Serial Killer Convicted

Serial killer William Reece gets death penalty in murders

By Mary Alys Cherry Laura Smither and Jessica Cain among victims

Convicted Serial Killer, William Reece

Serial killer William Reece, who confessed to kidnapping and sexually assaulting four young women in Texas and Oklahoma -- including Jessica Cain of Tiki Island and Laura Smither of Friendswood -- before finally killing them, has been given the death penalty by an Oklahoma City jury, after convicting him of first degree murder in the death of a 19-year-old newlywed two decades ago.

The June 2 decision followed testimony of how he admitted first fighting and then strangling Tiffany Johnston to death in 1997 after an altercation in the Sunshine Car Wash in Bethany, Okla. Prosecutors believed he was stalking Johnston, the daughter of his mother’s best friend. An Oklahoma City native, Reece, 61, reportedly showed no emotion when the verdict was read by Oklahoma County District Judge Susan Stallings, who set sentencing for Aug. 19. He did not testify during the trial, but jurors heard several hours of his confessions -- admitting the Oklahoma murder and three in Texas in 1997.

It is not known if he will be brought back to Texas and tried for the Texas murders. That decision will probably come after his sentencing and whether he decides to appeal the Oklahoma decision.

FIRST VICTIM

Reece, a truck driver, was just 28 when he was convicted in 1987 of assaulting his first known victim, a University of Oklahoma freshman, who he kidnapped, raped and sodomized after offering to help her with her car trouble. He reportedly bound her with tape and zipped her into a sleeping bag that he shoved inside the sleeper compartment of his truck. She escaped by talking him into letting her use the restroom.

After spending most of the next decade in prison for that attack and a similar incident, Reece continued his assault on women once he was out of prison by attempting to kidnap 19-year-old dancer Sandra Sapaugh, while offering to help her with her flat tire in Webster, just six weeks after Smither disappeared.

As he sped down the Gulf Freeway, she got away by jumping out of his pickup after he ordered her to take off her pants – suffering severe injuries from the tumble from the truck. “She probably knew if I don’t jump out of the car I may not see tomorrow,” said Webster Police Sgt. James Lovel, who investigated the kidnapping.

But her ability to pick him out of a lineup got him a 60-year sentence and eventually led to his leading officers to the burial sites of Jessica Cain near Hobby Airport, Kelli Cox in Brazoria County and admitting the murders of Tiffany Johnston and Laura Smither.

CONFESSES

Reece began confessing back in 2016 after receiving a 60-year sentence for attempting to kidnap Sandra Sapaugh and after DNA linked him to Johnston’s death – then a cold case in Oklahoma. He felt by cooperating with authorities, he might avoid the death penalty.

Eventually he disclosed to a Texas Ranger where he had buried the bodies of Cox and Cain. Prosecutors in two of the Texas cases agreed not to seek the death penalty, but Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater refused to make a deal. Reece only admitted to raping one of the four – Johnston. Cox disappeared July 15, 1997 in Denton after touring the local jail with some of her University of North Texas classmates.

On discovering that she had locked her keys up in her car, she went to a gas station across the street to call her boyfriend for help, bought a soft drink and disappeared.

Reece began his Bay Area killing spree on April 3, 1997 when he ran into 12-year-old Laura Smither on her bicycle near her Friendswood home and continued until Aug. 17, 1997 when he killed Jessica Cain, 17, on her way home after a night of practice for a play at Bay Area Harbour Playhouse in Dickinson and then joining all the actors at Bennigan’s in Clear Lake for a get-together. Her truck was found on the side of the Gulf Freeway with her purse inside the next day.

It was almost 20 years later before her family learned what had happened. Smither’s body was found in a pond near Pasadena about two weeks after she disappeared. LAURA SMITHER

JESSICA CAIN