Going West: True Crime - Rayna Rison // 170

Episode Date: January 29, 2022

In March of 1993, a 16-year-old girl in Indiana closed up the animal hospital she worked at in preparation for a date with her boyfriend. But when she didn’t come home that night or show up for her date, her family reported her missing. After her body was discovered and investigators uncovered numerous suspects with potential motives, an eventual confession would put all the pieces of the puzzle together. This is the story of Rayna Rison. BONUS EPISODES patreon.com/goingwestpodcast CASE SOURCES https://www.newspapers.com/image/520233581/?terms=Rayna%20Rison&match=1 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/33625443/rayna-lynn-rison https://www.newspapers.com/image/520251859/?terms=Rayna%20Rison&match=1 https://www.newspapers.com/image/518371992/?terms=Rayna%20Rison&match=1 https://www.newspapers.com/image/512333317/?terms=Rayna%20Rison&match=1 https://www.newspapers.com/image/518823726/?terms=Rayna%20Rison&match=1 https://www.newspapers.com/image/512101095/?terms=Rayna%20Rison&match=1 https://www.newspapers.com/image/518855707/?terms=Rayna%20Rison&match=1 https://www.newspapers.com/image/520225221/?terms=Rayna%20Rison&match=1 https://www.newspapers.com/image/520208139/?terms=Rayna%20Rison&match=1 https://www.newspapers.com/image/520208789/?terms=Rayna%20Rison&match=1 https://wsbt.com/news/local/i-thought-it-was-a-lovers-quarrel-testimony-evidence-revealed-in-murder-trial https://www.southbendtribune.com/story/news/crime/2013/08/26/first-relief-then-more-pain-for-rayna-risons-family/46395863/ https://www.abc57.com/news/updated-arrest-made-in-1993-murder-of-16-year-old-rayna-rison https://sports.yahoo.com/rayna-rison-cold-case-murder-202049371.html MUSIC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5QskO44eEY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on True Crime fans? I'm your host Heath and I'm your host Daphne, and you're listening to Going West. Howdy folks, thank you so much for tuning in today to yet another episode of Going West. Howdy Howdy Yes, then I just wanted to say before I forget, thank you so much to Lindsay for recommending this case. Yes, thank you Lindsay. Thank you so much. It means a lot when you guys recommend cases and Heathen and we're just talking about

this. Now we're getting so many, so if it takes us a while to get to the one that you recommended, we're sorry, we're just like really bogged down with cases right now. But good thing we're doing two episodes a week because we have more than enough cases. Also, real quick, before we get started, I know that I haven't told you guys about Patreon in like 30 seconds.

So, yeah, patreon.com slash going west podcast, that's where you can find bonus episodes. We have a ton of them, add free, full length, so go check them out. Including one from the 20s, that I don't know by the time we release this episode, I'm not sure if it will have just come out or is about to come out, but either way, go check it out. Alright guys, this is episode 170 of going west, so let's get into it! In March of 1993, a 16-year-old girl in Indiana closed up the animal hospital she worked at in preparation for a date with her boyfriend.

But when she didn't come home that night or show up for the date, her family reported her missing. After her body was discovered and investigators uncovered numerous suspects with potential motives, an eventual confession would put all the pieces of the puzzle together. This is the story of Reina Riceon. Reina Lynn Riceon was born on May 6th, 1976 in La Port County, Indiana to parents Karen and Ben Reisen. Reina grew up in the small city of La Port in Northwest Indiana with her older sister Laurie and younger sister Wendy. And it's just about 20 minutes away from Lake Michigan in a little over an hour from the bustling city of Chicago, while La Port itself has, and over the years, this pretty consistently

hosted around 20,000 people and maintained its historic architecture and charm. Reyna was an excellent student, but she also focused on music during her time in both middle and high school, playing three horn instruments, and this landed her in her high school's marching band. But she didn't just work hard on school work and music. She also worked hard at her three part-time jobs while she was a sophomore at La Port High School in 1993. Wow, that's really respectable, honestly. I mean, I thought having one part-time job in high school was tough.

I know. I don't know how she did it, especially because she was like an honor student and like I said, she played all these instruments like she was just super hard working. And she also had dreams of becoming a veterinarian. So one of her jobs, and actually her favorite of the three, was at the Pine Lake Animal Hospital right there in La Port. And what she did there typically was like walk dogs and clean the canals and she had been working there as of the fall of 1992 when she was just beginning her sophomore year and then we also knew that one of the other two jobs was

like a job at hot now, which is a fast food restaurant in La Port, I don't know if it's still there, but it was back in the day. So it's no surprise that her dad later described her as being always dependable. On Friday, March 26, 1993, Reina was scheduled to work at the Animal Hospital after school until closing, and then she planned on going out to dinner with her boyfriend Matt Elser. She and Matt had known each other through school for many years, and they actually started dating in 6th grade, so about 4 years prior. But their relationship was known to be kind of on and off again. However, at this time, they were back on and seemingly better than ever, which was a really good thing because everybody in Reyna's life really

liked Matt. That evening, 16-year-old Raina closed up the animal hospital at 6pm and then planned to head directly home so that she could change. And Matt was going to meet her at her house to take her out to dinner from there. And just for a little bit of a context and reference here, Raina worked actually about a five-minute drive from her family's home. So she was expected to arrive shortly after 6pm. But as the night progressed, Raina never walked through that front door. Matt waited and waited at her home, and he and her entire family grew extremely concerned. And she had driven her beige 1984 Ford LTD to work, so she was expected to drive home in it as she always did.

And it typically would have taken Reina just 15 minutes to close up when there was still a couple hours left of sunlight at this time, so her not coming home that night at all was just incredibly alarming. After a short while, Reina's boyfriend Matt decided to just drive down to the animal hospital to see if she was still there, but when he arrived, he noticed the place was locked up and closed and her car was not in the small lot, meaning she had locked up and left work.

He then returned to Reina's house to report this information to her family, and he continued to sit there and wait for her, just hoping that everything was okay. So they were all just sitting at the house, like basically counting the minutes as they passed. And by the time four hours had passed and she still wasn't home, her parents and younger sister Wendy headed down to the Laporte police station to report her missing. But even though Reina was

only 16 years old at the time, the police told them that they needed to wait 24 hours to officially file the report, which, to be fair, makes sense since she'd only been gone for a few hours and there was really no signs that something bad had happened to her just yet. But this, of course, really angered her family because they knew this wasn't like her. Her father, Ben later, stated, quote, �I knew late Friday night something was wrong when she didn't show up at home. It's just not her. She always comes right home from school

and gets her homework done. And as we remember in this particular situation, she had a date with her boyfriend and she was really excited about it. And since she worked so hard in school and in life, I'm sure that she was just looking forward to it being Friday after work where she could relax and just enjoy herself after a long week. So her father Ben tried to explain this to police, but they told him that there was really

nothing they could do at that time. So by the next morning, which was a Saturday, Reyna still hadn't arrived home, and her family felt even stronger than they had the night before, that something was very wrong. So the rice and family went out searching for her themselves, since they had to wait until that evening to report her missing again to the little port police. Alongside this, they called numerous friends and other family members to check and see if they knew anything, including Reyna's older sister, Laurie, who was in her mid-20s at this

time. But no one had seen her. Various volunteers started driving around looking for Reina and her car while others printed flyers and posted them everywhere that they could, but nothing brought her home that night. Though luckily, at that point, police knew that it was time to start looking for themselves, because it was clear that something just wasn't right. Yeah, I mean, they have the whole community pretty much looking for Reina,

and they know the family is very worried. So at this point, they're like, okay, yeah, we need to do something out. We need to like step in here. Yeah, so the police decided to make a public appeal asking for information regarding Reina, hoping that someone out there had seen her the night that she disappeared,

and this actually brought some important calls. It did, so a man called and explained that he drove past the Pine Lake Animal Hospital on that very Friday night at around 6 p.m., which happens to be the time that Reina would have been closing up. He remembered seeing a young woman arguing with a man, who was sitting in his sedan with another man. But the witness just assumed this was kind of, you know, a couple having a little argument, and according to his description of the young woman,

it really seemed like this was Reyna, but who was the young man that she was arguing with? And, you know, of course, as he's driving by, he has no reason to really pay too much attention to this situation because to him it means absolutely nothing. Right. And also, since Reina had a boyfriend at this time who again is Matt Elser, police questioned him to see if he was the one arguing with her. So that Sunday morning, March 28th, 1993, less than two full days after Reina went missing, they asked him some questions.

But it was pretty clear that he had not been involved. As Reina's parents could confirm, Madden had been at her house waiting for her at the time that she would have gone missing. And on top of this, you know, Madden was a nice young teenager who was respectable and he wasn't known for causing trouble. And not that this would automatically rule him out at all, but his story seemed legit, so police let him go. And just as they did that, they received yet another tip regarding Reina's case, and

this one was a big one. Someone had spotted Reina's tan-forward LTD with its hood up on the side of Country Road 200 East, which is located about 10 miles from Reina's place of work at the animal hospital. When police arrived to the scene, they noticed her keys were sitting in the ignition, and her purse as well as a man's ring in the car. Her purse was sitting on the front passenger seat by the way, and suspiciously, her glove compartment was open, and the contents of it were scattered all over the floor. Part of her work uniform was also found in the vehicle, but this wasn't unusual since she typically only wore her worktop to the job anyway

and wore jeans instead of slacks, according to her dad. Right, so maybe she... I don't know what this top looked like, maybe it was a polo or whatever, and she had a shirt underneath, and maybe that was what she did. She just took off that shirt. I don't know why she would have she only lived a few minutes away, but maybe it's not that weird. Well, I mean, also you have to think about the fact

that maybe she's working with animals. It's possible that she's, you know, she's washing them, she's got hair on her shirt. My good dirty, very good point. Yeah, so she might just want to pull that off. I mean, I've worked jobs where I immediately pull off my work shirt because it's just nasty. That makes sense.

But anyway, so outside of the car was a broken hair barrette that she had been wearing the night that she went missing. And since her car's hood was up, police pondered if she had some car troubles and this is what caused her to pull over. But why her keys and purse were left in the car really confused them? Right, because if she had some car troubles and this is what caused her to pull over. But why her keys and purse were left in the car really confused them. Right, because if she had car trouble,

you know, maybe her keys sat in the ignition, she turned it off and then she had to check under the hood, but it's not like she would leave her stuff in the car like that. Right, I mean, you would assume if she got picked up, you know, and got a ride to get some help, she would take her keys in her purse. So they attempted to turn her car on with the keys, and the engine started immediately,

proving that her car didn't have any troubles at all. Even when a mechanic checked under the hood, they didn't find anything wrong. So with this, it was believed that whoever put that hood up had staged it to look like she had car troubles, even though she didn't. And let's just talk about how eerie that is. To come across that scene, you're like, okay, whenever you see a hood up, you're like, that person has car troubles.

Right, but good on police for checking almost immediately. Let's turn the car on and see what happens. And then they're like, okay, the car's working. And so they ask a mechanic to make sure, because obviously they can look under the hood and be like, I don't know, I don't know, they don't know what mechanics, so maybe they don't know. But a mechanic comes in and says, yeah,

everything checks out. Like that automatically puts the situation in kind of a sketchy place is like, did somebody stage this? Yeah, it makes your stomach kind of sink because you're like, there seems to be something very strange going on here. Exactly.

So another weird thing was that this wasn't Reyna's typical way home at all. It was actually North just outside of the city of La Port in a rural area, whereas her home was just a few minutes south of her work. So she drove, or she would have if she had driven to this spot in the complete opposite direction. Yeah, she would have been heading south and not north. Yeah, and she had been working this job like I said since the fall of 92, so maybe like six months. So obviously she knew how to get home, so this was weird in its own way. But when Raina's car was processed, there was no clear sign of a struggle and no blood was found

in the vehicle, which didn't bring any answers to the investigation at all. And as Heath mentioned, a man's ring was found in the vehicle, and it was actually a class ring that was believed to be a male's just based on the size. And police wondered if it could be relevant to the investigation. So they asked Reina's boyfriend Matt if it was his. But his ring, which he had given to Reina, is kind of a love token, had his name engraved on it. But this ring didn't have anyone's name on it. And somehow Matt was able to identify

who he believed it belonged to. He said it was a young man named Jason Tibbs ring. Now Jason Tibbs is relevant to Reyna's life because they had actually dated back in middle school when Reyna and Matt were broken up for a period of time. They didn't date for very long but they did date. It worried Matt a bit why Reyna's ex-boyfriends Ring would be sitting in her car and police had the same concerns. So they headed over to question Jason Tibbs, who was around the same age as Matt and Rain at this time, and Jason explained that he had worked on Raina's car stereo and had taken off his ring to do so, which he then ended up forgetting. And this seemed like a pretty fair answer, but investigators wanted to question him about

where he was the night that Raina went missing for clarity. Jason told them that he had been fox hunting with his friends that night, and by the way, he wasn't hunting for FOX's. This is apparently a game that's similar to hide and seek, but you do it with cars and share general clues regarding your location over CB radios. To confirm his story, investigators questioned the friends that he said he played with, and they all confirmed that they had indeed been playing the game with him that night, but that no one actually found him.

So they couldn't quite confirm Jason's story completely, but even so, there also wasn't any evidence that he had done something to Reyna, and I really find this fox hunting thing interesting because I've never heard of that before. It sounds like a very small towny thing to do, but also kind of a fun thing to do on Friday night if you're underage and you don't really know what to do in your town, you know? Especially when you're around 16 years old, there's not that much to do. So, it kind of seems like a maybe fun teenage activity. Yeah, totally. I mean, this is, you know, a time before cell phones and social media and stuff, so. But of course, you know, the fact that all of the friends said, yeah, we played with him, they heard him on the radio,

but nobody actually found him or saw him. It's kind of interesting in itself as well, but maybe that's common in the game that you don't end up finding people. I've never played, obviously. We don't really know. So just about a week after Reina disappeared, her story was featured on America's most wanted, just hoping to bring more leads into our case. And it did just that, bringing in a peculiar development in what happened to Reina. Someone called to report that on Fail Road, just about six or seven miles from where Reina's car had been found, a Laporte High School letterman jacket had been found hanging in a tree.

When Reina went missing, she was known to have been wearing this. And maybe not to work, but she had it with her. And that information had been given to the public. When police arrived to the scene, they saw Elser stitched into the jacket, meaning it belonged to Reina's boyfriend Matt Elser. And Matt was the one who gave his jacket to Reina so she could wear it, you know, very typical high school thing to do. But how the hell did it get in a tree miles away from her car? And the way it was hanging made investigators believe that it probably wasn't hung up to be seen, but instead that maybe someone threw it out of their car's window to dispose of it as they drove by and

it just happened to catch on the tree. But the really weird thing here is that this exact area was searched just one day earlier and the jacket hadn't been there, meaning someone had just put it there. Three weeks after Reina disappeared, there was still absolutely no sign of her. Her father Ben told the South Bend Tribune, out of the neighboring town of South Bend, Indiana, quote, �Life is short, death is final, but missing is forever. These three weeks have been forever. It's such a like profound thing to say, and very, very, very heartbreaking. Yeah.

And at this time, Ben was working as a project engineer at AcroPac Group, and it was really cool because the company who had trucks driving all over North America helped out by putting Reina's missing posters on a bunch of their trucks to help get her face and her story out there. And they even paid to print all the posters, so that was just a really cool thing for them to do. Really, really sweet and supportive for sure. But sadly, something extremely tragic would be uncovered just a week later. But sadly, something extremely tragic would be uncovered just a week later. On April 26, 1993, so exactly one month after Reina disappeared, a teenage girl and her dad were fishing in La Port County when they came across a body floating in the pond. On April 26, 1993, a teenage girl headed off for a day of fishing with her father near Range Road, just about

two miles north of US-20 in La Pore County. This area in particular is just two miles northwest of where Reina's car had been found weeks earlier. The catch wasn't great that day, so the teenager split off from her father to just kind of walk around the pond. But when she did this, she glanced into the water to notice something horrific. A fully clothed body face up on top of two logs. So she called over to her dad to notify him of her discovery immediately, and the police

were quickly called to the scene to investigate. Although investigators couldn't be sure that it was Reina right away, they did note that she was wearing the same clothes that Reina had been when she disappeared. The girl's body was sent to South Bend Memorial Hospital for an autopsy, and Reina's parents were called to be notified of the situation. Although her body was badly decomposed, based on the description that's parents were called to be notified of the situation. Although her body was badly decomposed, based on the description that her parents were given over the phone, sadly they did feel confident that it was her. And this is probably because of the clothes that she was wearing and the fact that they

knew that she was a young, white teenage girl. And Reyna had been the only person reported missing in the area that had this description and appearance, so it was just kind of obvious. It was determined that her body had been in the water for a long time and that there were no obvious injuries to her body at the time she was found, and there was also no sign of sexual assault. A corner concluded that the remains did belong to Reina Reisen, and that her cause of death was his fixation, but they weren't really able to identify what could have caused

it, but they did know that Reina was murdered. At this time, Reina's reward fund totaled $36,000 as investigators hunted a killer. As the information was shared with the public, another tip came in. That investigators should look into Reina's older sister Lori's husband, a 27-year-old man named Ray McCarty. Because he had proved to be an incredibly malicious person in Reina's life for many years. It turns out that when Reina was 11 years old and Ray was 22, so five years prior to Reina's murder, Re began molesting her. And when she was 13, he got her pregnant. Reina did end up getting an abortion and luckily, Reina was convicted of child molestation. And when this was found out,

Reina said that she hadn't previously reported the assault to police because Reina allegedly told her that he would kill her if she did. And if this wasn't horrible enough, Raina's sister Laurie is actually known to have taken her husband's side in this whole matter. As if Ray didn't carry all the blame and what he did to her very young sister. So I'm not trying to point all this blame towards Laurie. I know that she suffered a great loss when her sister was murdered,

but this is what I read in a bunch of newspapers, and I just think it's really, really sad. But I guess in a good way-ish, Laurie apparently didn't trust Rey very much after this whole thing came to light, but she stayed with him. And extremely devastatingly, Rey only received a three-year sentence for

what he did to Reyna. And just two months before Reyna was murdered, he was released from prison. And this occurred on January 5th, 1993, and he returned to his wife Lori's arms and their home across town from the Riscind family home. And with that, Ray became the prime person of interest in his sister-in-law's murder. So police brought he and his wife Lori in for questioning right away, and Ray told them that he hadn't seen Reina the night she disappeared, and his wife Laurie said the same thing, but later he was questioned again. And this time, suspiciously he changed his story, and he admitted to seeing Reina the night she went missing and is presumed to have been murdered.

So here's the story that Ray told. On the night of Friday, March 26, 1993, at approximately 5.40pm, Ray headed over to Warren Street in their city of La Port to look at a house that he was interested in buying. Now this house happened to be just around the corner from the Pine Lake Animal Hospital that Rayna worked at, which is located on Pine Lake Avenue and Warren Street. And from this house that he was looking at, he could see the animal hospital. And he noticed Raina's car on the lot outside, so he decided to go over there after viewing the house since she was closing up. While Raina swept and cleaned the waiting room area, Raina allegedly walked inside and asked her if she knew where her

sister Lori was, to which Reina responded that no, she didn't know. And with that, Racer said that he left the hospital and didn't see her again. There was virtually no evidence connecting Rey to the murder, other than his potential motive of wanting to kill her, you know, basically after he served all this time in jail for raping her. But this wasn't enough for police to arrest him, so although they tried to find more evidence and new leads for her case, it eventually went cold. In September of 1994, the police officially named Laurie and Ray McCarty as suspects in Reina's case, and they stated their names publicly.

But this didn't lead to literally anything. It wasn't until a couple months later in the end of 1994, so about a year and a half after Reyna's murder, maybe a little more, that another lead came in. And at this time, Reyna would have been just months away from her high school graduation, and life as a veterinarian if she still would have chosen that career. But instead, investigators were chasing down her murderer. A 32-year-old man named Larry Hall was arrested in Indiana for kidnapping and murder. And after police searched his van, they found a birth control prescription model with the name R. Rice and On It. So this was obviously a huge discovery if it belonged to Reina because they already

knew that this man was capable of despicable acts. So did he murder Reina too? At this point in December of 1994, police had suspected Larry Hall on a number of abductions of girls and young women throughout the Midwest, but primarily his home state of Indiana. Now although investigators on Reina's case were very much interested in questioning him, he loyered up and retracted all of his confessions about the kidnappings that he committed. Reina's parents were questioned about the birth control, but her mom didn't think that

Reina had ever taken birth control, at least to her knowledge. Raina's sister's Wendy and Lori also agreed to this as well, both of whom had spent a lot of time with Raina in her bedroom. Yeah, I read in the newspapers specifically that it said that they snooped in each other's rooms a lot, growing up, and just over the years as teenagers. Probably Wendy more so than Laurie since Laurie was so much older than them, but they thought they would have seen something like that since they were always just digging into each other's stuff.

And they didn't. Right. And also according to the look of the bottle, it didn't appear to be very legitimate. But would that then mean that Larry falsified it? And if so, why? Investigators started comparing Reina's murder to the crimes that Larry Hallified it, and if so, why? Investigators started comparing Reyna's murder to the crimes that Larry Hall was thought to have committed, but they proved to be pretty different. It was believed that Reyna, who had died by asphyxiation, had likely been drowned, and

she was fully clothed when she was found, and there was no sign of sexual assault. But the alleged victims of Larry Hall had all been raped and left nude. Since police didn't have any concrete evidence that Larry was involved with Reina's murder, they just kinda had to let him go. But in case you guys are wondering, he did end up getting sentenced to life in prison for murdering a 15-year-old girl named Jessica Roach in September of 1993, so about 6 months after Reina's murder in the neighboring state of Illinois. And we may have to cover her story at Jessica Roach and Larry's other victims in another episode

because he is believed to have murdered up to 90 women and is even thought to potentially be behind the Springfield 3. For those who know that case, we haven't covered it, but it's pretty popular, so he's a super evil dude. But back to Reina's case, so the years continue to pass and no solid answers came to the case. As 1998 approached, police looked into Reimakarri as a potential suspect once again, and as they built a case against him, investigators were able to obtain a search warrant for Ray's house. There, they allegedly found blood in his car, which of course was incredibly alarming.

They also uncovered multiple handguns and other weapons. So in May of 1998, after a grand jury met for three weeks and over 70 witnesses spoke, 32-year-old Ray McCarty was arrested for the murder of Rayna Ryzen. He heavily maintained his innocence the whole time, and as this entire ordeal unfolded, Laurie stood right by his side. But surprisingly, Rayna's parents didn't believe that he was guilty of this crime either. Raine was jailed for 15 months awaiting trial, but on August 13, 1999, LaPort County prosecutor Robert Beckman dismissed the murder charge against him due to lack of evidence.

And Raine's trial had been scheduled for October 12th, but as of mid-August, Rae was released. And if you guys were curious, the blood found in Rae's car was proved to be animal blood because Rae was an avid hunter. By August of 1999, Rae was ready to move on from his conviction, and he told the South Bend Tribune that he understood why his 1990 conviction of molesting Reina made him a suspect in her murder. He also said that Reina eventually forgave him for molesting her and that they were quote, buddies when he got out of prison. Now, we can't be sure if this was true at all, but either way, Reina was not the one who murdered 16-year-old Reina. As the 20th century came to a close, Raina's case went cold once again, and more years passed.

But in March of 2008, so 15 years after Raina's murder, the port police got a new tip regarding her case. And I just want to say really quick how crazy it is for them to have determined that it wasn't Ray, because he was such a good suspect, like obviously with his molestation charges, the fact that he had allegedly told her if she told anybody about the molestation that he would kill her, the fact that he got out of prison just two months earlier, like it really led up to him. Yeah, all signs were pointing to Rey.

So it's so crazy that they proved that it wasn't him and they just didn't have enough evidence as we'll discuss There's evidence against somebody else, but it's just wild that it really did lead to him I will say though that Ray is not a very good guy for molesting a child. I mean absolutely not he's a total piece of shit So a man named Ricky Hammonds was serving a 45-year prison sentence for murdering a 25-year-old man named Daniel Cassidy in 1999, shooting him 9 times just outside of La Porte Indiana. Now Ricky was about 14 years old at the time of Reyna's killing, but he had some incredibly important information regarding her death that would crack her case wide open. In March of 1993, Ricky stated that he witnessed Jason Tibbs, remember him?

Oh yeah, we remember Jason. And another young man named Eric Freeman, drive into the Hammond's property. At this time, Eric was dating Ricky's sister, so this is how this connection comes into play. So Ricky watched as Eric and Jason Tibbs open the trunk of the car, exposing a body covered by a blanket. However, the person's face wasn't covered,

though Ricky didn't know who it was. But later, he saw Reina's story on the news and recognized her photo as the girl he saw in the trunk of the car dead. And as we know from another witness statement that came in, you know, during the beginning of the case, Reina had been seen outside the animal hospital that she worked at, arguing with a young man who was sitting in the car next to another man. Well Eric backed this up too. After police finished talking to Ricky, they spoke with Eric to see if this was true,

and they even offered him immunity if he was willing to testify against Jason, because they basically knew that at this point he was the one who killed Reina. Eric explained that when Rana was about to leave work, he drove over there with Jason, and Jason started trying to convince Rana to get back together with him. Throughout the years, despite the fact that she had been with Matt, he sent Rana love letters and consistently showed interest, which was, you know, always rejected. He and Rana had only dated for about 6 months in 7th grade, which was nearly 5 years before she was killed, but he apparently never got over her. At the time of Raina's death, Jason Tibb's had dropped out of school and wasn't known

to be a very good guy, nor a good influence according to those close to Raina. Whereas Matt, he's this really good guy, and seems to be pretty to Reina. Whereas Matt, you know, he's this really good guy and, you know, seems to be pretty perfect for her. So that night when Reina rejected Jason yet again, Eric said that Jason hit her and that this caused Reina to fall over. And raged by the whole situation, Jason then strangled Reina until she was dead, which caused Eric to ask, what the hell did you do that for? And then Jason looked to Eric and said,

if I can't have her, nobody can. They then put her body in the trunk, drove to the Hammond's house to figure out what to do, and then Eric helped Jason dump Reyna's body in the pond that it was later found in. And sadly, Ricky's excuse for not coming forward with this very crucial information at the time was because he smoked weed after seeing what he saw that night, and he didn't want

to get in trouble for it. You know, being only 14 and marijuana being illegal in Indiana. I think it still is illegal too, so. But luckily, Eric, who was living in South Carolina at this time, did fully cooperate and tell his whole story, which matched up with what Ricky had known about the night's events. And that line, if I can't have her nobody can, that Jason had apparently said after killing Reina, was the very first sentence spoken in the trial against 39-year-old Jason Tibs

during his October 2014 trial. So it took many years for investigators to build their case, but Jason was arrested for the murder of 16-year-old Reina Reisen. Prosecutor Chris Fronk read various love letters from Jason to Reina written back when they were in middle school. One that read, It kinda bothers me to see you tie down to one person. I'm jealous of Matt.

Also, tie down? Bro, you're in fucking middle school. It's pretty funny wording, but he is in middle school so it makes sense. Both Ricky Hammons and Eric Freeman testified about the events that unfolded that evening, while Prosecutor Fronk helped put the whole picture together with the evidence he had regarding Reina's murder. This led to Jason Tib's defense attorney, John Tompkins stating, �That was a good story.

Problem is, it's not true. He then told the jury that the evidence that would be presented throughout the trial would prove to them that Jason was not responsible. And Tomkins read an old letter from Jason to Raina as well, but this one said, I don't want to hurt you, I hope you give me a chance. And I do want to point out though that, like why even state, I don't want to hurt you? He could mean emotionally and maybe my mind is only going to physical hurt because of the subject matter, but either way, like kind of an odd thing to proclaim.

Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's really odd, does this say like, I don't want to hurt you. Right, so I mean, I don't know. We didn't read all the letters, so, but anyway. Eric Freeman told the courtroom that he saw Jason Tibbs get on top of Reyna and choke her to death. Another witness who took this stand was a woman named Patricia Humphrey, who had two sons,

one who was the same age as Reyna and Jason in 1993. She testified that although she had never met Reyna, Jason confessed to her that he had murdered her. So shortly after it happened, Patricia says that Jason asked to stay at her house, since again he was friends with her son Lonnie, and he said that he had killed Reina by accident and that he loved her. Patricia told Jason that he needed to seek help and turn himself into police and that she herself tried to tell police what he said, but that they didn't believe her. Which would really suck if that was true and since she was under oath, I don't think

she would make that last part up, but who knows, because people lie under oath all the time. But maybe when she came forward, police were focused on Rey as a suspect and didn't believe Jason had done it. So they didn't investigate her claims, assuming this is true. But it's also worth mentioning that Patricia admitted to being on 17 different medications, and also admitted to having spent time in a psychiatric ward, though she wasn't sure how many times. She also stated that at the time Jason confessed this to her, she was not on medication.

So it's very unclear if her story is true at all. Ultimately, the evidence against Jason Tibbs proved to be enough for the jury to find him guilty of Reina's murder, and he was sentenced to 40 years in prison. By the following year, 2015, his attorney worked to overturn his conviction, but the appeal was denied by the Indiana Court of Appeals. Four years later, in 2018, Ray McCarty was arrested on battery charges in Indiana, and although he allegedly told jail staff that he took medications for depression and blood

pressure, he didn't get this medication during his short time in jail. He allegedly told jail staff that he took medications for depression and blood pressure. He didn't get this medication during his short time in jail. Because shortly after his arrest, he killed himself in his cell via cutting his arm. He allegedly suffered from withdrawal symptoms and suffered hallucinations, and a federal lawsuit was filed on his behalf. That same year in September of 2018, Jason Tibb saw a new trial and his attorney tried to convince a judge that the fibers found on Reyna's body were consistent with the carpet and Rey McCarty's vehicle. Despite this statement, Jason has not been granted a new trial, and as of now, he still

sits in prison and has around 33 years remaining in his sentencing. Meaning if he doesn't get a new trial, he'll be in prison until he's in his late 70s. Jason's trial was an incredibly emotional process for Reyna's family who had been grappling with her death for over 20 years. But after the trial concluded in 2015, they stated, quote, Believe me, you don't know how much I miss that. Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, and I'm definitely going to repeat Daphne, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode of Going West. I'll say you're a line man, and next Tuesday we'll have an all-new case for you guys to dive into.

That's right. Also, remember we have Patreon episodes for you guys. If you're interested in bonus episodes head on over to patreon.com slash going west podcast. I want to talk about this case for a second, so I think it's really interesting the whole Rey McCarty possibility. And I gotta say, I'm not fully convinced that he didn't do it. I don't know if he did, but obviously the, you know, statements against Jason Tibbs are pretty damning, but it is just, you know, their word against his. So I don't know, I just gotta say like I'm on the fence a little bit, although I do see Jason having reason to do this, and of course he was convicted in a court of law.

So I don't know, what do you guys think? I'll say that I am definitely convinced that Jason Tib's was responsible. I think Rema Cardi's dirt bag, but I think that Jason Tib's is responsible, just based on Eric's, Eric and Ricky's statements. I absolutely agree. So thank you guys so much for listening.

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and I'm talking to you guys about True Crime. Also, if you guys wanna leave us a review, please do so. We love those. Also, please share the show. Do you have anything else to add, Daphne? No, it just means a lot that you guys listen and we love you guys so much. Alright guys, so for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger. Thank you. you