A serial killer already on demise row in Oklahoma pleaded responsible Wednesday to a few cold-case murders in Texas and was sentenced to life in jail.
William Lewis Reece, 62, first pleaded responsible in a courtroom in Galveston within the 1997 slayings of 12-year-old Laura Smither and 17-year-old Jessica Cain.
He was then transferred to close by Angleton to enter a responsible plea within the disappearance and homicide of 20-year-old Kelli Cox.
In every of the three instances, Reece acquired a life sentence, which he can't enchantment.
“Twenty-five years is an awfully very long time to be ready for justice and there have been quite a lot of years in there the place we actually didn’t suppose we’d ever see this present day,” stated Laura Smither’s mom, Homosexual Smither, in keeping with KPRC.
Reece was serving a 60-year jail sentence for the 1998 Texas kidnapping of Sandra Sapaugh in 2016 when he started cooperating with investigations of the opposite instances.
In 2021, he was sentenced to demise for the 1997 killing of 19-year-old Tiffany Johnson in Oklahoma Metropolis.
Reece carried out the killing spree in Texas and Oklahoma over a five-month interval in 1997, after he had already served 10 years in Oklahoma state jail for raping two ladies.
Smither didn't return from a morning jog in Friendswood in April 1997. Her stays have been discovered greater than two weeks later about 30 miles away in a retention pond in south Houston.
On July 15, 1997, Kelli Cox, a 20-year-old criminology pupil on the College of North Texas, was leaving a tour of a Denton jail when she found she had locked her keys in her automobile, reported Fox 26.
Cox walked to a close-by fuel station to name her boyfriend. She was by no means seen alive once more, forsaking a younger daughter.
Simply two weeks later in Bethany, Oklahoma, Tiffany Johnston, a 19-year-old newlywed, was kidnapped from a carwash. Her physique was found the next day in a area in Yukon. She had been raped and strangled.
In August 1997, Jessica Cain went to a celebration to have fun her efficiency in a highschool musical. Her truck was later discovered deserted close to her dwelling on Tiki Island, Texas.
In October of that 12 months, Reece was arrested for the aggravated kidnapping of Sapaugh. He was convicted of that crime in 1998 and sentenced to 60 years in jail.
Whereas he was serving his time period in Texas, investigators in Oklahoma linked Reece to Johnston’s rape and homicide and charged him in that case.
Hoping to safe a extra lenient sentence, Reece started speaking to the authorities and confessed to the murders in Texas after getting a promise from a Ranger that prosecutors wouldn't search the demise penalty.
Within the spring of 2016, Reece led cops to Cain’s stays in a pasture in south Houston, and to Cox’s stays in rural Brazoria County.
In courtroom Wednesday, a number of the victims’ relations gave emotional impression statements, describing the anguish of their loss.
Homosexual Smither, Laura’s mom, thanked her daughter’s killer for telling the reality about what occurred and informed him she forgave him, after languishing in “a jail of anger and rage.”
Alexis Bynum, Cox’s daughter, was simply 19 months previous when her mom was murdered. She stated she had spent years trying to find her lacking mother.
“On the finish of the day we’re in a position to shut the chapter on this a part of it and never have to fret about him hurting anybody else,” Bynum stated.
With Publish wires
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