Cold Case Files - Eyes at the Window

Episode Date: January 7, 2021

The community is shocked when nursing student Jana Reynolds is raped and murdered. Without DNA testing available the case goes cold, but when the killer strikes again a detective with a hunch puts the pieces together. Check our our great sponsors! Sweaty Betty: Go to SweatyBetty.com/coldcase and use code COLDCASE at checkout to get 20% off your purchase! Talkspace: Go to Talkspace.com or download the app and use code COLDCASE to get $100 off of your first month and show your support for the show! Madison Reed: Go to Madison-Reed.com and get 10% off PLUS free shipping on your first color kit with code CCF

Thank you for listening to this Podcast One production, available on Apple Podcasts and Podcast One. Jana Reynolds was 22 years old in 1988. She was a newlywed. Her husband, Jeff, had been her high school sweetheart. The couple lived in Mount Vernon, Illinois, where Jana was attending nursing school to become a registered nurse, and she was working part-time as a licensed practical nurse. Jeff worked full-time at the bindery department at a printing company. Friends and family of the couple described them as really happy.

They had never seen Jana and Jeff argue. On the night of May 5th, Jeff worked the late shift, meaning Jana was on her own for the night. A little after midnight on May 6th, a neighbor reported hearing noises coming from the Reynolds home. They said it sounded like a door being kicked in, or doors being slammed around. When Jeff arrived home at around 7.30 a.m. on the morning of the 6th, Janna's car was in the carport. She hadn't left for school. Jeff walked into the house and then ran back out, and the

neighbors reported hearing a different sound. Jeff screaming hysterically because Janna had been murdered. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files. I'm Brooke, and here's the prestigious Bill Curtis with a classic case, Eyes at the Window. Stopped by my parents' place, picked up a boat, and a buddy of mine was with me, and we went by my house because I wanted to change, change shoes. In 1988, Jeff Reynolds is 24,

newly married to his high school sweetheart, Jenna. And her car was under the carport. Thought nothing of it. And walked in. Noticed the back door had been broken into. And walked in and hollered for her. And I found her. Jeff finds his wife lying naked on their bed in a pool of blood.

He was very shaken, upset, almost screaming in the phone, if I can remember his nature. And that's all he said to me. I came home from work and found my wife mutilated. I need officers and paramedics here. First thing I see when I walk to the bedroom doorway is this beautiful young lady laying there on her back with severe cuts. Her throat had been cut a number of times. Her right wrist had almost been amputated.

Frank Cooper is a crime scene technician and one of the first investigators on scene. The last few minutes of her life, in my opinion, was in total fear. And she fought valiantly for her life until she couldn't fight anymore. Cooper collects the victims' clothes and bedding and tags them for forensic analysis. Meanwhile, Mount Vernon officers comb the neighborhood, looking for any trace of the killer.

We'd go down the street, down the alleys. We were looking in trash cans, and we were just basically looking for anything that might have any kind of implications to being involved in this. The neighborhood search turns up nothing. By the end of the year, detectives are unable to charge anyone with the crime, and the case goes cold.

First thing that we did was pull the case file out and read everything that we could find in it. It was in disarray. Ken McElroy is a detective with the Mount Vernon Police Department. In the summer of 2001, he and crime scene technician Roger Hayes are asked to reopen one of the town's most famous unsolved homicides, the rape and murder of Jenna Reynolds 13 years earlier. Once we were familiar with the case file, then Detective Hayes started pulling out the evidence piece at a time, reexamining it, looking at it with an alternate light source. In the back of my mind I was hopeful that I could find something that either was missed or was not available at the time back in 1988. From the knee

area of the left leg of the thermal bottoms got a stain here a bigger stain in there here and one here up around the crotch area you got a stain here here and one here. Up around the crotch area, you've got a stain here and here. And moving down to the right leg area, down past the knee, you've got a stain here, here, here, and here. Hayes IDs 23 different stains on Jana Reynolds' clothing, all possible sources of DNA. The clothing is sent to a lab for additional testing. We asked for a presumptive test first.

We wanted to make sure that the illuminating stains that Detective Hayes had detected was seminal fluid. They came back and said, yes, it is seminal fluid. It seems to be not degraded and we probably can get you a profile from that. And within probably two weeks, we had a profile of the person who had left the stains on the thermal bottoms and the panties. Jeff Reynolds is eliminated as a source of the seminal fluid, as are several long-standing suspects. With nowhere else to turn, detectives dig into old crime reports, looking for any similar types of attacks. This year, our homes and our offices are now the same space. We're all dealing with more stress

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I was laying on my couch, listening to Bon Jovi, trying to go to sleep. I heard a forceful push on my door and looked up from the couch and he was standing there. Dina struggled with her attacker. That's when he, you know, pushed me back down on the couch and proceeded to attempt to rape me. He wanted me to do oral sex on him and I just kept my mouth clamped down.

After a while, he finally left, and he told me if I told anyone or if I went to the police, he would kill me. Dina filed a report, but no arrest was made. A couple months later, she saw a set of eyes outside her window. I just looked up from doing dishes and saw his eyes, and he was standing there. And I screamed, and I screamed for my husband. And by the time he got out there, he was gone. Dahl called the police, and several squad cars began to patrol the area.

As I was driving east on Westgate, I saw a black male walking, a pretty good clip, walking down the street at a pretty good pace. And I stopped the car and got out, approached him. And as I did, I recognized him as Joe Tucker, asked him what he was doing. And he just told me that he was out for a walk at that time of night. It was a cool evening, and really he should not have been sweating like he was for just out for a walk. Tucker was questioned. At the time, however, detectives could not connect him to the peeping Tom report and Tucker was released. A couple months later,

Dina Dahl found yet another strange man in her home. Dina was coming from her neighbor's home, which is this trailer right here, and she was coming across to her trailer, which was parked right along this area here. Dina heard the front door open, and she asked who it was. I said, well, I said, who is it? And he said, it's me. And I knew it was him. And I hit the back door.

He chased me around, all the way around, down to the road and up into the neighbor's backyard before he caught me. And then he pushed me to the ground and attempted to rape me. And the whole time I was just fighting him. I was fighting for my life. The suspect fled on foot as Dahl called police. The investigation, however, went nowhere. A decade later, McElroy reviews the Dina Dahl case and sees an M.O. that closely tracks the attack on Jana Reynolds. Playing a long shot, he asks the crime lab to run the peeping Tom, Joe Tucker, against evidence from the doll rape and his unknown profile in the Reynolds case. Tucker proves to be a match in both. Basically, I got a call from a scientist that was working on this.

And I remember where I was at. We had a bomb threat called into our high school, and we knew what payphone it had been called from. And I was dusting the payphone for prints when I got a call on my cell phone. And basically, Kristen told me that we got a match. McElroy digs into Tucker's personal history and discovers a connection between his suspect and the murder victim.

Jenna Reynolds and Joe had worked together a few years prior to that at a local fast food establishment here in town. And Jenna only worked there a couple of months. It was the only job she had through high school. She was 16 when she worked there. Joe Tucker was a cook, and Jenna Reynolds waited on, you know, took orders. And so their paths had crossed.

The connection between Tucker and Jenna Reynolds provides McElroy with ample motive for the murder. He puts a call in to Jenna's husband to tell him of the impending arrest. He called me on the phone and told me that he was going to go make an arrest. They were going after him. It could be over, you know, finally. After all these years, you know,

we've finally got somebody who they think has done it. Detectives pull a warrant for the arrest of Joe Tucker. But will their suspect talk? And if so, what will he say? We knew Joe Tucker was going to be at work Monday morning, or was supposed to be. So we went to his place of employment. And they called him into the main office of the business he was working in. On May 8, 2002, Detective Ken McElroy travels 300 miles to Springfield, Missouri.

His mission, arrest the man suspected of raping and murdering Jana Reynolds 14 years earlier. Once he came through the door, he seen me. His head kind of dropped, and I told him, Joe Tucker, you're under arrest for Jana Reynolds. Once we arrested Joe and had him back at the Springfield Police Department, took him into an interview room, I read him his rights. Watch his foot.

Should I or should I not talk with him? Do you want to talk to me without a lawyer present? Yes or no right there? He decides he's going to, so he signs his name. Okay, so you understand your rights? Uh-huh. Okay. Joe Tucker decides he can talk his way out of his handcuffs.

The suspect soon realizes he might have made a mistake. All that hair was enough root material for the lab to do DNA on you. They compared it to the DNA they found on her bedding and clothes. It was a 1 in 17 trillion. If you noticed, his head was down. There was a pause. And I thought, you know, he may actually tell us about it there for a few minutes. Somebody got to be playing games, okay? Because y'all trying to tell me that I murdered a girl that I only knew for a short period of time. He goes back to denying it right to the end.

He just denies everything. I'm saying I didn't murder nobody and I truly don't know that girl. Okay, is that your DNA at that house? It shouldn't be. No, but is it? Is it? I don't know. I was trying to overwhelm him with some evidence here. If you did this, let's talk about it and let's avoid this having to go in front of a jury, because you're going to lose with the amount of evidence that we have. Let's just talk about it. It's a brand new year, so why not try out a brand new hair color? This year, take coloring your hair at home to the next level with Madison Reed. You deserve gorgeous professional hair color

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Find your perfect shade at madison-reed.com. Cold Case listeners get 10% off plus free shipping on their first color kit with code CCF. That's code CCF. Joe, ain't no wiggle room in this one. None. It wasn't me. It wasn't me. It wasn't me. You won't take a chance with the jury.

You're damn right because that was not me. If you came, you're hurt. God's forgiving you. God don't need to forgive me because I done no murder. One of the things he'd said to me right before I left was,

you know, God will point out who did this. And I told him, you know, I just kind of looked at him and said, Joe, I think he already has. McElroy and Hayes leave the room and give Tucker a chance to think. On closed-circuit camera, they watch as their suspect starts to pray. We're watching this from another room, and we're wondering at this point in time, is he really praying about this case or but or is he wondering how many other cases is he going to get tagged with since they have my DNA? We've always thought Joe has done more than one homicide and a couple

of rapes. We think that Joe has done many more than that. Tucker Wave's extradition goes back to Illinois and is sent to Menard Prison on a parole violation. While he awaits trial in the Reynolds murder, Tucker finds himself a lawyer. Unfortunately for Tucker, it's of the jailhouse variety. He sought out a person in Menard who had a reputation for having legal knowledge, and he asked this person to help him prepare a defense for this case, General Reynolds' case. So he told Joe, well, write down everything you did in this case. So Joe writes down basically how he kills Jenna Reynolds. It's on one page. Tucker's jailhouse lawyer tells Joe one page is insufficient. So Tucker goes back to his cell

and writes some more. So Joe goes back and writes several more pages, five or six more pages, even draws a diagram of the house, of Jenna Rimmel's house. The jailhouse lawyer takes Tucker's letter and quickly turns into a jailhouse snitch, offering up the handwritten confession to detectives. He showed them to me, and I was a little skeptical at first, but as I read the letters, I seen that, you know, knowing the evidence and knowing the case, like, I knew it. I knew that the person that wrote these letters probably was the killer. On April 11, 2006, a jury deliberates for less than four hours before finding Joe Tucker guilty of murdering Jenna Reynolds.

The only real courtroom drama, would Tucker ever be eligible for parole? Or would he die inside an Illinois jail cell? She was like me. She was terrified. At Joe Tucker's sentencing hearing, the state brings out its star witness, Dina Dahl. Even though the statute of limitations has run on her case, Dahl wants to tell the court about the night she claims Joe Tucker attacked her. You're trying to go to sleep. You wake up and you realize it's not your husband. You're blocked in.

I mean, there's nowhere to run, really. And the only thing you think about is survival. And maybe just let it get over real quick and he'll go away. Unfortunately for her, he didn't. Dina Dole has the desired effect on the jury. They return with a sentence of life without parole. Detective Ken McElroy is in the courtroom with the Reynolds family, including Jenna's husband, Jeff.

Jeff Reynolds hugged me and I thought he was going to break a rib. And the whole family is very appreciative. It was probably the most rewarding day I've had during my career as a law enforcement officer. It was very rewarding and overdue. For Jeff Reynolds, the verdict means he can later rest a piece of his past and give thanks to a detective who did more than just a day's work. I think of him as a friend. I mean, he's just been very strong for me. Been a good friend.

In 2011, Tucker appealed his conviction based on ineffective assistance of counsel, funds being denied to hire an expert witness, and his lack of remorse being portrayed as a sign of guilt. All three arguments failed, and his conviction was affirmed. Joe Tucker is now 56 years old and carrying out his sentence in an Illinois prison. Cold Case Files, the podcast, is hosted by Brooke Giddings, produced by McKamey Lynn and Steve Delamater. Our associate producer is Julie McGruder. Our executive producer is Ted Butler. Our music was created by Blake Maples. This podcast is distributed by Podcast One.

The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and is hosted by Bill Curtis. You can find me at Brooke Giddings on Twitter and at Brooke the Podcaster on Instagram. Check out more cold case files at AETV.com or learn more about cases like this one by visiting the A&E Real Crime blog at AETV.com slash real crime.