up, it didn't look
Speaker 3: exactly like it used to look. It was raining by
Speaker 3: that point. They did a little bit of work in
Speaker 3: that field with the back hole, but it was raining
Speaker 3: and so they had to stop. When the rain ceased.
Speaker 3: They went to the other side of Houston near Hobby Airport,
Speaker 3: and he told them, Okay, this is where I buried
Speaker 3: Jessic Cane. And they began digging in that area and
Speaker 3: they found the remains of Jessica Kane. Then they went
Speaker 3: back to the Bassoia County area and they looked some more,
Speaker 3: and they dug some more. They went through it. They
Speaker 3: strained dirt into buckets and they found one of Kelly
Speaker 3: Cox's teeth. They found a bone. They believed that that
Speaker 3: bone was a thigh bone from Kelly's leg. Eventually found
Speaker 3: enough evidence at that side that they charged William Rees
Speaker 3: with those two murders. By that time, the DNA had
Speaker 3: come back as positive in the Tiffany Johnston case, and
Speaker 3: they also in Oklahoma City charged Oklahoma County charged William
Speaker 3: Reese with capital murder in that case. So Reese was
Speaker 3: not looking forward to being moved to Oklahoma because they
Speaker 3: were going after the death penalty. He did not have
Speaker 3: a death penalty looking at him in Texas. So Texas
Speaker 3: law enforcement agreed to wait and see what happened in
Speaker 3: the Oklahoma case before they tried reached in Texas.
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Speaker 7: Now you talk about this capital case, what happens with
Speaker 7: that prosecution?
Speaker 3: Everything moves slowly in the criminal justice system. These murders
Speaker 3: happened in the spring and summer of nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 3: The trial in Oklahoma County of bringing reached for the
Speaker 3: murder of Tiffany Johnston began on May tenth, twenty twenty one. Well,
Speaker 3: it had been twenty four years since Tiffany died, twenty
Speaker 3: four years since Jessica died, since Kelly died. That's a
Speaker 3: very long time to wait for justice. But the Oklahoma
Speaker 3: County prosecutors believed they had a strong case against William
Speaker 3: Rees and they wanted they wanted the death penalty for him.
Speaker 3: They believed he deserved it. They believed that Oklahoma County
Speaker 3: jurors would would believe that he deserved it as well.
Speaker 7: You talk about sea years of pow testifying at this
Speaker 7: trial as well, I was wrong. There was an Oklahoma survivor.
Speaker 7: The Oklahoma people he attacked. Sandrasapau testified at this trial
Speaker 7: as well.
Speaker 3: That is correct. There were two young women who had
Speaker 3: been attacked by Reese many years earlier, and it seems
Speaker 3: like William Rees learned by doing, and by that I
Speaker 3: mean his first two cases. He kidnapped a young woman
Speaker 3: from her car when it stopped running. She was in
Speaker 3: Oklahoma City. She outsmarted him and got away from him,
Speaker 3: but not before he committed oral sexual assault on her.
Speaker 3: She told police who she believed he was. They arrested him,
Speaker 3: He made bail, and before he came to trial on case,
Speaker 3: he followed a woman home from a bar and sexually
Speaker 3: attacked her. He was convicted of those two crimes and
Speaker 3: went to prison for eight years. He had been out
Speaker 3: of prison less than six months when Laura who was
Speaker 3: the first victim that we know of in Texas, was murdered.
Speaker 3: William Reeves had learned one thing while he was in prison.
Speaker 3: If you leave them alive, they'll finger you and you'll
Speaker 3: get caught. You can't leave them alive, and so he
Speaker 3: began to murder his victims. But it took twenty four
Speaker 3: years for a man who had not graduated from high school,
Speaker 3: who had spent most of his youth in foster homes
Speaker 3: and orphanages. He was one of thirteen children, and all
Speaker 3: he had learned was how to shoe horses and how
Speaker 3: to drive big equipment. So that's what he was doing.
Speaker 3: That's why he was on the highway back and forth
Speaker 3: between Texas and Oklahoma the whole time looking for work.
Speaker 3: That's why he was in the area when Laura Smither
Speaker 3: went for her morning run. It was drizzling rain. He
Speaker 3: was supposed to drive some heavy equipment on a nearby
Speaker 3: in a nearby area where they were building homes, and
Speaker 3: he got sent home, and that's how he came to
Speaker 3: meet with Laura on the road in front of her house.
Speaker 7: This he led police to the bodies. He made a confession,
Speaker 7: he I don't know he was candid about his motivations
Speaker 7: for the murders and the rapes. There wasn't much to
Speaker 7: set him off. Again. He was paroled in.
Speaker 3: Each of these young women for what happened to them.
Speaker 3: He was, you know, in his mind he was blameless.
Speaker 3: He said that that Kelly Cougs was routed to him
Speaker 3: and threw a soft drink on him because they bumped
Speaker 3: into each other. And so in his mind it was
Speaker 3: okay for him to kidnap her, ripe her murderer, and
Speaker 3: bury her body. That's the way William Resh's mind worked.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And this this idea of disabling a car. These
Speaker 7: people all had flat tires or a rescue. As you say,
Speaker 7: he learned. So maybe once he just happened to be
Speaker 7: help out somebody that had a flat tire, but certainly
Speaker 7: after that he planned the disabling of these people's vehicles.
Speaker 7: Very interesting to hear about that. In light of a
Speaker 7: couple of weeks ago we had another book, the Flat
Speaker 7: Tire Murders. Again, the modus operandi was to disable the
Speaker 7: vehicles via a flat tire. Very good technique, it seems.
Speaker 3: Yes, young young women often don't know what to do
Speaker 3: when they have a flat tire, and it's scary. You
Speaker 3: can't drive your vehicle and suddenly you're pretty helpless and
Speaker 3: up jumps this man who says, hey, I'll thinks that
Speaker 3: flat tire for Are you no problem? It's very difficult
Speaker 3: to say no, go away in circumstances Black Fan. But
Speaker 3: in the case of in the case of Sandra Sapau,
Speaker 3: they found a stab wound in one of her tires
Speaker 3: that had flattened the tire. They believed he used to knife,
Speaker 3: probably the same knight that he forced her into his
Speaker 3: truck with. He caused the problems to cause these young
Speaker 3: women to need help, and then suddenly here he was
Speaker 3: their hero. He was going to change their tire for him.
Speaker 3: He was going to get him out of the situation
Speaker 3: they suddenly found themselves in. And that worked really well
Speaker 3: for him. The very first case that was made on
Speaker 3: him was the young woman in Oklahoma City who was
Speaker 3: driving down the interstate in the rain and suddenly her
Speaker 3: car stopped. She didn't have a flat tire, but she
Speaker 3: just suddenly she had car trouble. He was driving down
Speaker 3: the interstate in a nineteen wheeler, pulled up behind her,
Speaker 3: appeared at her window and said you're going to get hit.
Speaker 3: You're on the interstate. You need to get in the
Speaker 3: truck with me and we'll go get some help and
Speaker 3: we'll find somebody to tow your car for you. I
Speaker 3: think this was the thing that led him to believe
Speaker 3: this is a great way to get women. And I
Speaker 3: think that he manipulated the other situations so that he
Speaker 3: could be their hero and then he could rape and
Speaker 3: murder them because he locked it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, were the parents of some of these victims, Kelly Cox,
Speaker 7: Lauris Smithers. Were they okay with the rationale for the
Speaker 7: plea bargain and that he wouldn't be put to death.
Speaker 3: They agreed to it because they they want enclosure. They
Speaker 3: wanted to know where their daughters were. They knew they
Speaker 3: were dead. They had to be dead. It had been
Speaker 3: at that point nineteen years since they lost their daughters.
Speaker 3: They wanted them desperately. And yes, they agreed that if
Speaker 3: he were going to be tried in Oklahoma City for
Speaker 3: a death penalty case, that it was okay with them.
Speaker 3: It was okay with them to not dry him in
Speaker 3: a death penalty case in Texas. That's how they That's
Speaker 3: how they found their daughters absolutely. Kellicoxiu's mother actually said,
Speaker 3: if he doesn't find our daughter for us, all bets
Speaker 3: are off. But if if he leads us to her body,
Speaker 3: then we still want to have a trial. We still
Speaker 3: want to look him in the eye. We want to
Speaker 3: hear what excuse he might have for the things he
Speaker 3: did to our daughter. So there was some hesitation that
Speaker 3: they wanted so badly to find their daughters that they
Speaker 3: did agree to him.
Speaker 7: This is a remarkable book too, because you do demonstrate
Speaker 7: and have access to the information about these incredible people
Speaker 7: that were just again they had the future ahead of them.
Speaker 7: I know it's a cliche, but these people again innocent people,
Speaker 7: remarkable stories like somebody abducted from a police department parking lot,
Speaker 7: somebody out for a job for twenty minutes. All of
Speaker 7: these innocent people with their lives ahead of them, and
Speaker 7: this William Reese came into their lives. But also dedicated
Speaker 7: police detective and police chiefs like Sue dietrich Nance which
Speaker 7: just emerge as a just a hero in this book
Speaker 7: for being dedicated and never giving up the fight, and
Speaker 7: along with some other detectives that you have mentioned as
Speaker 7: well that stuck with this case. Because they believe they
Speaker 7: knew who was the perpetrator. I want to thank you
Speaker 7: very much, Donna Fielder for coming on and talking about
Speaker 7: what evil lurks the Good Samaritan Killer. I know that
Speaker 7: you are an author of other books such as Lady Killer,
Speaker 7: Let's Kill Mom, Pennies on Her Grave, and The Vanished Wife.
Speaker 7: Is there a website they might take a look, might
Speaker 7: take a look at, or an Amazon page? Tell us
Speaker 7: how they might take a look at other books and
Speaker 7: information about this one.
Speaker 3: I have a website called Donna Fielder books dot com.
Speaker 3: If you go to that website, all the books are
Speaker 3: listed there. They're all available on Amazon and many are
Speaker 3: available bookstores. But if you want to if you want
Speaker 3: to get a book to download, there's an Amazon button
Speaker 3: beside each book. If you press that Amazon button, it
Speaker 3: will take you directly to the place that you need
Speaker 3: to be in owner to bout those books.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there we go.
Speaker 7: Thank you so much, Donna. It's been incredible. What evil
Speaker 7: lurks the Good Samaritan Killer? Donna Fielder, you have a
Speaker 7: great evening. Thank you so much for this interview.
Speaker 6: Goodnight, Thank you, good night.
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