Going West: True Crime - Thad Reynolds // 39

Episode Date: September 16, 2019

One early morning in July 2004, a 36-year-old Georgia man is killed shortly after his arrival at work. As a beloved member of the community and passionate Deacon at his local church, who would want him dead- and why? This is the murder of Thad Reynolds. Get 10% off your Vampire Wine order at vampire.com using promo code GOINGWEST at checkout! These incredible wines are perfect for a Halloween party or just a Fall night in. **Case Sources** http://www.nbcnews.com/id/37321880/ns/dateline_nbc-crime_reports/t/secret-life-homecoming-queen/#.XXf5Xy2ZNo4 http://www.northwestgeorgianews.com/rome/news/reynolds-harper-both-heading-to-prison/article_f33e65aa-f94b-5ed8-9b6c-d9ae3ae6f5cd.html https://murderpedia.org/female.R/r/reynolds-michelle.htm https://www.parnickjenningsfuneral.com/memorials/Reynolds-Thad/1279286/obituary.php  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on through crime fans? I'm your host Heath, and I'm your other host, Daphne, and you're listening to Going West. Today we actually have a solved murder case for you guys, but before we get into it, we wanna say thank you to everyone who gave us a five star review on Apple Podcast this week. Thank you so much to Megan and Tra from Eugene Oregon and Avi from Houston, Texas. And a big thanks to Daniel from Worcester, Massachusetts

and Deja from Maryland. Big thanks to Kate from Warrensburg, Missouri and Sandy from Rumpford, Maine. And a huge thanks to Angelica from Maryland, Big thanks to Kate from Warrensburg, Missouri, and Sandy from Rundford, Maine, and a huge thanks to Angelica from Tracy, California, and Jenna from Eugene, Oregon. Thank you to Erin from Chicago, Lainey from Melbourne, Australia, Ingville from Norway, and Jamie from the UK. And of course, we have to highlight our newest patrons this week, so a big thanks to Ricardo, thanks for joining the Going West gang on Patreon. If anyone else wants to join our Patreon, it's just five dollars a month and you get access to bonus episodes. Two weeks ago we

released a brand new full-length bonus episode on the murder of Garrett Phillips. So make sure to check that out patreon.com slash Going West podcast. And we've got another exciting case for you guys coming up this week as well, so make sure you go over there and subscribe. Once again, it's patreon.com slash going West Podcast. Alright guys, without further ado, this is episode 39 of going West, so let's get into it. on July 5, 2004, a 36-year-old man has found stabbed a death at his job in Rome, Georgia. When police arrive to the scene, there's a witness who tells them an interesting story, and that story just continues to unfold over the next couple days. Police soon realized that someone

very close to the victim could have something to do with his death. This is the murder of Thad Reynolds. That Reynolds was born on January 21, 1968 in Rome, Georgia to Wilburne and Katie alongside his sister Beverly and brother Ty. Growing up, Thad was really into sports, and when he started Kusa High School, he joined the football team as well as the wrestling team. He was raised in a very religious household, and they all attended the Hollywood Baptist Church, which was right in town. And Rome, Georgia, is right in the Bible belt. And in fact, it's an incredibly religious town

with the most churches per square capita in the nation. So if you look at this town on Google Maps, you'll just see churches everywhere. It's a really quaint little conservative town with a population of around 35,000 people, and it's the kind of place where people know their neighbors. One night in high school, Thad was playing a high school football game when he caught the

eye of a beautiful blonde girl in the stands. Her name is Michelle Solens and she was a student at Pepperall High which was a rivalry school in the town of Lindale located just 6 miles or 9.5 kilometers south of Rome. Both Thad and Michelle were very well liked and they were very popular amongst their schools. Most people would say that they were incredibly friendly and social. One night at a dance, Michelle laid eyes on that again and that's when they met. After that, they fell in love. In 1986, Michelle became homecoming queen and later that year, she and Thad went to prom

together. Then about a year after high school, they got married. They were both very involved in the church, and Thad even became a Sunday school teacher, and a discipleship leader for church activities. Once they were married, Thad worked hard to buy them a house, and then they had their first child, a daughter named Olivia. But just a few years later, Michelle asked Thad for a divorce. Apparently, both of them cheated and they just weren't happy. Michelle wanted a lot more in life. She didn't want to just be a young, stay-at-home mom,

so she broke up with that and got an office job. That was heartbroken by this because he was madly in love with Michelle and didn't want them to be apart, and he didn't believe in divorce anyway, especially since they had a child together. Meanwhile, Michelle was dating other men, but the grass isn't always greener on the other side. She wasn't meeting anyone exciting, and she was slowly realizing that she didn't want

to be a single mom. The interesting thing here, though, is that they weren't enemies during their divorce. They actually spent holidays together and went on vacations, but they were apart for around four years. That was desperate to get Michelle back and even ask groups of people within the community to pray that she would come back to him because he couldn't imagine living his life without her. Apparently the prayers worked because she did come back and decided that they would try their relationship out again. So that and Michelle got remarried at the Hollywood Baptist Church in Rome, Georgia, with all of their friends and family there.

And they were really happy in those days and they even built their own house on a small plot of land next to Thad's parents' house. Since the town was so tight knit, multiple people from the church came out to help them construct their house. Over the next few years, Michelle had three more girls who they they homeschooled, and they

were happier than ever. That worked hard at the Frito-Lay distribution center in Rome, and eventually became the supervisor. His whole goal was to be able to spend time with his family, so he would go into his job around 4 a.m. so that he could get off in time to spend the rest of the day with his girls once they were done with their schooling with Michelle. On top of that, that was also a deacon at the church because like we mentioned, he and his wife were very involved in the church. And as a deacon, he did a lot of couples counseling. That was very well liked in the

community because everyone felt like they could just go to him for anything and that he would help them. He was just a really good guy overall. Scotty Harper was Thad's best friend and he too was involved in the Hollywood Baptist Church, where he was actually the family pastor. He had three young children of his own with his wife Paige who was Michelle's best friend. So the four of them were all very close and they would go on vacations together, and they were known to usually be with each other. Even their kids were great friends, so they had a lot of family slash friend time together, and they'd all go out to the movies, have barbecues,

go camping, host prayer groups, and just about everything else. People in the community also really looked up to Scotty. He was someone you could always count on and the neighborhood thought of him as a good role model. Aside from being the family pastor at the church, he also worked in IT at Floyd Medical Center after becoming very tech savvy from touring with the Air Force. Michelle and Scotty went to high school together, but Scotty was two years younger and the two didn't know each other at the time. In fact, they didn't know each other until after she and Thad had gotten remarried, because Thad met Scotty while he was divorced. But Michelle and Scotty became very close.

They talked about church business on the phone and via email, but it all seemed very innocent. But in the spring of 2004, Michelle started acting strange again and she once again was looking for more in life. She desperately wanted to get out of her small town and buy a cabin resort in Tennessee where she and her family could live at, but also run for tourists visiting the Smoky Mountains. But this didn't end up happening, so Michelle remained restless and unhappy. When Thad would come home from work, she would just leave the house to go shopping by herself, or have some me time.

After a rafting trip between the harpers and the rentals, both Paige and Thad noticed that their spouses were being flirty towards each other, and Paige actually told Scotty to stop talking to Michelle and to stop spending time with her unless she was there. Thad also talked to Michelle about this. He was concerned because Scotty was very funny and confident and he knew that Michelle was beautiful and he didn't want Scotty getting any ideas. But then, Michelle started sending Scotty very sexual emails about what she wanted him to do to her and he was fully reciprocating. Unbeknownst to Paige and Thad, Scotty and Michelle had an affair in Scotty's minivan

in the parking structure at the hospital that he worked at. After their affair, they started going on secret dates in the town next to them so that people they knew wouldn't see them. They hooked up while their spouses thought that they were at the gym, and they began planning to run away to Portland, Oregon, together.

But they were both in the same position. They didn't want to tear apart their families, but they wanted to be together. In Michelle's mind, Thad wasn't giving her any attention. He didn't put her on a pedestal like she had always wanted, while Scotty did. They barely slept together, rarely went on dates alone, and that really upset Michelle because she had fully planned to spend the rest of her life with that. So now she's at a crossroads. In June 2004, there was a big church gathering in Alabama for the Kids Dance Group.

Michelle was in charge of performances at the church and worked alongside the kids a lot, so she was planning to go along with many other people from the church, including Scotty and Paige. But for whatever reason, Thad decided to stay home. Many of the adults were shaperoning the kids, and therefore shared a hotel room with a bunch of them per room sleeping in their sleeping bags on the floor. But Michelle had decided to get her own room, which was strange to Paige since she was the only one who did that. Paige shared a room with some other girls and Scotty was with the boys,

but that night, Scotty ended up spending his time in Michelle's hotel room. In some of the many emails that were sent between Michelle and Scotty, Michelle mentioned that the only way they could really be together is if Scotty outlived Thad. They referred to Thad and Paige as Nats and made jokes about them dying.

Michelle said that maybe she could put extra butter into Thad's dinner so that he would die from a heart attack? Or instead, they could just have a double dinner date and they would make two different sauces, one for Michelle and Scotty and one for Thad and Paige, and that they would poison their spouse's sauce. So we're already starting to see how these little jokes and things are starting to get out of control and maybe building and creating some momentum towards something very terrible. It's interesting that they both thought that, oh, this is so funny, let's joke about killing our spouses. Well, I think that if you're willing to joke about murdering your spouse, that's not too far off to believe that you could actually do that, I think, in a sense.

Well, exactly, which is why it's interesting that both of them joked about this and thought it was funny. Like, oh yeah, let's kill the gnats. Like, what? Yeah, and typically, we see that there's, like, a three-way love triangle. What's interesting here is that we're almost seeing like, we're seeing two people with the same fucked up mindset kind of coming together with this plan. Especially because both of their

spouses were really good to them. It's not like they were monsters or anything like that. That was a really good man and Paige is a really good woman and they all had so much fun together. They were this friend group that did everything together and the fact that two are conspiring against the other two is just like crazy. Yeah, how can you put aside the fact that your families have gone on vacations together and your children are best friends? How can you just put that aside and start planning something so evil? On Monday, July 5th, 2004, at around 4.30am, a Frito-lay delivery truck driver arrived at the

distribution center to pick up his load for the day so he could go on his route to deliver snacks around the area. He was about to get out of his car when he saw a man standing in the doorway of the building. The driver noticed that the man looked hesitant and frazzled, and he didn't recognize him. He also didn't know why there would be a man just standing there so early in the morning, because the parking lot was basically deserted, and very few people worked that early. The man was silhouetted by the lights inside the facility since it was still dark outside, with the sunrise being around 5.30am.

The delivery driver sat in his car and watched the man walk to his maroon minivan and opened the door. He was then again silhouetted by the light from inside the car, and the driver saw him take off his shirt before getting into the car and driving away. The driver didn't get a look at his face since it was so dark, so he still wasn't sure who the man was or what he'd been doing. When the delivery driver walked inside the building to start work, he noticed blood all over the floor. The trail led to his supervisor Thad Reynolds, who was dead. He immediately called 911 and within minutes they arrived to see if they could do anything to save his life, but they were too late.

Thad Reynolds suffered 19 stab wounds and police could tell by the bloody scene that there had been an intense struggle. Police were stunned at this death, because they couldn't imagine who would want someone like Thad Reynolds dead. He was hardworking, a dedicated father, and was a shoulder for everyone in town. In the town of Rome, Georgia, there are maybe one to two murders a year, but this murder in particular was incredibly heartbreaking and shocking for the entire community. So, police knew right off the bat that it wasn't a robbery gone wrong because

that had his wallet and his cell phone on him. Since he worked at a Frito Lay facility, there wasn't money lying around, it was just kind of a place for delivery drivers to pick up their orders for their roots. Then they started thinking that maybe a stranger had been in the area and saw the lights on inside, so maybe this was just a random killing. But that didn't make that much sense either. Police just knew that there had to be something else that they didn't know. The pastor at the Hollywood Baptist Church went to the Reynolds house that morning to break the news to Michelle that her husband Thad had been murdered, and apparently she collapsed to the floor crying. The pastor then called Thad's mother Kitty and told her to go to Michelle's and that she needed to tell her something. Once she got to Michelle

and Thad's home, she learned that her son was dead. The community was alerted of the news, and many of the Reynolds neighbors showed up to show their support to Michelle and their kids, including Scotty and Paige Harper, their best friends. Scotty had been told the news at the hospital where he worked. The pastor had called him too. When Scotty went home to Paige before they headed to the Reynolds home,

Paige noticed that Scotty's right hand was all bandaged. She had asked him what happened, and he told her that he had heard it lifting weights at the gym that morning. Hey gang, we have the perfect wine for you guys to try. It's called Vampire. They have an incredible selection of reds and whites, and they just introduced a new addition to their line, Dracula Sparkling Rose. My personal favorites are Fengria, which is an incredible bottled sangria, Vampire Red

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Visit vampire.com and use promo code GoingWest at checkout. That's vampire.com and use promo code GoingWest at checkout. So Scotty Harper, Thad's best friend in Michelle's lover, was contacted by the pastor regarding Thad's murder. Scotty went to tell Paige so that they could go show their support to the Reynolds, and that's when Paige noticed that Scotty had bandages on his hand. When she asked him what had happened, he stated that he heard it at the gym. And she didn't question him any further after that because she had no reason to doubt his reasoning at that point. While much of the neighborhood was at Michelle's side, the police continued to investigate the crime scene, and they found some pretty

key evidence. Police discovered that the killer was very sloppy. So first off, the witness who had discovered Dad's body was questioned by police. He told them all about the man he saw with the burgundy minivan. This was one big clue for police because they had a car to start looking for. Then police found a pair of prescription glasses at the scene of the crime. They didn't belong to that because he didn't wear glasses, so they determined that they were possibly connected to the murderer. Then, they found the sheath for a knife, which they thought could be connected to the murder weapon, but they didn't have a suspect quite yet. Their plan was to see if they could track the

prescription on the glasses and find their killer that way, but in the meantime, another witness stepped forward. One of Scotty Harper's co-workers at the Floyd Medical Center went to police and told them an interesting story. This co-worker had been working on switching over the phone lines for the hospital. And apparently, he overheard a steamy conversation

between Scotty and another woman named Michelle. He didn't know her last name, but he definitely heard that her name was Michelle while he was eavesdropping on their conversation. So for whatever reason, he kept eavesdropping on their conversation, and it got really sexual. And he told the police all about Scotty's affair. And the reason that he had gone to police in the first place about this was because people around town had been saying that they thought the killer drove a Maroon minivan, and this

co-worker knew that Scotty also drove a Maroon minivan. So at this point, he just spilled all that he knew. Police wanted to reach Scotty's computer to see if they could find any evidence of this affair, and they wanted to see if this Michelle woman he was having an affair with was indeed Michelle Reynolds. And once they started looking into his emails, they hit the jackpot. They found countless emails that dated months back between Michelle Reynolds and Scotty. And for the most part, they were super raunchy. Police were feeling incredibly suspicious of Scotty at this point. He was having an affair with Thad's wife, he wore prescription glasses,

and he drove the same car as the supposed killer. Police gave Scotty a call and told him that they wanted him and his wife Paige to come down and answer some questions. So the following morning, they showed up at the station together. Police immediately started asking him questions regarding his affair with Michelle. They also asked him where his glasses were. Funny enough, Scotty told them that he wasn't having an affair, because he had no idea that they had seen his emails and that he had been snitched on by his coworker. He didn't know

they had any proof at all. So Scotty just wouldn't budge. He kept denying the affair to police. So then they asked him if they could search his minivan, which he willingly agreed to. While police headed over to Scotty's minivan, Scotty was free to go. He told Paige that he needed to stop by work, probably so he could get rid of evidence he didn't know police already saw, but Paige said that they had to go to his parents' house. Once they left the police station, Paige asked Scotty if he knew anything about Thad's murder, and Scotty's response was, you do know what you're asking me, right? When Scotty if he knew anything about Thad's murder, and Scotty's response

was, you do know what you're asking me, right? When Scotty and Paige got to his parents' house, everything fell apart for him. He told his wife and family that he murdered that. Scotty hired a lawyer right away, and then even checked himself into a psychiatric hospital, which had been initially recommended by his lawyer. Scotty felt like his lawyer was implying that maybe he was insane at the time of the murder, but Scotty disagreed. He remembered all of it and knew exactly what he was doing. But regardless, he checked himself in and stayed the night there.

So essentially, Scotty just could not take the pressure of police questioning him and he folded very quickly. Right, so I think especially because he's a pastor that he probably knows right from wrong and knows that he did a very bad thing, so I'm really not surprised that he confessed this early because he probably, like you said, just couldn't take the guilt. When police told Michelle that that had been killed, and her words, she felt the floor and started crying uncontrollably. But at Thad's funeral, she was totally calm. No one in Thad's family remembers her shedding a single tear, and this was just a couple days after her husband was brutally murdered.

In fact, some later stated that Michelle was joking around at the funeral, and even said that now that Thad was dead, she could get her nose pierced. And multiple people heard her say this, and they were just dumbfounded. So she definitely wasn't playing the grieving widow. On top of that, Michelle told police that she didn't want to know anything about his murder at all. Not a single detail. And that raised some red flags for investigators because they figured she would have wanted

to know what happened to her husband. This is definitely a red flag for me too because you see in a lot of other cases where the family is just desperate to know the answers and what happened to my loved one and the fact that she was just like, I don't want to know anything is pretty shocking. Right, and a lot of the times in those cases, like you said, it's like the family they they almost don't want to know, but they need to know. I would understand if she didn't want to hear the gory details, but just to not want to know what happened to her husband at all is just really weird. The next morning, which was a Thursday, police searched the rental's house, and they

looked through Michelle's computer too. On top of the sexual emails, they found some other peculiar evidence. In late June, so weeks before Thad's death, Michelle and Scotty had been talking about Thad's schedule via email, and Michelle was telling Scotty where he could find Thad at certain times of the day. Michelle later stated that this was so he could have a talk with Thad about their affair since she was too afraid to tell him herself. But as she also stated many times, she had no intention of letting Thad know about her affair. So this statement doesn't really make much sense.

The day before Thad's murder, Michelle had told Scotty what Thad's work hours were, which is a huge red flag for police. Police immediately put Warren's out for the arrest of both Scotty Harper and Michelle Reynolds. Also just before Thad's murder, Michelle and Scotty had a serious talk, and Michelle basically called him a coward for not following through on their plan to be together, and said that he wasn't doing what they agreed on. She was threatening to end their relationship right then, and Scotty was refusing to let that happen. Even more, Michelle was saying that she and Thad had a date plan for that night, that she was excited about since they never did that, and she thought it was just what they needed.

So just before the murder, Scotty was feeling very threatened by Thad. It definitely sounds like Michelle was trying to manipulate him and trying to make him jealous, because obviously she knows that her lover isn't gonna want her to talk about the fact that she's going on a date with this other guy even though it's her husband, but this definitely got Scotty super pissed. Yeah, basically in this case, Michelle is the puppet master and Scotty is basically just the puppet and she knows exactly what to do to pull all of his strings and make him worried that she's going to cut off the affair.

And like, that's just so manipulative to the point where it's just like, it's just so evil to think about. Well, Scotty even told Michelle when she was saying this, he was basically saying, no, I'm not allowing that, that's not gonna happen. Like, he was really upset by her saying this and would not accept the fact that she was rekindling her marriage with Thad.

And she knew, she knew that she wasn't rekindling her marriage with Thad. She just was using this as ammunition to get the job done. So after Thad's murder, Scotty and Michelle talked on the phone about what had happened and Michelle was just really concerned that her daughters were gonna find out that Scotty had murdered their dad because her kids

loved Scotty. So Scotty was feeling very guilty and he wanted to confess, and Michelle actually asked him if he could wait a couple days until after the funeral was over. This just proves even further that she didn't care much about the murder at all, because if she did, she would have turned Scotty in instead of trying to stop him from confessing. Scotty and Michelle were being held without bond while they awaited their conviction. If they were found guilty of Thad's murder, they both could face the death penalty. Even though they were in this horrific situation, Scotty and Michelle were still flirting. Somehow, they were able to talk on the phone to each other thanks to another inmate were in this horrific situation, Scotty and Michelle were still flirting.

Somehow they were able to talk on the phone to each other thanks to another inmate who had helped them set it up and later snitched on them, but the whole conversation was being recorded. They talked about Portland and Scotty even asked Michelle what she was wearing and her response was orange. So here they are in this jail potentially facing life in prison or even death and they're acting like nothing even happened. They told each other how much they loved and missed each other and Michelle didn't seem upset at all at the fact that she was in jail because he killed her husband. But during the call, Michelle never admitted fault. She said things hinting that she didn't know he was so in love with

her that he would take it that far, but she said it moreing that she didn't know he was so in love with her that he would take it that far, but she said it more casually. It didn't seem like she was surprised at all. So investigators think that this was her way of setting it up so she wouldn't be faulted for the murder because she supposedly had no idea it was on Scotty's mind. While Michelle and Scotty sat in jail, investigators continued to work around the clock to find everything they could on Scotty and Michelle. They still didn't have the murder weapon or a for sure way of convicting Scotty, but they didn't stop at anything. They noticed that Thad had a life insurance policy that would guarantee $250,000 to Michelle once he passed. And this of course was a red flag. Remember the guy who snitched on Scotty about the flirty phone calls at work?

And the guy who told police that Scotty had a maroon minivan? So he did a little snooping in Scotty's office once detectives were done searching it. Since this guy also worked in IT, he knew more of the ins and outs of the office, and he really hit the jackpot. After peeking around Scotty's office, he thought of something. While they worked, they sometimes would have to remove the floor tiles to get to certain wires while fixing a problem, so he figured that that was a pretty good temporary hiding place.

He and another co-worker started going around removing tiles in the server room and by the third tile he pulled up He found a JC penny shopping bag. He reluctantly opened the bag to discover a knife Bloody clothing and shoes and the receipt for the knife that Scotty had purchased at Kmart He immediately went to police with this gold mine of evidence and they had pretty much everything they needed from there to police with this gold mine of evidence, and they had pretty much everything they needed from there. Since they knew when the knife had been purchased, they reached out to them for security footage, and in the video, they saw Scotty Harper buying the hunting knife. So they had Scotty nailed.

But this still left Michelle. Police couldn't tell how much involvement she really had in this case. So like we mentioned before, Michelle did a pretty good job of never admitting fault in Thad's murder, and she never wrote in an email that she wanted Scotty to kill Thad. But she did tiptoe around it with comments about how Scotty would have to live longer than Thad if they wanted to be together. Based on her actions, police were fairly confident that she had at least played some kind of role in the murder. Even if it was just manipulating Scotty to do it.

The closest thing they had to proving Michelle was involved was based on an email that she sent to Scotty the night before Thad's murder. On Sunday, July 4th, he emailed Michelle, stop me if you have any hesitations. To which Michelle responded, I'm ready. Please be observant of your surroundings and be careful. I can't wait to be your bride. And it's really frustrating because obviously she's talking about murdering Thad, like it's pretty clear. And unfortunately she didn't actually say the word, so it's hard to actually convict her on something like that,

even though I think everybody can agree we all know what she means here. Yeah, there's no way around it. We know exactly what she means. During the trial which took place four years after Thad's murder in October 2008, Michelle's attorneys pointed out that Michelle never directly said that she wanted Scotty to kill her husband. They also pointed to the fact that Michelle loved that, it would never do anything to

hurt him. But there was no covering up the affair, and Michelle did admit to this. But she also stated that just because she was with another man doesn't mean that she wanted her husband to die. But according to her, they never did anything except kiss and hug, because Scotty couldn't even get an erection. The prosecutor begs to differ. Michelle is apparently on record stating that she had shown Scotty sexual positions that

he had never seen before. She was almost bragging about it. It was very clear to the prosecution that Michelle was lying about the extent of the affair to make her self-esteem innocent, but what else was she lying about? The prosecution had tons of emails to show the jury that helped them realize just how evil Michelle Reynolds was, including the email about poisoning Thad and Paige. But still, this would not prove without a doubt that Michelle would follow through on a real murder plan.

They know they needed Scotty to testify against Michelle, which they thought would be incredibly hard to get because up until this point, Scotty put Fultt completely on himself. But they finally got that wish. During a taped confession, Scotty took a plea deal and confessed to murdering Thad, and in turn would not receive the death penalty. He also agreed to testify against Michelle. In Scotty's testimony, he stated that in the months leading to Thad's murder, Michelle would drop comments hinting to him that she wanted him to kill Thad, and that she almost broke up with him when he wasn't making any moves to eliminate Thad. On the morning of July 5, after Scotty stabbed Thad 19 times, he called Michelle to tell her what happened.

And Scotty states in his testimony that he heard relief in Michelle's voice when she found out that her husband was dead. But Scotty still admitted to the court that he was the one who did this. He killed Thad alone. Apparently, as of the night before, he didn't know what was going to happen the next morning. He didn't know if he was just going to have to talk with that about his affair, or if he was going to have to commit murder. So here's what happened on the morning of July 5th, 2004. Scotty drove to the

Frito-Lay distribution station that morning, knowing that was working inside. He had the hunting knife on him when he walked in. Thad saw him and cheerfully asked him what he was doing there, and that's when Scotty said, I want what you got. He said Thad looked confused, not understanding what he was referring to. Then, Scotty took out the hunting knife and stabbed Thad until he fell to the ground and didn't get back up again. But he didn't feel relieved when Thad was dead. He didn't think to himself, now Michelle is mine. He was just in disbelief of the whole situation and he was far from happy. After the murder, he drove to the hospital he worked at and changed out of his bloody clothes and put them in a JC Penny bag under the floor. Afterwards,

he went to the ER where he got stitched up for his bad knife wound. In late 2008, Scotty Harper pleaded guilty to the murder of Thad Reynolds. He agreed to life in prison without the possibility of parole. They were going to try Michelle separately, and that trial didn't begin until early 2010. On January 13, 2010, Michelle Reynolds admitted to plotting with Scotty Harper to murder her husband, Thad Reynolds. She pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter, which would give her 20 years in prison. Since she had already served five years at this point, she agreed to serve 15 more. As a part of her sentencing, she is not allowed to have any contact with her children while she is in prison.

To be considered for parole, Michelle will have to complete at least 65% of her sentence, so she could be out anytime in the next few years. Thank you for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you so much everyone, and next week we'll have an all-new case for you guys to check out. Make sure to check out VampireWine at vampire.com and use promo code Going West for 10% off your order. And if you guys want to shout out in the show, make sure you go over to Apple Podcast

and leave us a five-star review, but make sure you leave your name and your location. And if you want to become a part of the Going West gang, head over to patreon.com slash Going West Podcast and join our fan club where you get bonus episodes every month. Also make sure to check us out on Instagram at Going West Podcast. And check out our Twitter at GoingWestPod. You can also find us on Facebook at GoingWestTrueCrim and join in on the conversation over there. So for everybody out there in the world,

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1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc Thank you. you