00:00:11
they got me set up like I'm a serial killer right now all right are you no I'm not I'll
00:00:19
pass any polygraph you throw at me I you know I have no reason to lie if you passed him pushing a grocery
00:00:29
cart you'd never know that inside his head he just thought about how to kill
00:00:37
you my daughter went uh on run this morning and she's been gone a lot longer
00:00:42
than I expected here's no doubt in my mind he would have continued slaughtering young
00:00:49
women and girls female Dred out of a white jly she needs an ambulance she can't
00:00:58
walk it's like we have a predator in our neighborhoods he had the capacity to
00:01:04
become a serial killer on a scale that is difficult to even imagine [Music] [Music]
00:01:32
[Music] [Music] just Southwest of Oklahoma City lies the Tiny Town of anad Darko population
00:01:54
6,000 it's just your average rural Oklahoma town not a real high crime rate everybody's pretty
00:02:02
laid-back there's not a lot there to miss or see really when you meet somebody new you
00:02:11
ask them who their people are because you're going to know somebody in their
00:02:17
[Music] family everyone in anad Darko knows Kathy doy and her daughter Tiffany my name is Kathy
00:02:27
doy and I'm the mother of Tiffany doy Johnston she was always with me before
00:02:36
she got married she was my shadow everyone that's what everyone called her Tiffany was very energetic loving
00:02:49
caring hyper she cared about everyone she liked animals she liked to play in the
00:02:57
dirt she wanted to study the pl and see what they how they were formed and what have you cuz she could grow
00:03:05
just about anything she set her mind to Tiffany and I became friends in junior high I was new to town new to the
00:03:13
area and uh didn't really know anybody didn't have any friends didn't have much
00:03:19
going for me and uh Tiffany was the type of person that was going to take care of
00:03:24
you uh she just decided she was going to be my friend since I didn't have any her
00:03:30
and I were friends from then on shortly after graduating high school Tiffany marries her childhood
00:03:39
sweetheart she said she was B madly in love with Ryan and all girls should marry their first
00:03:47
sweetheart she was determined to get married and she did the young couple moved to nearby
00:03:58
Bethany Ryan is is employed at a manufacturing plant while 19-year-old Tiffany Works two jobs so she can afford
00:04:05
a new car she traded her car in on her new white neon she was so proud of that she's always cleaning it out or
00:04:17
washing it or cuz she was proud of it was something that she worked for that she
00:04:25
got on July 26th 1997 the newly EDS plan to meet at a club after work TIY had gotten off work and then she went and
00:04:35
cleaned out her car or washed her car because it was hers and Ryan's 3mon anniversary I was actually working
00:04:45
Patrol at that time and I drove by the Sunshine Car Wash there was about four vehicles that
00:04:54
were there people still washing their car and I did observe a white vehicle in the furthest west stall that had no one
00:05:02
around it it was about 45 minutes later I was again driving by that car wash and
00:05:10
now there were no vehicles other than that one white car in the Far West Stall and there was nobody around the car we
00:05:17
did not see anyone around the uh car wash at all detective Mobley looked in the passenger side and he advised me that
00:05:27
the keys to the vehicle were still in the ignition that kind of raised our concern uh so we started to look into it
00:05:39
a little deeper myself and mbly made entry into the vehicle to try to find a phone
00:05:45
number or name of someone that we might be able to contact uh we did end up locating a
00:05:52
number with the word mom on it the Tiffany Police Department called around midnight they wanted to know if Tiffany
00:06:06
had a white car and if I knew where she was I started calling people I knew that
00:06:15
she might go to no one had heard from her no one had seen her and this is like at 2:00 in the
00:06:22
morning so by the time we got up here at the car wash they had everything blocked
00:06:30
off down deep you knew that with all her personal belongings and her P her car that she had been inducted and she was
00:06:42
probably not alive a frequent visitor to the car wash is 38-year-old William Reese who Kathy knows from his time in
00:06:55
anad Darko he was always in trouble he stole Vehicles he stole from grocery stores or what have you he had been in
00:07:07
jail he had already been in prison he had just gotten out uh shortly before this
00:07:16
happening so William Reese was born in 1959 in Oklahoma and so it was a pretty depressed area that he grew up
00:07:28
in he had had a difficult upbringing an unstable childhood he was one of 13 children he was in foster care system
00:07:37
for a while he was forced to quit school in the n9th grade and go to work so this
00:07:43
is somebody I think who got a pretty tough start in life there was probably a combination of
00:07:50
neglect with so many siblings and there being some a lot of financial instability and I think it would have
00:07:55
been a pretty harsh upbringing in a lot of respects there was a lot lot of suspicions he was abused at some point
00:08:02
13 siblings a family background being moved around you have lots of negative risk factors in front of
00:08:12
[Music] Reese that marriage does not last very long and it doesn't it Fizzles out
00:08:19
pretty quickly because of how Willam ree is treating his wife he's drinking and
00:08:26
he's physically abusive to her and she ends them ends the relationship [Music]
00:08:31
ship this is somebody who for whatever reason uh doesn't respect women um feels
00:08:37
entitled to behave however he wants to likely blams everything that's wrong in
00:08:42
his life on other people and those are things that do not bode well in terms of his relationship with other women in the
00:08:49
future or his ability to adjust and adapt effectively to to life as an adult his ex-wife said that he was unusually
00:08:58
close to his mom and even she even made the comment at one point that she felt like his mom was
00:09:04
so protective of him that quote you know if he killed somebody she would help him
00:09:08
hide the [Music] body it's one day since Tiffany doy went missing with her car left at a Bethany
00:09:25
car wash around 50 Mi away Oklahoma City Police make a gruesome Discovery while investigating their own missing person's
00:09:36
case as they were investigating that scene they canvased the area and then ended up finding Tiffany's body on that
00:09:45
same road about a 100 yards down [Music] you're asking yourself who did it why
00:10:01
would someone want to kill Tiff you didn't think about your friend just getting
00:10:09
murdered for no reason out in the middle of nowhere like that it just didn't
00:10:13
happen the thing that always kind of bothered me the most is that Tiffany and Ryan they just started their lives
00:10:22
together and uh within 3 months it got taken away if they they had their full life
00:10:30
together what would have come of that and so we went down a list of people for the police to check out
00:10:48
because we didn't know what else to [Music] do and it's the first thing that Mama
00:10:58
thought of too so I I can't say that it didn't enter our minds cuz it did you don't know if he was really at
00:11:07
work or not you know he could have took off in any case where you have someone that has
00:11:18
disappeared you know you always you always got to start with people that are close and family members uh so
00:11:26
absolutely he was looked at police soon determined Tiffany was last seen alive shortly after 6 p.m. on July
00:11:40
27th her husband was at work from 3:00 p.m. until 11:00 p.m. and is cleared of any
00:11:47
[Music] suspicion Bethany police conduct a background check on local sex offenders in including William
00:12:01
Reese they find no evidence linking him to the crime scene Tiffany's mother knows Reese's
00:12:09
mother who offers to prepare Tiffany's clothes for her funeral her name with
00:12:15
Pat she wasn't a friend but she was an acquaintance because she did my ironing
00:12:21
and what have you for me and so we took Tiffany's clothes down to her for her to
00:12:28
press for us cuz she called and said she would do [Music] that in 1986 he kidnaps a woman and he rapes her
00:12:52
and at that point I think he has taken a hard turn in his life because now he is
00:12:58
making choices is that the vast majority of people would never make he's become a criminal he's become
00:13:05
a predator he was driving a truck and going to pick up a load and he picked her up in
00:13:20
route her car broke down under a overpass and uh he stopped and asked if she needed help he kept on her and then
00:13:31
she finally agreed and got in the truck with [Music] [Music] him ree is arrested but released after
00:13:53
posting bail he attacks again 1 month later he rapes one woman while he's awaiting
00:14:03
trial for raping another woman I don't know how you get any more of a definition of a predator than
00:14:10
that both of these victims survive their ordeal and have their identities protected ree stands trial on two counts
00:14:19
of rape he is found guilty and sentenced to 25 years in prison for an individual
00:14:25
who is inside of a correal Institution for years that day is filled with boredom our environment creates our
00:14:33
propensity to be involved in crime well just think of it you're surrounded by
00:14:39
other people who have committed crimes one learns to associate with certain people one has to protect
00:14:47
themselves inside of a correctional institution a lot of time to think Reese's attorneys claim errors were made
00:15:11
during his trial and after serving 10 years of his 25e sentence convicted rapist Reese is released
00:15:19
early he briefly lives with his mother and Anna Darko before moving 7 hours away to Houston Texas
00:15:35
my daughter went uh on run this morning and she's been gone a lot longer than I
00:15:40
expected and what's your name please Bob Smither 12-year-old Laura Smither goes
00:15:46
for a jog in her Friendswood Texas neighborhood and never returns home I'd never seen anything quite like
00:15:55
this before I mean you had people from everywhere coming out of the wood work searching for this young
00:16:01
girl they were going through Fields they were searching in bodies of water [Music]
00:16:17
everywhere Laura's body is found 17 days later in a retention pond in nearby
00:16:24
Pasadena that's to day I will never forget because you had a father and son that were out there they we're training
00:16:29
a hunting dog hunting dog hits on something in the water father and son go out there to see what's going on and
00:16:35
this is the part that I mean just so chilling because the dad looked at the Sun and says I wonder what kind of
00:16:42
animal that is and the son looks back at the dad and says Dad animals don't wear
00:16:47
[Music] socks William Reese became a suspect early on because he was a convicted sex
00:17:00
offender out of Oklahoma and that's fairly standard when you have a child disappear like this police start looking
00:17:06
at registered sex offenders in the area more than that reys had a construction job near this spot it got rained out the
00:17:13
morning Laura disappeared so he would have been going home and that would have put him along her route about the time
00:17:19
she disappeared there were fibers uh that were found that matched floor mats in his
00:17:36
truck the fibers were unique but they weren't so incredibly unique that it's
00:17:41
like okay these fibers could only possibly have come from William Reese's truck it wasn't unique enough and
00:17:50
honestly fibers are not DNA a lot of that evidence had been destroyed because Laura was left in
00:17:57
water this is a 12-year-old child and what that tells me is one of two things either William Reese did not
00:18:08
recognize how young she was when he grabbed her I don't believe that number two is
00:18:16
that this is somebody who is sexually interested in this age group and is willing to take advantage of an
00:18:27
opportunity and rape and murder somebody who is that innocent and that young while under police suspicion and
00:18:36
within their custody ree speaks with a Texas news channel to profess his innocence who are they going to look at
00:18:43
first an excon especially if youve done hard time you're going to be a number one suspect
00:18:50
no matter what and if they can't find nobody you're going to be their py
00:19:13
Sandra sea a 19-year-old pregnant mother comes face to face with William Reese just south of
00:19:23
Houston she goes into a convenience store and she comes out of the convenience store seees she has a flat
00:19:29
tire a supposed Good Samaritan comes along oh let me help you out uh with that tire boom grabs her tosses her into
00:19:38
the truck takes off down the freeway the fact that William Rees acts so quickly after his released
00:19:49
from prison suggest to me that this is somebody who has thought about this and fantasized about this for 9 years while
00:19:59
he's Behind Bars he tells her to take her clothes off she bends down to take her shoes off
00:20:07
and notices that the car door is unlocked and she at that point makes a very important
00:20:14
decision this may be my last opportunity the more secluded the more away the more
00:20:21
the person is going to their environment rather than being in my environment takes the advantage away from you
00:20:29
I would rather die jumping out of this car and leaving my fate in my own hands than suffer whatever is about to happen
00:20:37
if I stay with this man female jumped out of a white dly unknown LP last headed 45b she needs an ambulance she can't
00:20:47
walk okay we got was Sandra now safe police begin questioning her hoping they can find her
00:21:00
kidnapper before he attacks [Music] again 20-year-old kellyanne Cox goes missing in Denton
00:21:14
[Music] Texas Kelly Cox was a beautiful single mom college student in what is essentially kind of a college town of
00:21:25
Denton Texas she had just wrapped up a a school field trip she was studying the area of
00:21:32
Criminal Justice and she stopped at this convenience store and unfortunately that's where she crossed paths with
00:21:38
William ree she just vanished Into Thin Air and that's what's again so frightening about
00:21:46
all of this it's somewhat mindboggling on the one hand that William ree continues his
00:21:55
Killing Spree after s seal manages to get out and Escape William ree is so focused on finding young women that kind
00:22:08
of fit his prototype and sexually assaulting them abducting them that he's not even concerned about Sandra sea he
00:22:17
is thinking about his next victim and finding her kellyanne Cox's Disappearance in
00:22:24
Denton Texas is around 3 hours away from Tiffany and ok Oklahoma at the time of Tiffany's
00:22:33
abduction Kathy doy has no idea of these other cases 17-year-old high school student
00:22:45
Jessica Kaine goes missing near Houston just like the others had her entire life ahead of her High school
00:22:58
student out with friends after a school event Jessica was always very well behaved never violated curfew anything
00:23:08
like that so when she didn't come home on time her parents were instantly worried and her truck was found parked
00:23:14
on the side of Interstate 45 like Laura it was like she just fell into a hole in the universe just
00:23:23
vanished Into Thin Air but the truck was there purse was in the front seat didn't
00:23:27
even really appear there was any kind of a struggle oh it's terrifying it's like we have a predator
00:23:34
in our neighborhood people in the area were like who is hunting our children what we have is an apex
00:23:43
predator an individual that has opportunity combined with skills and additionally being punished for the
00:23:53
criminal act in the past but not being deterred I have always thought that the killing part of it for him was more
00:24:03
pragmatic that I'm not going to leave a victim to point their finger at me again
00:24:09
my needs are more important than anybody else's and I'm going to make sure that
00:24:14
nobody's left to identify [Music] me Cathy do still has no idea who killed her
00:24:31
daughter police have no suspects and don't suspect William Reese is involved but 450 M away in Texas
00:24:42
kidnapped Survivor Sandra sea is now facing him in a lineup he's being asked to repeat the
00:24:49
lines Sandra heard her kidnapper shout not get the [Music] truck [Music] okay the net is closing around Reese in
00:25:19
Texas but will he be linked to the murder of Tiffany Johnston 450 mil away 3 months after the murder of Tiffany
00:25:36
Johnston Sandra SAA has identified William Reese as her kidnapper 450 M away in Texas as authorities gather evidence to
00:25:48
prosecute him the owner of the Sunshine Car Wash where Tiffany was last seen recognizes Reese in news
00:25:56
reports he tells Oklahoma police that Reese is a frequent customer but investigators still have no
00:26:03
way of linking Reese to the crime we checked people that lived in the area that had serious criminal
00:26:11
histories and uh none of those came to fruition no forensic evidence at that time and there weren't cameras in that
00:26:20
area that we could rely on for uh evidence purposes so it truly it came to where
00:26:29
we believed whoever committed this came from outside of the community Bethany police passed the case
00:26:38
to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation but still no leads 9 months pass by and Tiffany's
00:26:50
mother Kathy doy makes a solemn bow we had lots of red birds around that day and where we live
00:27:02
is American Indians and I'm partying in and we believe in the Red Birds when the
00:27:12
red birds come to see you is a visit from your loved ones from [Music] Heaven I told her that I would find who
00:27:28
murdered her and get Justice for her because what just wasn't right they took
00:27:36
away my youngest child if something were to ever happen to anyone in my immediate family Kathy
00:27:47
is the first person I'm calling to start looking into it she does not know how to give up she
00:27:55
does not quit and she knew that one day we'd get there we just didn't know
00:28:06
when each anniversary of Tiffany's murder is met with an eerie [Music] coincidence every year on Tiffany's
00:28:16
anniversary date which is July the 26th there would be little necklaces bracelets
00:28:29
and we'd gather these up we didn't touch them we put on gloves like you're
00:28:33
supposed to and we'd give them to the OSBI it was concerned of members of the
00:28:39
department and I and I think part of the family that the suspect might have been
00:28:43
the one leaving these trinkets they would just show up every year at the same time and nobody would ever own up
00:28:52
to putting them there Cathy's dogged determination finally gets results in her daughter's Cold
00:29:07
Case Advanced DNA testing is performed using the evidence collected from Tiffany's
00:29:14
body it reveals a partial profile of her killer investigators compare this to DNA
00:29:21
swabs from her ex-boyfriends husband colleagues and even patrons seen at the car wash the day of her murder all are
00:29:32
excluded yet to be tested is anad Darko resident William lwis Reese a known sex offender and frequent visitor to the car
00:29:41
wash police also look for a link between Tiffany's killing and the crimes in
00:29:45
Texas and realize a striking connection the Interstate 45 Corridor a perfect formula does come
00:29:59
together to allow these criminal activities to take place access very important so here you
00:30:06
have an area south of Houston Texas before the very end in galvaston in which one can be on the
00:30:14
interstate highway and quickly be in another state or another part of this huge state of Texas very quickly
00:30:28
in many respects Texas is a Serial Killer's dream you can go for miles and miles
00:30:34
without seeing anybody there's actually a part of Texas that is Infamous for being called the
00:30:42
Texas Killing Fields because they discovered about 30 bodies of young women there that have been
00:30:50
[Music] unsolved now we have a pattern we have something to actually look at something
00:30:57
that's solid uh we have other cases that we can study along with ours to help get closure for all of
00:31:07
them it's a horribly frightening thing especially as a father of two to think
00:31:11
that there are humans out there that walk around look at another human go I want that I'm going to take that and
00:31:18
they do [Music] by January 2014 the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation is closing in on
00:31:34
suspected serial killer William Lewis Reese and seeks to obtain his DNA Reese is easy to locate he was
00:31:42
successfully convicted for the kidnap of Sandra sea and is serving a 60-year sentence in a Texas prison Sandra seaw
00:31:52
is the reason the murders stopped I give her up an amazing amount of credit because she was brave enough
00:32:02
to escape him and she was brave enough to never ever waver never be intimidated never be too scared to identify him and
00:32:10
stick through that all the way to the end he was convicted and the only reason no one else was murdered is because he
00:32:16
went to prison and that was because of Sandra sea authorities swab Reese for his
00:32:22
DNA and compare it to the partial profile taken from Tiffany's body the results indicate reys could be the
00:32:31
[Music] killer we believe that he was probably the person that did it it was just
00:32:48
finding that link to be able to put it all together you want to do everything you
00:32:55
can to find that link and and I mean look it took a decade for that link to finally come to
00:33:06
fruition Texas authorities discover another critical clue as they investigate the link between Reese and
00:33:12
Tiffany's murder longdistance phone cards so he had these cards and he used one of them to make a phone call and
00:33:21
that was still in his truck when Friendswood Police impounded it and that wound up being some very key evidence
00:33:28
that Oklahoma authorities used investigators go to William Ree and basically let him know that the gig is
00:33:41
up and that uh you know they have DNA linking him to Tiffany Johnston and I think that at this point William ree is
00:33:48
somewhat panicked because he is well aware of the fact that Oklahoma has the death
00:33:53
penalty and so he is in prison in Texas at this point point and so I think he decides that if I'm
00:34:02
Cooperative with some of these other unsolved murders perhaps I can avoid the death penalty in Texas and won't be
00:34:10
extradited to Oklahoma to potentially face the death penalty there with this new information linking
00:34:23
Reese to Tiffany's murder as a bargaining tool invest investigators question Reese about the murders of
00:34:30
Laura Smither Kelly anx and Jessica Kane he reveals where police can find the bodies of Jessica Kaine and kellyan
00:34:40
Cox his cooperation means ree won't face the death penalty for these murders he's a chess
00:34:49
player he knows how to use his pawns he knows how to use his pieces which pieces
00:34:54
to sacrifice when to get what he wants and I feel that he has used his victims as those pieces and played them against
00:35:04
law enforcement to gain favors and I don't think that we will ever know how many of those pieces he
00:35:12
has held back to play later there's no reason to believe that there are not more that are out
00:35:19
there this is where further investigation can take place but then there becomes a question for the
00:35:25
individual how much more information am I going to give you if I'm already here
00:35:29
for the rest of my life what advantage do I have reys doesn't confess to any other
00:35:36
[Music] murders he claims he accidentally hit Laura Smither while she was jogging
00:35:43
along the side of the road so I picked her up her head rolled around backwards and I put her in a flowboard
00:35:56
my truck pass side and I shut the door I had this little blanket and I laid it on
00:36:03
her took off I don't remember how I got out where I was some Dent p i light in the water and I went
00:36:14
home reys doesn't say anymore about kellyan Cox just that he got into an altercation with her at a convenience
00:36:22
store opened up my door and boom I run right into and Coke went all over for me and we got into it there and she hit me
00:36:30
with that coke when I hit her she hit her head you know how your door opens up M her head hit there and she slid back
00:36:40
she was out I put her in the back seat she never woke up she wasn't breathing or nothing she never woke up
00:36:48
and I dug me a little hole and put her in there reys confessed but they were carefully crafted confessions to where
00:36:59
he upheld his end of the bargain that I'll tell you what happened but he never
00:37:03
really fully told police what he did when you listen to his confessions or you hear his confessions it's
00:37:12
just it's just amazing how he distorts clearly what happened they'll talk about murdering
00:37:19
somebody but they won't admit to assault sexual assault for for some reason or
00:37:23
they'll do what a lot of murderers do which is f ways to what we psychologists
00:37:29
call neutralize their actions so that might mean blaming the victim which he definitely did you know oh this person
00:37:35
started it we got into a match you know oh this person we got into some kind of argument about spilling Coke on
00:37:43
me I can't think of a better description of somebody who has no compassion empathy or caring for his victims they
00:37:50
truly are objects for him to fulfill his sexual fantasies reys also claims an argument ensued with
00:38:02
Tiffany Johnston at the car wash next thing I know this girl was yelling at me that I sprayed her I don't think I
00:38:10
sprayed her but she was cussing me and everything so when I grabbed her around the throat start choking she wasn't
00:38:18
moving no more and I shut the door and I backed out did you try to have sex with any
00:38:24
victims I don't think so okay um I guess I don't think so it kind of opens well I
00:38:30
mean far as I know [Music] no My Vow was to find who murdered her and get Justice for
00:38:50
her William Reese is convicted of the kidnapping and first-degree murder of Tiffany Johnston
00:38:58
[Music] he is sentenced to death the day that we got our conviction on Rees the red birds were lined up outside
00:39:14
our house on the light pole all the way across the line and they were everywhere Tiffany knew then that Mom
00:39:25
got Justice I'm persistent and like I said she was my baby and I made her a promise and I carried it
00:39:40
[Music] out he was ice cold arrogant when they sh showed the pictures of his victim's bodies of what
00:40:01
he had done he would smile and lick his lips Tiffany gave her life to help the parents in Texas bring
00:40:13
some closure to them because if it hadn't been for Tiffany's case Texas wouldn't have had
00:40:21
anything reys accepts a plea deal and in addition to his current sentence for Sandra SA cause kidnapping he is
00:40:28
sentenced to a further three life terms in a Texas prison for the murders of Jessica Cain kellyanne Cox and Laura
00:40:38
Smither William Reese is currently serving his prison sentences in Texas so he still owes the state of
00:40:47
Texas time for Sandra Sea's kidnapping and now for the murders of Laura Jessica
00:40:53
and Kelly Anne there's an appeal process in Oklahoma my sneaking suspicion is when he runs
00:41:00
out of appeals in Oklahoma and they actually set a date for his execution he will be extra guided back we got Justice
00:41:08
for Tiffany in the court system that he's getting to do what he wants to he can go to the
00:41:18
library he can work on horses shoes leather or whatever he wants to do and that's not Justice for Tiffany
00:41:30
how could someone that I ran across knew his mom how could he have done [Music] that Kathy suspects it was Reese's
00:41:44
mother py leaving trinkets on Tiffany's grave there's not a doubt in my mind
00:41:51
that it was her because I think she felt guilty because she knew that that W her son had murdered
00:42:00
Tiffany and so that was her way of being at peace with the idea that she wouldn't
00:42:05
talk to the Poli or wouldn't tell them every year you could guarantee there would be something out there and
00:42:14
even to this day when Tiffany's anniversary date comes around we always check on the
00:42:23
26th to see if anything has been placed on Tiffany's grave that we don't know and nothing has
00:42:31
showed up since Pat died I just want to know why we haven't been able to bring him back I want to
00:42:43
know why the da will not sign off to have him brought back and put on death row he took my friend he took one of the
00:42:52
best people I've ever known in my life and he robbed the world of something great
00:42:57
I don't know what her plans were after college but whatever they were she was
00:43:01
going to be great at it [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]