48 Hours - The Daughters Who Disappeared

Episode Date: January 22, 2023

In 1997 four families are shattered when their daughters go missing. As they grieve, one man claims to have answers. Can he be trusted? 48 Hours correspondent Erin Moriarty reports on the final chapter of a case she started covering more than two decades ago.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to this podcast ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app today. Even if you love the thrill of true crime stories as much as I do, there are times when you want to mix it up. And that's where Audible comes in, with all the genres you love and new ones to discover. Explore thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. Listening to Audible can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits,

and even your overall well-being. And you can enjoy Audible anytime, while doing household chores, exercising, commuting, you name it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca. In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee when she received a call from California. Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife of a Marine had moved to the California desert

to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military. And when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. Serial killers can be very difficult to predict. They're constantly thinking about hunting for human beings. Police reported another crime finding. To hurt and to kill.

Her car was later found abandoned on I-45. The highways are a particularly good, effective hunting ground. Once you commit your murder, you're good to hit the road again. The 12-year-old disappeared April 3rd while jogging near her home. She's a beautiful child. How soon did you really know that something awful had happened? When we first went out to search and we didn't find her,

when there was absolutely no sign of her, we knew then that something terrible had happened. Kelly Cox locked her keys in her car after taking a college field trip to the Denton Police Department. She was last seen making a call from a pay phone. Not knowing where your daughter was, how do you describe that? There's really not a way to describe it. I had nightmares for years that she was being hurt or harmed every day.

The pain does not go away. Tiffany Johnston went missing from a Bethany car wash. Tiffany was abducted in broad daylight. She just vanished. Tiffany was my baby daughter, my shadow. Anywhere I was at, Tiffany was with me. It's been a week since Jessica Kane disappeared. Her car was found abandoned on I-45.

She would not go somewhere without calling, and that's why we know something's wrong. We've got to find her. Childhood friends came together to hold a vigil, praying she would be found. Until she's found and someone proves that she's not alive, she is alive to us, and we're still searching. Could it happen again? Was it going to happen again? William Reese was on the top of the list very early on. Reese is the primary suspect in the kidnapping of Laura Smithard. I think most investigators felt like he was responsible for multiple girls.

But you couldn't get him on it? No. The case went on for a number of years, and no one ever forgot the pain from 97. He had to cooperate, or those girls were gone forever. Today's March 1st, 2016. If you're comfortable with it, I would like to go through these four different incidents. Mr. Curry, are you okay with that? Yes, ma'am. These offenders, they love to brag about themselves.

Yeah, I take this throw blanket I had, and I laid it on top of her. So it becomes something that's fun for them, a little bit of a cat and mouse game. Steph, you're saying? I don't remember that. They are pathological liars. And then you immediately buried her after that? Yes, sir. They lie about things they don't even have to lie about.

You can't necessarily trust what he says. You have to verify. This is the area that he brought you to, but, I mean, you were looking and you weren't finding her. Right. Some folks thinking that maybe the information was not accurate. I have no reason to lie to you guys. And that he was playing us. Certainly we were hoping it was going to be a little bit faster than it was but you can see that truly confirms a needle in a haystack. As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch.

It was called Candyman. The scary cult classic was set in a Chicago housing project. It was about this supernatural killer who would attack his victims if they said his name five times into a bathroom mirror. Candyman. Candyman? Now we all know chanting a name won't make a killer magically appear, but did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder?

I was struck by both how spooky it was, but also how outrageous it was. We're gonna talk to the people who were there, and we're also going to uncover the larger story. My architect was shocked when he saw how this was created. Literally shocked. And we'll look at what the story tells us about injustice in America. If you really believed in tough on crime,

then you wouldn't make it easy to crawl into medicine cabinets and kill our women. Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, early and ad-free with a 48-hour plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. Hot shot Australian attorney Nicola Gaba was born into legal royalty. Her specialty? Representing some of the city's most infamous gangland criminals. However, while Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets, the most dangerous secret was her own.

She's going to all the major groups within Melbourne's underworld, and she's informing on them all. I'm Marsha Clark, host of the new podcast, Informants Lawyer X. In my long career in criminal justice as a prosecutor and defense attorney, I've seen some crazy cases, and this one belongs right at the top of the list. She was addicted to the game she had created. She just didn't know how to stop. Now, through dramatic interviews and access,

I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most shocking legal scandals. Listen to Informant's Lawyer X exclusively on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. And listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad-free right now. There was a very scary killer who was going up and down I-45. That is correct. Killing-45. That is correct. Killing young women. That is correct.

Interstate 45 runs through the swamps and the derelict oil fields between Galveston and Houston. The highway marks a trail of unsolved murders that stretches back for decades. And friends with Texas Deputy Chief of Police Josh Rogers says 1997 was a particularly deadly year. We were living in such a false sense of security. It was quite a shock to the system when we got educated. And you got educated the hard way? The worst way. Absolutely the worst way.

On April 3, 1997, Gay Smithers' 12-year-old daughter Laura, an aspiring ballerina, went out for a run and never returned. As days passed, thousands of volunteers, on foot and on horseback, combed the swamps and fields around their home in Friendswood. Keep your eyes open. This is what we're looking for. The U.S. Marines even flew in to help. We just wanted to say thank you to everybody. We are going to find her. What does this say, your t-shirt? It says pray for Laura. I was also there in 1997 with the family, Gay, Bob, and Laura's younger brother, David.

Are you surprised by the outpouring of concern, sympathy? We're uplifted by it. It's just the only thing that's getting us from one day to the next. The beginning of the ballerina. Exactly. Yeah, I was taken to her backyard at the other house. There's no doubt she's coming home. I went into denial immediately. I would not accept any other

scenario other than that somebody had taken her. We've all been scared to do it. If I prayed hard enough, she'd be released to come home to us. That's how I coped. Then came the devastating news 17 days later, when Laura's decomposing body was found in a retention pond 12 miles from her home by a father and son walking their dogs. We thought it was, you know, like a dead animal

in the water or something like that. My son Jason, he says, no, animals don't have socks. I screamed into the phone, that's not Laura, that's not Laura, I couldn't accept it. I can still hear my screams in my nightmares. And then of course we had to tell David for something, say our no words. How old was David at the time? Nine. He not only lost his sister, in a way he lost his parents. We were physically there, but we were emotionally absent. Part of us was gone. Part of us was ripped out.

After weeks in the water, Laura's exact cause of death could not be determined. Investigators also couldn't be sure if she had been sexually assaulted. In spite of the unknowns, a suspect emerged pretty quickly, a man named William Reese. It was the third day that Laura was missing that he was on the police radar. That quickly? Yes, the third day. And why? Because he was a sex offender. Reese had been released six months before Laura's murder, after spending 10 years in prison for two rapes in his native Oklahoma. He was now working in Friendswood, Texas. He was building a residential subdivision and was a bulldozer operator.

And on the day Laura went missing because of rain, police learned, Reese was let off work at 9 a.m. Which would have taken him right in the direct path of Laura Smithers. Investigators searched Reese's truck and found fibers from replacement floor mats that were consistent with trace fibers found on Laura's socks. These weren't factory floor mats. These weren't common fibers. While police continued to investigate Laura's case, Reese remained free and was traveling back and forth between Houston, where he worked,

and Oklahoma, where his mother lived. Then in July of 1997 in Denton, Texas, a university town along the stretch of interstate connecting them, 20-year-old Kelly Cox disappeared. To describe it, it's like Martians picked her up. She just vanished. Kelly's mother, Jan Bynum, says Kelly had gotten locked out of her car after a class trip to the Denton police station. She had gone to a nearby gas station parking lot to use a pay phone. Very busy area with police officers everywhere. Jan knew something was wrong when Kelly failed to pick up her then-toddler Alexis from daycare that afternoon. She would never have left her daughter. care that afternoon. She would never have left her daughter. She was only 19 when Alexis was born. She took such responsibility and she embraced it.

And I know she absolutely adored this one over here. In addition to raising Alexis, now 27 years old, Kelly was taking a full load of courses at UNT, the University of North Texas in Denton. She was maintaining straight A's in college. All A's on her finals a week after having them? Yeah, a week after she had Alexa, she took her final exams and pulled all A's on them. I mean, she was very, very driven. Alexa says she remembers little about her mother, except the anguish of her being gone.

I remember looking for her. You do? Looking underneath the bed. I remember looking all around the house. Look in closets. She would look under the bed and say, Mommy, Mommy. The days of searching turned into weeks, then then months. We can get this face out there.

Jan was on local TV pleading for help finding her daughter. I don't want it on a back burner. I want her face out there. Jan was on local TV pleading for help finding her daughter. I don't want it on a back burner. I want her face out there. But unlike Laura Smither, Kelly was a young woman, not a child. And as the case dragged on, Jan says she didn't feel that finding Kelly remained a priority for police. Jan still remembers a conversation she had with one member of the department three months after Kelly went missing. And he said, you should just consider yourself lucky. We're even working on this case. Most police departments would have just turned her picture in to the missing person's clearinghouse and been done with it.

That was heartbreaking. Jim was certain that someone had abducted Kelly, but was at a loss. Police had no body and no strong leads, and the case soon grew cold. I don't think, did I ever completely not think when the phone would ring, that maybe it was something about Kelly. Just 11 days after Kelly went missing, up in Oklahoma, and not far from William Reese's hometown,

another young woman was about to vanish. She'll always be my baby. She'll always be a granddaughter. And she'll be a wife. Kathy Dobre's daughter, Tiffany Johnston, 19 years old and newly married, was just starting to build her life. On July 26, 1997, she vanished from this Bethany, Oklahoma car wash, leaving her car behind. Oklahoma car wash, leaving her car behind. Her car mats were hanging on the car wash rack. Her money, her paycheck, everything was in her car.

The next day, Tiffany's partially clothed body was found in tall grass here, just off the interstate, 15 miles west of that car wash. She had been strangled and sexually assaulted. She had rope burns around her wrist. She had black and blue places on her face. No one at the car wash reported seeing anything out of the ordinary. So whoever took her had to be pretty calculating and thinking about the surroundings. Oh, yeah. And Tiffany would fight. A few days after Tiffany's murder, Kathy says she got a phone call from a man she knew from her town of Anadarko, William Reese.

He called to tell me he was sorry that he had heard Tiffany had gotten killed. And how did he sound when he called you? Sincere. All he said was, I'm sorry to hear about your daughter. How did you first meet William Reese? I met him at the restaurant. Kathy was a waitress in town and knew Reese's mother. And when Reese was released

from prison in 1996 and came home, Kathy had given him a ride to get a new driver's license. Did you know what he had spent time in prison for? No, they acted like it was no big deal. And would you have even guessed that he had been convicted of violent crimes toward women? Oh, heavens no. It never occurred to Kathy that Reese could have anything to do with Tiffany's murder. I couldn't see someone that I knew that would kill Tiffany because they knew how much she meant to me. As for investigators, they found the killer's DNA on Tiffany's body, but they weren't able to develop a profile. At some point, Kathy, did you give up thinking they're just never going to find the person who killed my daughter? I never gave up because I

made a promise to Tiffany when I buried her that I would not give up until we found who did it. Why was it so important to find who killed her? Because I didn't want him killing someone else's child. If you have my daughter, I pray that you would return her. We want her back home. Just three weeks after Tiffany's murder, back in Lamarck, Texas, it happened again. We're not going to let her go.

Jessica Kane was about to graduate high school. The 17-year-old was last seen leaving a Clear Lake area restaurant. On August 17, 1997, when she didn't come home by curfew, Jessica's father, C.H. Kane, went out looking for her. I had been to all the places where I thought she might be, and I was on my way home. It was actually just about three or four miles from the house on the side of the road. He spotted her truck on the shoulder of I-45, but Jessica was gone. And there was no sign of struggle. Once again, search parties combed the area for yet another missing girl.

More than a hundred volunteers searched on foot along the marshes and through the brush. Tracking dogs were called in to help. We were the most broken people at that point. Gay and Bob Smith are still reeling from the loss of their daughter, Laura, just four months earlier, felt compelled to join the search. We didn't hesitate. We went immediately. The search for Jessica Kane widened today across the salt grass and scrub that surrounds the marshes. The search went on for weeks, but there was no sign of Jessica and no clue who had taken her.

We wondered, could it be the same person who took Laura from us? You know, we just didn't know. us. You know, we just didn't know. As Gay wondered about William Reese and his involvement, a story emerged about another case where the victim survived. Everything happened so fast. Back in May of 1997, three months before Jessica Cain disappeared, a 19-year-old mother, Sandra Sepah, stopped at a convenience store off of I-45 in Webster, Texas. She noticed a man staring at her from the parking lot. His truck was out there parked, but I wasn't really paying attention. When Sandra left and went to a Waffle House across the street. She saw the man again. He followed me to the Waffle House, and I parked.

And he asked me if I needed help. And I go, get help for what? And he goes, well, your tire's flat. But just moments later, the stranger was forcing her into his white pickup truck at knife point. He was just telling me to keep my mouth shut. I mean, I was terrified. She says he sexually assaulted her in the truck, and then they started speeding down the interstate. The only thing I was thinking, like, he's going to kill me.

I'd rather jump and kill myself than him doing that to me. And that's just what Sandra did. As the truck sped down I-45, she opened the door, jumped out, and hit the pavement. And then I got up, started running. Gravely injured, Sandra managed to get help and reported the incident. Five months later, in October of 1997, during a meeting with Friendswood Police, Webster investigators noticed that Sandra's description of her abductor's pickup sounded similar to the truck that Friendswood Police had searched in Laura Smithers' case, belonging to William Reese.

Okay, if y'all would get shoulder to shoulder with the guy on the red circle. On October 16, 1997, Reese was pulled in for a lineup. Number four, step to the red circle. Why don't you take a quarter, turn to the left. When he walked out, I mean, I knew that was him.

No doubt. It was him. No doubt. That was him. Can I allow boys to get in the truck? Get in the truck. William Reese was immediately arrested and charged with kidnapping. He pleaded not guilty. He was finally behind bars, but not for any of the murdered girls. Did you attack Laura Smith?

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Get in the truck. William Reese was defiant. He denied kidnapping Sandra Sapa and slashing her tire. But after his arrest, investigators were determined to time Delores Smithers' murder, too. Think you're being unfairly treated, Mr. Reese? Yeah, I do. I do, Mr. Reese. Yeah, I do. Friends with Deputy Chief Josh Rogers says they thought they found another link when they searched Reese's apartment. He had a horse blanket that was multicolored.

Most of those colors were also found on one of Laura Smithers' socks. So the evidence was strong. And they already had those other fibers on Laura's socks that matched Reese's floor mats. Still, the DA at the time did not feel that was enough evidence to charge Reese with Laura's murder. And was that frustrating?

Very, very. I got very, very angry I felt that the system had failed us and failed Laura But Friendswood detectives weren't giving up They pulled records to trace Reese's movements during the previous summer and discovered that Reese might be connected to the other unsolved cases

There was a fuel charge from Denton on July 15th discovered that Reese might be connected to the other unsolved cases. There was a fuel charge from Denton on July 15th, the same place and date of Kelly Cox's disappearance. It was the first time Kelly's mother, Jan Bynum, had heard the name William Reese. He was now also on the radar of Denton police. That, you know, caused them to want to check Kelly's fingerprints against anything in his truck or car. Did they find anything, fingerprints, anything connected to Kelly? No, they did not. Friends with detectives also found records showing Reese had used a payphone in the town where Tiffany Johnson's body was found less than an hour after she disappeared.

And the owner of the car wash, after seeing his picture, says Reese was a frequent customer. With that, Reese joined a list of possible suspects. customer. With that, Reese joined a list of possible suspects. Anyone along that route during that time period, he was looked at. Investigators were also now eyeing him in Jessica Cain's disappearance and used bulldozers to look for evidence at the horse ranch where he had worked. But they came up empty-handed. And in April of 1998, as suspicion swirled around William Reese in several jurisdictions, he went on trial for the kidnapping of Sandra Sapa. You went to the trial, why?

For Laura. I had to be there for Laura. I got very angry with what I learned at that trial. Because, of course, it puts everything in your head, what he had done to Laura. Gay Smithers says she was especially upset when she heard the testimony of Reese's two rape victims from the 1980s. Remember, he had been released from prison for those attacks just six months before Laura was murdered. They came down and testified, and I was mortified to hear what he had done to those two young women. The jury didn't take long. They went out and minutes later, it was a guilty verdict. William Reese was convicted and sentenced to 60 years for kidnapping Sandra Sapoth.

I think a lot of people felt like that was probably going to be the best that we were going to be able to do, is just to keep William Reese off the streets again. But Laura's case remained officially unsolved, and the Smithers wanted to see Reese charged. Up in Oklahoma, Kathy Dobre continued to pressure investigators to solve Tiffany's murder. At first, I'd call every week. It was always the same thing. They didn't have anything.

It was always the same thing. They didn't have anything. It would take more than a decade before Kathy says her calls were finally answered. All I knew was that I've got a victim whose car was at the car wash. In 2012, retired police chief Lynn Williams had recently started working on cold cases at the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigations, or the OSBI, and was assigned to Tiffany's case. The car was abandoned. The keys were in ignition. The doors were unlocked. No witnesses. There was that DNA evidence from Tiffany's body. So really, DNA was going to be your only hope. That was my frame of mind.

But the DNA had already been tested twice without success. We are worried, usually, that there's nothing left to test. Wendy Duke is the supervising criminologist at the OSBI cold case unit. She found two samples from Tiffany's body that had not been totally consumed in earlier testing and was able to develop a partial male profile from them. It's exciting even if it is a partial profile. Because it was a partial profile, Duke could only compare it to a profile from a known person. And the team slowly eliminated suspects from the file until they got to William Reese. And what was the result?

And he could not be eliminated from that partial profile on the swab from Tiffany. The DA in Oklahoma thought it was enough to charge Reese for Tiffany Johnson's murder. And after all those years of waiting, Kathy finally had some news. And I said, oh my God, why Tiffany? That was my main thing. Why Tiffany? Oklahoma law enforcement also shared the news with Texas investigators, including the Texas Rangers, who wondered if William Reese might be willing to talk to them about their cases. They went to visit Reese in prison, and to their surprise, he agreed to talk further

if they could take the death penalty off the table. The Smithers agreed, and so did Jan Bynum, as long as Reese helped police find Kelly. That's a huge decision to make before you even know. Oh, I know. And basically, I said I wanted answers, and I wanted to know whether my daughter was alive or dead. What would you do with the difficult decision that the Bynum and Smithers families faced? Chat now with the 48 Hours team on Facebook and Twitter.

Geez! Geez! . What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? Look. Look, hi. Hi.

. When they would find a body anywhere, and then they would confirm who it was, and it wasn't Kelly, and I'd go, oh, it's not Kelly. And then I'd go, but it was somebody's daughter. Almost 19 years after Kelly Cox's disappearance, her mother, Jan, was finally close to knowing what had happened. In February 2016, William Reese was moved from prison to the Friendswood Jail after agreeing to give investigators information about their three Texas cases.

He hoped his cooperation might help him in Oklahoma, too. He told us that he wasn't going to play games if we weren't going to play games. Investigators took Reese out to this remote field south of Friendswood, where he said Kelly Cox's remains were located. Reese hadn't yet told them if he was responsible for her death. He doesn't give any confession. No. But it's clear that he's got some involvement.

Correct. Police spent long days and nights with Reese in the jail and out in the field looking for Kelly's remains. And during that time, Reese started telling investigators about his encounter with Kelly Cox and Denton. He claimed they got into a fight in the gas station parking lot after he bumped into her and she spilled her soda on him. I started cussing. I think I pushed her. That's when she hit me with the coke. I slapped her. It was over. She was fighting back? Yes. Okay. What happens next? And then I grabbed her around the throat, and I choked her. Reese had just confessed to murdering Kelly Cox, but investigators weren't sure if his story was true.

They hadn't found any sign of Kelly in that field. But as they kept looking, this was not the only major revelation to emerge. I remember going to work at the construction job site. It was a rainy morning. Soon, Reese was telling investigators what he said happened to Laura Smithers on that rainy morning in Friendswood. I hear something slamming against my mirror, and it scared me, so I stopped. I got out, and that's when I looked in the ditch, and I seen Laura Smithers laying in the ditch. And she wasn't breathing. And she wasn't breathing. Reese claimed that Laura had died instantly after he had hit her with his truck by accident. But he later changed that story, claiming Laura had survived,

but when he tried to stop her from crying, he accidentally broke her neck. Psychopaths are incredibly callous individuals. They are without guilt and they are without remorse. Mary Ellen O'Toole is a retired FBI profiler. We asked her to review the case records and Reese's videotaped statements to try to understand his psychology. I've not assessed him, not met him, and I'm just going from my own experience. not met him, and I'm just going from my own experience. But looking at his cases, looking at his behavior, I would say in my opinion that he manifests traits of psychopathy. You all wanted the truth, so I'm telling you the truth.

And once police got him talking... I had a nose right there, and I'm buried right there. ...Reese didn't seem to want to stop. I seen a pawn, I jumped the curtain, it was right there. O'Toole says that Reese was probably enjoying the attention and the break from his routine. I'm doing this on my own free will. What's the worst thing that you can do for someone that has a tendency to love exciting, challenging, stimulating things? You put them in an environment like prison where they get bored.

So when you offer them the opportunity to come out and assist law enforcement, they're going to jump at that. After a week of fruitlessly searching for Kelly Cox, Reese offered to help them find another victim, Jessica Kane, whom he said he had buried in a different field closer to Friendswood. And while Reese didn't have an agreement with the DA in that case, How's that being against drinking?

he started telling that story too, claiming he had had an argument with Jessica outside the restaurant where she was last seen, and that she followed him down I-45 for 30 miles. I don't know why, I just pulled over. She pulled up behind me and started yelling. I went off on her again. Okay. Then you end up choking her out then?

Yes, sir. On I-45? On I-45. But even as Reese admitted murdering Jessica, he would not admit to raping her or Kelly or Laura. Do you believe that most likely every one of his victims was raped? I do. I believe that they were because I believe that that was really the intent of the crime. If that's his motivation, sexual motivation, why doesn't he admit that? Is that typical? In some cases, I would say that's typical because in their eyes that makes them look pretty pathetic that you have to attack someone, strangle someone, beat someone up in

order to be sexually gratified. Go ahead with the next one. That's the one in Oklahoma City. Finally, even though he could again be facing the death penalty, investigators were able to get Reese to talk about the last case they thought he was linked to from 1997, Tiffany Johnston, who Reese said he had encountered at that car wash in Oklahoma. I was spraying it, cleaning out my nipple truck. That's when that girl yelled, hey, I sprayed her. I go, sorry. I thought she said something. He knew police had his DNA and admitted having sexual contact with Tiffany after forcing her into his horse trailer.

Tiffany, after forcing her into his horse trailer. I was fighting. I snapped her overalls. I don't know why. Once again, Reese made a point to blame his victim for the violence that followed. She hit me in the back of the head with a horseshoe. Pissed me off. I started squeezing her around the throat, and I grabbed that lead rope, grabbed her around the hole, and I... Four victims and four confessions,

but with no sign of Kelly Cox or Jessica Cain, not everyone believed Reese was telling the truth. There was some folks thinking that maybe the information was not accurate and that he was playing us. Go inside the case and see more of the evidence at 48hours.com. As we dug and we continued to not locate anything, there certainly wasn't as many investigators helping at the end of it as they were at the beginning of it. In March of 2016, after 25 days of digging, and with William Reese's guidance,

there was finally some news. They found Jessica Kane's remains. What was that day like? Very emotional. We were sad, but also we were joyful as well to have located the remains. Jessica's parents asked for privacy as they processed the news and buried their daughter. Four investigators finding Jessica corroborated William Reese's stories and re-energized the search for Kelly Cox. And after another two weeks of painstaking work, they found her.

I had nightmares for the first time where she had to wake me up screaming. Never had nightmares like that before. Her nightmares were being down in a hole. It was just... After Kelly and Jessica were found, Oklahoma County prosecutors Jimmy Harmon and Ryan Stevenson had William Reese transported back to their state to face a capital murder trial for Tiffany Johnston. We typically only seek the death penalty on the worst of the worst murderers, and Mr. Reese certainly fit that bill. Reese pleaded not guilty, even though prosecutors

had the DNA evidence and his chilling words from his tape confession. That's when I grabbed her around the throat and choked her. When the trial began in May of 2021, Reese's defense fought to keep that video out, but the judge decided that the jury would watch it and hear all his statements where he admitted killing Laura Smither, Kelly Cox, and Jessica Cain. All relevant, says Stevenson, for showing that Reese had a pattern. All of that being in such a short time period, we wanted to be able to show the jury that this guy wasn't stopping, he was stopped. Sanders-Sapah and two women who say Reese sexually assaulted them in 1997 all testified at the trial. Prosecutors say this testimony was crucial to correct the

self-serving stories that Reese told on those tapes. You never quite get the full story out of William Reese. He always tells it in the way that makes him look best. Prosecutors think the true story is that Reese would set traps for his victims. He would sometimes create the situation in the case of Sandra Sapol by slashing her tire, presented himself as the Good Samaritan, and he would then attack them. After nine days in that Oklahoma courtroom, the case went to the jury. It took them less than two hours to decide, finding William Reese guilty of murdering Tiffany Johnston. Reese was sentenced to death. I'll never forgive him for killing Tiffany. He should die.

But instead of being sent right away to death row, Reese first made one final trip back down the interstate to Texas, where he agreed to plead guilty to murdering Laura Smither, Kelly Cox, and Jessica Kane. It took almost 25 years, but you finally got justice for Laura, didn't you? Yeah, and for Jessica and Kelly. And that was very important to Bob and I. In exchange for his guilty pleas, Reese received three life sentences in the Texas cases.

Gay Smith made a statement at one of those hearings. I spoke about Laura and how we had an empty seat at our table for the rest of our lives, and then I told him that I forgave him for what he did. You forgive him for ruining your lives? You lost Laura, who had her whole life ahead of her? your lives, you lost Laura, who had her whole life ahead of her. Forgiveness does not mean I condone what he did, nor does it mean I will ever forget what he did. Forgiveness was for me to not live in a cage of rage. That's what forgiveness is. With Laura's case now resolved, Gay and Bob could devote more time with their son David, now 34, and his children. Gay also travels the country training law enforcement on handling missing persons cases. I'm here to tell you what happened with the prayer that you will be inspired by Laura's story to never give up.

by Laura's story, to never give up. The Bynums wanted a way to share their memories of Kelly and created this statue in her honor on the UNT campus, where Kelly had once been a student, hoping to remind people to be aware of their surroundings. You've got to live, but you can do that in a smart way and be safe. Jan says, like every family touched by William Reese, she's having to learn how to live with grief. I cry every day. I used to say to people, if you don't want to see me cry, then you can walk away, because I am going to cry. How do you want people to remember your mother? Just the way she was. She was a ball of fun.

She was a beautiful young woman who had a lot going for her. She was driven and she was doing it for me. Could this doorbell video help prove murder? A cop's wife shot dead. What happened inside their house? I had nothing to do with it. Or did he? There's something not adding up. 48 Hours, Saturday on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.

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