A series of murderers already in the death penalty in Oklahoma pleaded guilty to three coldcase murders in Texas on Wednesday and sentenced to life imprisonment. I was sentenced.
William Luis Reese, 62, was first found guilty in the Galveston court, which killed 12-year-old Laura Smither and 17-year-old Jessica Cain in 1997.
He was then transferred to nearby Angleton, where he entered his guilty plea for the disappearance and murder of 20-year-old Kelly Cox.
In each of the three cases, Reese was sentenced to life imprisonment, but he cannot be appealed.
"25 years was a very long time to wait for justice, and there was a year there that we didn't really expect to see this day," Laura Smither's mother said. Told. According to Gay Smither, KPRC.
Reese was sentenced to 60 years in prison for kidnapping Sandra Supporto in Texas in 1998 in 2016 when he began cooperating in investigating other cases. rice field.
2021 In the year he was sentenced to: 19-year-old Tiffany Johnson was sentenced to death in 1997 after being killed in Oklahoma City.
Reese murdered in Texas and Oklahoma in 1997 for five months after already serving 10 years in a prison in Oklahoma for raping two women.
Smither was unable to return from a morning jogging in Friendswood in April 1997. Her body was found more than two weeks later in a regulating pond in South Houston, about 30 miles away.
On July 15, 1997, a 20-year-old criminology student at the University of North Texas, Kelly Cox, toured Denton Prison when he discovered that he had locked his car key. Was away.reported Fox 26.
Cox walked nearby as a train station to call her boyfriend. She never saw her alive again and she left her young daughter.
Just two weeks later, in Bethany, Oklahoma, a 19-year-old newlywed, Tiffany Johnston, was kidnapped from a car wash. Her body was found in a Yukon field the next day. She was raped and strangled her.
In August 1997, Jessica Cain went to a party to celebrate her high school musical performance. Her truck was later found abandoned near her home in Tiki Island, Texas.
In October of that year, Reese was arrested for worsening supporter kidnapping. He was convicted of the crime in 1998 and sentenced to 60 years in prison.
During his term in Texas, Oklahoma investigators linked Reese to Johnston's rape and murder, in which case he was charged. Hoping to ensure a more generous sentence, Reese began talking to authorities, and after getting a promise from the ranger that the prosecutor wouldn't seek the death penalty, he murdered in Texas. I confessed.
In the spring of 2016, Reese sent a police officer to Cain in the meadow. In South Houston, and to the ruins of Cox in the countryside of Brazoria County.
In court on Wednesday, some of the victims' relatives issued a statement of emotional impact explaining the suffering of their loss.
Laura's mother, Gay Smither, thanked her for telling her truth about what happened to her daughter's hitman, and she said, "Angry and Angry Prison. After suffering, she said she forgave him.
Cox's daughter, Alexis Bynum, was only 19 months old when her mother was murdered. She said she spent years looking for her missing mother.
"At the end of the day, you can close this part of the chapter and you don't have to worry about him hurt others," Bynum said.
With post wire
