00:00:00
It almost made me sick. I was on the floor and then I kind of got myself together. I said, we have to go over there. I have to go over there.
00:00:13
In the muscular military world, she was a commander who cared. I was like, what are you doing? And she says, I'm writing birthday cards to all my soldiers.
00:00:23
Her husband, a charming sergeant and devoted dad. He was just as loving and doting as Lynn was.
00:00:31
No one could believe it when this decorated officer was found dead in her own home.
00:00:36
An army commander being murdered was unheard of. The first suspect, as usual, the husband.
00:00:43
But this one had a rock-solid alibi. It would have been very difficult for him to have committed this murder.
00:00:51
Did this soldier have enemies off the battlefield? her brother-in-law had a grudge. Rodney was going around calling her names, vulgar names.
00:01:01
Her husband had a girlfriend. Roger was sitting with a young lady and they were cuddled up.
00:01:08
We found out that she was pregnant. Who killed the commander? In a place where loyalty is prized
00:01:15
above all, one clue. That palm print was a key part of the case. Would reveal a breathtaking
00:01:21
betrayal. I don't even have words. What a monster. I'm Lester Holt and this is Dateline.
00:01:29
Here's Andrea Canning with Deadly Devotion. In the hot and dangerous Middle East, she held her own in the company of men,
00:01:42
a captain and a commander whose devotion never wavered. She inspired people and that's maybe why
00:01:49
She made such a great commander. She inspired her troops. She inspired those that worked for her to want to do well.
00:01:56
She was Captain Lynn Armstrong Reister. Army veteran Debbie Moore was one of her best friends.
00:02:03
Lynn was very intelligent. She knew how to bring out the best in people. I just loved her.
00:02:09
She was someone to be inspired by. She inspired people. She had a big role in the military.
00:02:13
Very big role, yeah. She was in charge of the air defense artillery in Saudi Arabia.
00:02:19
When they were in Saudi and we had the Patriot missiles, she would be the one that would make that decision on what was coming in
00:02:26
if it needed to be taken out of the sky. Captain Reister earned medals in promotions
00:02:30
and the loyalty of the men and women under her command. That loyalty cut both ways, according to her assistant, Megan Ayers.
00:02:39
Did she take good care of her soldiers? Absolutely. She did welfare checks where she would visit with families.
00:02:47
She would meet with the different wives. and things like that. Was she the perfect candidate for the Army?
00:02:53
She was, in my opinion. She didn't let stress get to her too much. I think that she was probably one of the best commanders I've ever worked under.
00:03:02
Lynn grew up with a brother and two younger sisters in the military town of Pensacola, Florida.
00:03:07
While she was away at school, she sent her sister some advice on tape for her 16th birthday.
00:03:13
Don't argue. Avoid arguing. Just be happy. Don't let anyone spoil that for you, and you'll be happy and you'll find it in your heart.
00:03:21
Anyway, I hope that helps. She graduated with an officer's commission from Norwich University in Vermont,
00:03:28
one of the oldest military colleges in the country, and then began the globetrotting life of a soldier.
00:03:35
I met Lynn over in Germany. Debbie and Lynn were both stationed over there. They met at a birthday party through mutual friends.
00:03:43
I snapped a picture of the four of them sitting there at the table. Young women serving their country, savoring life overseas,
00:03:51
and being surrounded by guys in uniform, sometimes love entered the picture. It certainly did for Lynn.
00:03:58
How did Lynn and Roger meet? They met over in Germany at the K Club. Is that an army club?
00:04:03
That is an army club. It's in Ansbach. And we would go there on Saturday nights because on Saturday nights they had country music.
00:04:10
Sergeant Roger Reister and Lynn hit it off at once, and the romance blossomed. blossomed. Lynn was a wonderful person. She had a smile that just lit up the room. As a military
00:04:21
wife, when I heard that Roger was enlisted and Lynn was an officer, that's a no-no in the military.
00:04:28
Yeah, back then it wasn't as critical as it became a couple years later. He was a charmer,
00:04:33
and she fell in love. And they got married. Debbie liked the fact that he was an Elvis fan.
00:04:41
And I was like amazed. I thought, really? You're in Thomas Presley too? I was kind of surprised by that, yeah. So, yeah, he was a lot of fun.
00:04:52
Roger admired Lynn's devotion to her country and her strength. You have to be mentally strong. With the military, especially with the women in the military, you have to be, you know, mentally strong and be able to go toe-to-toe with some of the men.
00:05:05
Lynn and Roger had chosen a soldier's life, and that meant a marriage full of separations.
00:05:11
Roger even missed the birth of his son Tristan. It was unbelievable. As soon as I came back, I stepped off the bus, and she held him, and she said,
00:05:19
This is your son. And it was really a great moment. It really was. And I just held her and held him at the same time.
00:05:28
Was he a good dad? He was. He would bring him up to visit, and they would play, and he seemed very happy being a dad.
00:05:38
When Tristan was four, the family was stationed at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, and it was Lynn who got called away.
00:05:46
Lynn found out she had to deploy to Saudi Arabia. You were going with her? Yes, ma'am.
00:05:51
Was she okay with that I mean she had to leave Tristan behind This is her first deployment without him correct To the best of my knowledge yes I remember her telling us that it was hard that she was having a hard time with it
00:06:06
She was sad, and that she just kept telling him that she would come home. It won't be that long.
00:06:12
And it was how long was the deployment? It was about six months. And then she did get home, but her old life was about to change.
00:06:21
About four months after she got back, Roger convinced Lynn to let his 24-year-old brother Rodney come live with them.
00:06:28
Rodney had gotten into some trouble while his brother was serving his country. Maybe Roger and Lynn could set him straight.
00:06:35
He was on probation in Florida, and for him to be able to leave the state, she had to write this letter, you know, saying how she would take on that responsibility.
00:06:47
Roger asked her to do that, and so she did. Right about the same time, Lynn found out she was pregnant again.
00:06:54
The tug of motherhood was getting stronger, so this globetrotting Army captain made a decision.
00:07:00
She put in for a transfer to teach ROTC in Minnesota. Good for her career, good for her family, and no travel.
00:07:08
Was she doing it at all to be with Tristan more? Was that part of it? Yeah, that would be part of it, yes. She wanted to, um, it's more relaxing.
00:07:16
She was going to be a teacher. It was something that she was really looking forward to.
00:07:20
Just days before moving time, Lynn was saying goodbye to Fort Bliss. Lynn was having a going-away party.
00:07:27
Anytime a commander resigns a command, the unit will put together and buy a going-away gift.
00:07:34
It's usually a plaque or something to commemorate the accomplishments of the unit.
00:07:40
Megan didn't go, but her husband did. My husband came home and I asked how it went, you know, did she like the gift?
00:07:47
And he said, you know, she never showed. And that was very odd. Something else was odd.
00:07:55
Roger had been calling Lynn at home throughout the day. No answer. Late that afternoon, he came home from work with Tristan.
00:08:03
And it was all too clear why Lynn hadn't answered the phone. Hi, my mom. I need to go home.
00:08:12
Lynn Armstrong Reister, mother, soldier, beloved commander, was in her bedroom, lying dead in a pool of blood.
00:08:26
When we return. My first instinct was to grab Tristan and run out of the house. It almost made me sick. I was on the floor.
00:08:34
Where will investigators start? It could be a neighbor. It could be a lover. It could be anybody.
00:08:40
You had a killer on the loose. Yes. Who's out there? Who did this? Roger Reister and his little boy Tristan had just come home at dinner time to something no child should ever have to see.
00:09:05
I'm the one that found her. whenever I walked into the, had Tristan with me. And whenever we walked in, it was tough.
00:09:15
It was tough seeing that. Lynn, six months pregnant, had been stabbed to death. Her throat slashed.
00:09:22
My first instinct was to grab Tristan and run out of the house. And then I know I was screaming and yelling.
00:09:28
I probably looked like a madman out there, but it was, it was, I didn't know what to think.
00:09:33
She's pregnant. You need to have somebody there. He immediately called 911 and brought Tristan out.
00:09:42
Tristan in his statement says, my daddy took me out fast and, you know, those kind of things.
00:09:47
Gonzalo Chavaria was the lead detective. Did you think about this poor, poor woman's last moments in this house?
00:09:55
I did. Looking at the scene and trying to imagine her maybe fighting for her life
00:10:03
or pleading for her life or how scared she might have been. Any signs of robbery or things taken?
00:10:11
No, we actually did a scan and we could see valuables. There was no signs that this was a burglary or a robbery.
00:10:19
But once we did the walkthrough and looked at, and with the help of Roger, because he was explaining
00:10:24
what he had seen when he went in. With police and neighbors converging on the scene,
00:10:31
the news got out quickly. Lynn's friend Debbie Moore couldn't believe it. My husband and I were watching TV, and he was flipping through the channels over the remote control.
00:10:41
And the channel flipped by, and it was her house. And I yelled, and I said, you know, wait, wait, wait, what is that?
00:10:48
Isn't that Lynn's house? And so we flipped it back, and about that time it came up that a woman had been found murdered in her home.
00:10:58
Did you know right away? I knew it was Lynn. Yeah, because I knew the house. And then they said it was military.
00:11:11
And I remember it almost made me sick. I was on the floor. And then I kind of got myself together.
00:11:23
I said, we have to go over there. I have to go over there. Roger was already talking to detectives and clearly shaken.
00:11:31
Police were sympathetic, but they knew he had to be carefully scrutinized. What's your first impression of Roger Reister?
00:11:38
He was grasping his son wouldn't let go of him. And I thought that maybe I saw some fear.
00:11:46
He was scared about what had occurred, it seemed to me at the time. Are you looking for anything in Roger Reister eyes or his mannerisms or what he saying Are you immediately sizing him up Absolutely Just to see if maybe he did this Absolutely It actually took a while for me to calm down at the very beginning because my mind all over the place
00:12:06
And then once I wrap my mind around, okay, let me just go ahead and give them this, get this knocked out of the way, then they can actually get on with the investigation.
00:12:14
Detectives wanted to know where he was all day. Roger had a good alibi. He had a solid alibi, yes.
00:12:20
His son was with him all the time. He had left his house very early and stopped at a convenience store where he saw friends and talked to them.
00:12:29
And then when he got to work, obviously his co-workers, his supervisors saw him.
00:12:35
Also backing up Roger's alibi was his brother Rodney. He told detectives he helped Roger jumpstart his truck early that morning and watched him and Tristan leave.
00:12:45
Detective Steve Munoz. He said that they were able to crank up the truck, get it going.
00:12:50
and as he pulled away, he says that he did see Roger also pull off from the driveway.
00:12:56
Later, Rodney visited Roger at the base. He told police his older brother looked worried when he called Lynn and got no answer.
00:13:04
Thursday, 9.58 a.m. Hey, you there? 10.25 a.m. Hello, this is Roger. Give me a call as soon as you get in.
00:13:16
I'm going to need you to come pick up Tristan. And then he leaves work, and so we knew that it would have been very difficult for him to have committed this murder.
00:13:28
So who did it? As the investigation got underway, Detective Chavaria thought the possibilities were endless.
00:13:35
It could be anybody. It could be a neighbor. It could be a lover. She was a captain. She was a supervisor. And we thought about her troops and her subordinates and maybe somebody that she might have disciplined or sex offenders in the area.
00:13:54
You had a wide net you needed to throw out. It was a wide investigation at the time, yes.
00:14:00
You had a killer on the loose. Yes. And the neighbors were very scared. And who's out there? Who did this?
00:14:06
In those first few hours, the leads would pour in and police had to move fast. Lynn Reister had inspired loyalty in her life.
00:14:15
Now in death, the detectives could not let her down. Coming up. An army commander being murdered was unheard of.
00:14:25
On base, a giant military family is hit hard by murder. But in Lynn's own family, had there been signs of trouble?
00:14:34
Rodney was going around calling her names, vulgar names. They had a little bit of animosity towards Lynn.
00:14:41
When Dateline continues. The news of Lynn Reister's murder spread through El Paso,
00:14:58
and it was devastating to those who served with her at the Army base. Did this crime send shockwaves through Fort Bliss?
00:15:06
It certainly did. It was heartbreaking. It was harrowing when it first happened. We had no idea and it was scary.
00:15:16
The Fort Bliss community packed the memorial service to say goodbye to the captain and the baby she was carrying, who never got a chance.
00:15:25
Tell us about the funeral. The wake was extremely difficult. She was buried in her Army dress uniform, and in order to do the open casket, they had to cover the throat.
00:15:44
So they used her air defense artillery ascot to, you know, it connects on the back so that they would be able to do the open casket.
00:15:59
Lynn's mother asked me to go and buy a baby blanket. It was a little boy. And so I went and bought a little baby blanket.
00:16:06
And so for the memorial, when they laid Lynn out in her uniform, the point was there that not just one person had died in this attack, but two had died.
00:16:17
Four-year-old Tristan was there with his family and his mother's friends, barely comprehending the tragic rupture in his life.
00:16:24
Do you remember how you felt towards him? I do. I just, I felt sorrow. I wanted so bad to fix it for him.
00:16:34
And I understood that this little four-and-a-half-year-old boy will never know how great his mom was, how much she loved him.
00:16:44
Did your heart just go out to this little boy? Yes, absolutely. It still does. But the detectives had to put emotion aside and drill down to the facts.
00:16:53
Roger wasn't home at the time of the murder, and neighbors weren't reporting any suspicious activity.
00:16:59
So detectives wanted to know if anyone held a grudge against Lynn. They quickly learned that at least one person may have, Roger's brother, Rodney.
00:17:09
Things started to go south with Rodney pretty quickly after he moved in. Yes, there was times where he would just lay around all day long.
00:17:18
Rodney idolized his big brother, but he was something of a disappointment to Roger and Lynn.
00:17:24
Well, he just wasn't working. He was basically, you know, just living off of us, stuff like that.
00:17:30
She would go to get milk out of the refrigerator for Tristan, and the milk would be gone because Rodney had drank it all and didn't bother to replace it.
00:17:37
And, yeah, it was becoming not a very good relationship. Lynn didn't want him to stay.
00:17:45
I think Lynn was ready to have her house back. You know, it's very difficult when you have another adult living in the home.
00:17:50
I think they talked and they ended up Roger ended up telling Rodney Rodney it was time to go that you needed to leave You been here long enough We tried to help you You know you not really helping yourself so you need to go Lynn and I came to that decision together
00:18:05
It was just one of those things that just had to be done, and he held that against her.
00:18:10
Mine and his relationship continued on, but I could tell he had a little bit of animosity towards Lynn even after that.
00:18:17
A closer look at Rodney showed a young man with a dodgy past. He'd done time in Florida for crimes like petty theft, forgery, grand theft auto.
00:18:27
Nothing violent, but still, he was no fan of Lynn's. And then I remember Lynn telling me that Roger had told her that Rodney was going around calling her names.
00:18:43
You know, calling her vulgar names. That she's the reason that he got kicked out.
00:18:48
That she's the reason that all these things happened and stuff. Did you see that as a motive?
00:18:52
I never thought that that in itself would have been a motive to kill her or that he would have been that angry just because of that to kill her.
00:19:00
So why in the world would Rodney want Lynn dead? I don't think Rodney wanted Lynn dead.
00:19:06
Here was a person that was willing to help us in the investigation, and he was very cooperative initially and throughout.
00:19:15
The search for suspects continued. Lynn's neighborhood turned up nothing. Same with Fort Bliss.
00:19:21
Lynn had no enemies there. You couldn't imagine that it could have happened. It seemed unreal.
00:19:28
An army commander being murdered was unheard of. But then one name cropped up. Rodney mentioned it to police.
00:19:38
We asked them who else would want to do this to Lynn. Did she have any enemies? Rodney tells us that there's this one girl.
00:19:46
her name is April and this girl has a crush on my brother and so he mentions her and that's important.
00:19:54
Coming up, crush? This was way more than that. I was kind of playing detective for her.
00:20:01
A bold confrontation with the other woman. We knock on the door, she opens it and I said my understanding is you're pregnant.
00:20:16
It was a lead that would take the Lynn Reister murder investigation in a new direction.
00:20:27
Roger Reister's brother had mentioned a young woman who had a crush on Roger. Detectives quickly learned this crush was an open secret around town.
00:20:38
We went to the village inn and I walked in the door and there was Roger. It was about nine months before the murder.
00:20:45
Lynn's assistant Megan had just gotten back from Saudi Arabia. Lynn was still there with a week and a half to go.
00:20:52
Roger was sitting in a booth with several other people. I didn't know any of them, as well as a young lady.
00:21:01
And they were cuddled up. And Roger had a look of sheer terror on his face when he saw me walk in and realized who I was because we knew each other.
00:21:14
He stopped and he gave me a hug and I didn't know you were back. Well, I am. The young woman's name was April.
00:21:22
She was 19 years old. What exactly was going on between Roger and this young lady?
00:21:28
They looked like a couple. They did. Megan decided it wasn't her place to tell Lynn.
00:21:33
But over in Saudi Arabia, Lynn knew something was up. Roger never seemed to answer the phone.
00:21:39
Hey, Roger. It's Lynn again. I don't know where you're at. We'll turn to the home for 24 hours.
00:21:47
And word had traveled halfway around the world that Roger had been having parties at their home,
00:21:53
drinking with people as young as 18, acting like a teenager himself. Lynn left him this voicemail
00:22:00
before she got her flight home to Texas. Hey, Roger. I need to make sure that I have a ride.
00:22:08
Our marriage cannot withstand any other deployment I said, period. You're not single anymore, Roger.
00:22:14
You need to stop hanging out with those guys. I've never what you've done on the planet, Roger.
00:22:19
I've always been there. Lynn rarely gave up on people she loved. When she got home from Saudi Arabia, she wanted to patch things up with Roger.
00:22:27
You're talking about somebody who was in a marriage that she wanted to keep together.
00:22:32
And she fought hard to keep it together. One night, Lynn decided to surprise him at his favorite country bar.
00:22:43
But the surprise was on her. Roger was there, surrounded by his new gang of young friends.
00:22:50
She came over to me and started talking to me and asking me questions about Roger,
00:22:54
if I saw him over there and if I'd seen him before. And I told her that, yeah, I'd seen him there one other time.
00:22:59
She goes, well, do you know who these people are? And April was in the bar that night?
00:23:02
Yes. And how was he acting around April? They were out dancing on the floor, doing flips and turns and, yeah, things that he never danced with, with Lynn.
00:23:12
But he's doing this in front of Lynn? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. She was so angry. And what made it worse is he was so disrespectful.
00:23:21
I mean, she was trying to talk to him, and he just, every time she'd start walking towards him, he'd walk away.
00:23:27
Sounds like Lynn was trying to be the grown-up, and Roger had reverted a little bit back to sort of the good old days.
00:23:33
Oh, yeah, yeah. Detectives learned that night at the country bar ended badly. A messy, drunken argument broke out between Roger and Lynn,
00:23:42
and Roger moved into the barracks. After that, Lynn asked Debbie for some help. I was kind of playing detective for her.
00:23:49
And so I went up there and I remember sitting and watching outside the barracks,
00:23:53
and April ended up coming up there and hanging out at the barracks. This wasn't just a crush.
00:24:00
was a full-on affair. And then it got worse. Lynn heard a rumor that April was pregnant with Roger's baby.
00:24:07
And so I told her, I said, you know, I know where April lives. I said, Lynn, why don't we go over there?
00:24:14
I said, why don't we just go talk with April? That's gutsy. Yeah, well, we were older.
00:24:21
And, you know, I knew Lynn would be... Lynn wasn't going to lose it. I mean, Lynn, she was a commander.
00:24:27
So what's it like when you knock on the door? Well, we knock on the door, she opens it, she's a little bit surprised.
00:24:33
Like I said, Lynn was very nice. We sat down and we started talking to her about a relationship,
00:24:40
and she tried to say that, you know, yes, that she had, but it was over now that Lynn was back.
00:24:45
And I finally said, I said, well, but my understanding is you're pregnant. April denied she was pregnant, insisting the affair was over.
00:24:53
So you both left April's not really knowing for sure if she was or wasn't pregnant?
00:24:59
Yeah, then of course later we found out that she was actually pregnant. And telling people the father was Roger.
00:25:07
A lot of women would have cashed in the marriage at this point, but not Lynn. She let Roger come home.
00:25:14
Does Lynn still want to make things work with Roger despite this bombshell? She does.
00:25:20
Why? I think probably because of Tristan. I think that it was important to Lynn that her family stay
00:25:28
together and that Tristan be raised with, you know, a mother and father and that she would work it out.
00:25:34
And they were working on things. She was, yes. Marriage counseling? They did try marriage counseling, yes.
00:25:41
They'd moved back in together? Yes. Police heard that after Roger reconciled with Lynn, her car was vandalized. April was never
00:25:49
charged, but at the time, Lynn and Roger told police they thought she did it. So this is very
00:25:54
complex, this April situation. Police had to put this woman scorned on the list of possible suspects.
00:26:02
Roger had pushed April aside to a point where he was telling everybody, oh, that's not,
00:26:09
you know, denying that was his baby that April was carrying. You want to get a woman angry.
00:26:14
Yeah. That's a pretty good way to do it. Absolutely. But as detectives were sorting
00:26:20
through this tangled love triangle, they got news of a break in the case. The forensic lab
00:26:26
came back with something, a trace of the killer on Lynn Reister's arm. Coming up.
00:26:34
This is the smoking gun. It is. A telltale palm print. Whose could it be? Who was behind this
00:26:41
killing. Does everyone's jaws drop? Yes. When Dateline continues. A troubled marriage, a doomed affair, a pregnant mistress. Detectives did the math and suddenly
00:27:04
April and Roger were each looking like possible suspects. But then results came in on a
00:27:11
Clue found at the crime scene a bloody palm print on Lynn Reister's arm. Did Roger give his palm print?
00:27:18
Roger gave his palm print, yes. Was he a match? He was not a match. Did April give her palm print?
00:27:22
Yes. Was she a match? She was not a match. And then they checked the prints of someone else,
00:27:28
someone Lynn Reister had once tried to help, her brother-in-law Rodney. And he's a match.
00:27:35
Those prints belong to him, and they're in blood on Lynn's arm. This is the smoking gun.
00:27:41
It is. Rodney was brought back to police headquarters by Detective Steve Munoz. He was still a person like nothing fazed him.
00:27:50
Here I am. Whatever you want from me, you want to talk to me, I'll give you whatever you need.
00:27:55
When Rodney sat down with Detective Chavaria, he was confronted with the print evidence, and he denied everything.
00:28:03
As we talked to him and broke down those denials, he became very emotional. Rodney cried a bunch of times during the interview,
00:28:12
and he revealed that he had, in fact, killed Lynn. Case closed? Not even closed.
00:28:20
We had to answer the question of why did Rodney kill her? Why did Rodney get involved in something so heinous and so horrible so violent Detectives continued to press They never thought the spat between Rodney and Lynn was a good motive for murder There had to be something else
00:28:42
Rodney finally broke down. He admitted there was. He did it because Roger asked him to do it.
00:28:49
He said Big Brother Roger was behind it all. Does everyone's jaws drop at this statement?
00:28:57
Absolutely. Roger was arrested and charged with murder. There was such this big shock with his friends and their mutual friends
00:29:05
because they thought, no, no, because he looked like this perfect husband, perfect father.
00:29:13
According to Rodney, Roger suggested, then begged, then bullied him into killing Lynn.
00:29:19
He offered money. He'd pay off Rodney's bills and then some. But mostly, he offered love.
00:29:26
Then Roger's feeding all these things into his head about she wants to move. She wants to take me away from my friends.
00:29:35
You're you. I love you. She wants to separate us. Rodney told police his brother had no shortage of reasons for wanting Lynn dead.
00:29:44
Prosecutor John Gibson. Roger wanted a life insurance policy. He wanted custody of his young son.
00:29:50
He knew that if his affair with April became apparent that he faced consequences in the military to include prosecution and military jail.
00:30:00
He didn't want to move to follow Lynn in her career to Minnesota. He wanted to stay and he wanted to party back here in El Paso.
00:30:08
And Rodney said Roger didn't just talk about why he wanted his wife killed. He says Roger talked about how and when.
00:30:17
He describes Roger preparing the weapon, preparing extra clothes for Rodney to change.
00:30:26
Rodney said the plan was for Roger to call him that morning to say his battery was dead.
00:30:32
Was that the signal? That was the signal, and that's what Rodney tells us. When I went to the house, I knew that was the day I was going to have to kill Lynn.
00:30:40
The prosecutor threw the book at Booth Brothers. So a decision was made to go ahead and pursue capital murder charges against both Roger and Rodney Reister.
00:30:51
And that could mean the death penalty? It could mean the death penalty. But as the day of Roger's trial got closer, Rodney's misguided loyalty got the better of him.
00:31:00
He refused to testify against his older brother. You know, I think Rodney had a degree of loyalty and love for his brother,
00:31:08
such that, you know, he couldn't get up on the stand and testify against him. So a jury would not hear from the younger brother or see his confession.
00:31:17
The prosecution was forced to drop the murder charge against Roger. But that was not the end of the case.
00:31:24
Remember that pack of young people Roger was running with? Many of them were high school kids in that area,
00:31:31
and many of the people were junior in rank, other soldiers at the base. So Roger surrounded himself with people he knew would look up to him.
00:31:40
But they turned on him after Lynn was killed. One by one, six members of Roger's circle told police they knew Roger wanted his wife dead because he had talked to them about it.
00:31:52
Two of them even told police Roger had tried to hire them for the murder. You know, Roger Reister basically told anybody who had listened that he wanted his wife dead.
00:32:02
So the prosecutor charged Roger with solicitation for murder and put him on trial for that.
00:32:08
One of Roger's minions, a young soldier named Patrick Mueller, was a key witness.
00:32:13
He was granted immunity and gave a statement explaining that he too had in fact been solicited by Roger to kill Lynn Reister.
00:32:20
Then he asked me if I would kill Captain Easter. What did you tell him? Yes, I would.
00:32:29
Where were you supposed to stab her? Mention somebody in her throat so she could not scream.
00:32:36
Mueller said he went to the house one night, but chickened out when he spotted a neighbor.
00:32:40
Another young man testified how Roger had tried to hire him. He told me he wanted his wife pretty much killed in X amount of dollars.
00:32:52
And I said, well, you know, I don't know. Roger's former mistress, April, now cleared of any suspicion,
00:32:59
testified that Roger talked to her about tampering with Lynn's breaks. Lynn friend Debbie doesn understand why one of these young people didn blow the whistle before Lynn was killed I was so angry because I thought why didn one of them mention that to me Why wouldn that comment not been told to me
00:33:21
Because I think if one of them had told me that, and I would have went back to Lynn with that right away.
00:33:26
With all those witnesses, the prosecution thought they had a strong case. But Roger Reister had plenty to say about those witnesses and about his brother Rodney.
00:33:37
Did you ask your brother Rodney to kill Lynn? Coming up. I love my wife. We were trying to build a future together.
00:33:48
Roger tells his story. Will a jury believe it? And his son has a story to tell too.
00:33:56
Tristan, Lynn's living legacy, all grown up. To take your wife, the mother of your child, and the fact that she was carrying his unborn child,
00:34:21
I don't even have words of how sick, what a monster. Roger Reister didn't look like a monster when he went on trial for criminal solicitation.
00:34:31
But lots of witnesses said he talked about killing his wife to anyone who would listen.
00:34:37
Well now, 12 jurors were listening. And it took them all of three hours to find him guilty.
00:34:45
When you hear guilty... My legs went out from underneath me. My lawyers actually had my arms.
00:34:50
Roger was sentenced to life in prison. He spoke to us from behind glass at a Texas state prison.
00:34:57
The prosecutor said in his closing statements, who is he crying for? Referring to you, he said he's crying for himself.
00:35:05
No, I was crying for my wife and my unborn child is what I was crying for. It had nothing to do with me.
00:35:13
Why should we believe you? Because I didn't do it. Because I love my wife. He told us he may have been a terrible husband, but he never wanted Lynn dead.
00:35:22
Was life easier without her in the picture? No, absolutely not. That's why we actually got back together.
00:35:27
We separated, and I was like, okay, well, I'll move back into the barracks. But that's why we got back together, because life wasn't easier without her.
00:35:35
Life was better with her. Always has. But remember, the prosecution said there was a long list of motives.
00:35:44
All right, let's run through the motives of why the prosecution said you wanted your wife dead.
00:35:50
First was that you wanted the $250,000 life insurance policy. Oh, no. It doesn't make much sense because Lynn was making more money than I was.
00:35:59
So $250,000, all soldiers have that same amount on them. You wanted sole custody of Tristan?
00:36:06
No. Lynn and I would have definitely been joint custody. It's something that we talked about whenever we briefly separated.
00:36:13
You didn't want to go to a military prison for committing adultery? No. It's been a very long time since anybody was convicted of a felony for adultery in the military.
00:36:27
He says he still doesn't understand why all his old friends turned on him, but he doesn't have a good explanation for why they all would have lied.
00:36:36
You had a lot of people saying that you wanted to have your wife killed. And you would think I'd come up with a really good reason for it, for all those people, and I haven't.
00:36:46
Obviously, maybe some of them had their individual motive. But six people. I know.
00:36:52
That's a lot of people all lying and ganging up on you. I don't know what their reasons are, but you'd be surprised what people would say.
00:37:00
The year after Roger's trial, his brother Rodney was convicted of murder and sentenced to life.
00:37:06
Roger still says Rodney acted alone. One of the things that's hard to wrap your head around is that Rodney had this love for you.
00:37:15
He looked up to you. And for Rodney to turn on you and say that my brother asked me to kill his wife,
00:37:25
and I did it out of love for him, why in the world would he make that up? Maybe to save his own life.
00:37:33
I heard that they were trying to give him the death penalty, and the only thing that he could have done to even save his own life was to say something like that.
00:37:40
Maybe get a little bit of sympathy as far as why But this is a man who loved you Well if he loved me he wouldn have killed my wife You do seem though like you playing the part of victim a little bit by saying this
00:37:53
person made this up. This person made this up. Poor me. You know, I all these people are lying.
00:37:58
Well, I'm an innocent man sitting in jail. So, yeah, I do kind of feel like a victim. Yes.
00:38:04
He says that he's the victim in this, that all these people lied and now he's behind bars because
00:38:09
of the lies. All these people lied. I don't even know what to say to that. Debbie says Lynn's profound
00:38:19
loyalty may have been her undoing and that Lynn would want other people to learn from that.
00:38:26
Sometimes you don't keep fighting to keep that marriage together. That maybe there is a time
00:38:33
that it's better just to say, you know, it's over and walk away. For years, memories of the case could bring the detective to tears.
00:38:44
Can you explain it? Why you have this emotion? Can you put it into words? It's hard.
00:38:51
It's hard. She was pregnant. And of course, you have Tristan. And Tristan lost everything.
00:39:01
What hits you the hardest? She was trying to keep her family together. and I don't think she knew what kind of man she was married to.
00:39:15
Do you think about your wife's last moments and your unborn child's last moments, how horrific they were?
00:39:21
No, I try not to think about that at all. It's not how you really want to do your time in here.
00:39:30
Lynn stated in her will that Tristan should go to her mother if anything happened. Roger agreed to send Tristan to one of Lynn's sisters instead.
00:39:39
I know he's at the good home. That was probably one of the good things that I did before I got locked up was make sure that he went to that family in particular.
00:39:48
He doesn't know anyone, anything about me. Tristan's life hasn't been easy. He's determined to get through college and has struggled to pay
00:39:55
for it. But it's hard with no mom and certainly no dad. He very clearly doesn't know anything I've gone through, you know, and he obviously doesn't understand that most of what I've gone through is because of his decision.
00:40:11
He keeps saying that you had this great upbringing and, you know, that gives him peace essentially, but your life was not so easy.
00:40:19
It wasn't. It was a very difficult place to grow up in. Just in general, the very fact that I lost my parents is one thing that's traumatizing.
00:40:32
But then to go live with my aunt, this is in effect a stranger to me as a kid, it was a lot.
00:40:42
Still, his difficult life has pointed him in an interesting direction. You want to be a crime scene investigator.
00:40:50
Yes, I do. And is this 100% from your own experience, or is there something else?
00:40:56
Believe it or not, I've always been really interested in, like, anatomy and how things work.
00:41:02
But I've also wanted to have a bunch of questions answered about my own life, about, you know, the situation with my parents mainly.
00:41:10
And that curiosity kind of bled over to other situations. Me and my mom. Tristan treasures the baby book his mother made for him.
00:41:19
I get bigger and better. And he loves listening to that audio tape she made for her sister's 16th birthday.
00:41:26
It's cool hearing her. I remember when I was 16. That was the greatest time of my life.
00:41:33
Believe it or not, it'll probably be one of the most exciting times of your life, too.
00:41:38
I sometimes wonder if she would be happy with how my life is going or my decisions.
00:41:43
or if she'd be proud of me or whatnot. You've overcome the odds. You're in college.
00:41:49
You're making something of your life. It's not over yet. I've got a long way to go.
00:41:54
How could she not be proud of that? I'm sure she is. I just wish I knew for sure.
00:42:03
I miss you so much. I miss all of you. And I hope you guys miss me a little bit.
00:42:11
That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.