Killers in the Family Page 6
However, even with this new piece of eyewitness testimony, the Prosecutor’s Office still didn’t think they had enough evidence to refile the charges. No one had seen a body, just a rolled-up carpet.
West returned disappointed from the Prosecutor’s Office. “We were still waiting for someone to come forward who had direct knowledge about the crime before we could do anything further with the evidence we had collected,” he said.
Detective West vowed, however, to never forget this case, his first unsolved homicide. He promised to always be on the lookout for any new evidence. As forensic science advanced over the following years, West would occasionally pull out the case file and see if there was anything more he could do with it. “In the 1990s, I had the Prosecutor’s Office look again at the case,” West said. “I also reinterviewed many people. But just nothing of significance developed that could bring this case forward.”
Still, West refused to give up and renewed his vow to someday solve the case. “You never forget your unsolved cases,” West said. “But if you have one with a child victim, it really stays with you. She was truly an innocent victim. She should have gone to her aunt’s house rather than trust the Reeses.”
FOUR
“Unfortunately, after we dropped the case, Paul Reese Sr. continued with his life of crime,” Detective Roy West said—and not only that, he noted, but “with teaching his kids his way of life.”
Indeed he did: “Lawless Legacy: Eastside Family Has 50 Convictions,” read the headline of an article about the Reese family in the September 22, 2008, issue of the Indianapolis Star newspaper. And in the years since that article appeared, the family has continued to pile up more and more criminal convictions.
Left unprosecuted for Dawn Marie Stuard’s murder, Paul Reese Sr. continued to lengthen his criminal record. Following his release after the State of Indiana dropped the charges in the murder case, Paul Reese Sr. went on to amass felony convictions and prison sentences for burglary (four times), robbery (twice), and drug possession. Paul Sr.’s criminal record extended back to the 1960s, initially for relatively minor crimes. In January 1964 a court had convicted him of malicious trespass of a residence and fined him $1 and costs. Then in November 1971, a court again convicted him, this time of theft, and sentenced him to sixty days in jail. Paul Sr.’s criminal record suddenly turned deadly serious in 1979, however, when he pleaded guilty for attempted voluntary manslaughter. He admitted to the court that he had beat his forty-five-year-old girlfriend Helen K. Smith with a claw hammer. Paul Sr. actually called the Indianapolis Police Department himself soon after the attack and told them that he had tried to kill his girlfriend with the hammer. After making the call, Paul Sr. then briefly fled to Florida, but the police arrested him when he returned to Indiana soon afterward. They served a warrant on him while he was in the hospital recovering from an overdose of antidepressant medication. The police found Paul Sr.’s fingerprints at the crime scene, and the victim later identified him as her attacker. Paul Sr. claimed the attack had occurred during a blackout. He received a six-year prison sentence, though the State released him on parole on October 15, 1982. And though he spent four months in jail after being arrested for Dawn Marie Stuard’s murder, after Paul Sr. was released from custody, he didn’t remain free for long. In November 1989, a judge sentenced him to prison to serve a ten-year sentence for burglary. In this case, the court found him guilty of a Class B felony, meaning the crime was more serious than a normal burglary because it had special circumstances, such as his having been armed during the crime, or that the building he burglarized was a church. The State paroled him after less than six years, on July 19, 1995. His return to free society was short, however—four months later, in November 1995, a court sent him back to prison once again to serve two more years on another, different burglary charge. In that case, the court had found Paul Sr. guilty of a Class C felony for breaking into a home and trying to steal a VCR, though he was interrupted in the act by the residents returning home. He received parole on Christmas Day 1996 but soon had his parole revoked and was returned to prison.
Paul Reese Sr. never seemed to learn his lesson, though, not even after several years in prison. In May 1998, shortly after his release on the last burglary charge, a court again sentenced him for two counts of Class B felony robbery, one count resulting in a six-year sentence and the other in a sixteen-year sentence. In Indiana, robbery is defined as knowingly or intentionally taking the property of another by threatening to use force or by putting the person in fear. It is usually a Class C felony. It can, however, be upgraded to a Class B felony, as it was with Paul Sr., if the perpetrator is armed with a deadly weapon or the crime results in bodily injury to anyone other than the robber. The following year, in March 1999, a court convicted Paul Sr. of yet another Class C burglary and added an additional six years to his sentence. In December 2001, while still in prison serving his sentence for the last burglary charge, he received another year and six months in prison on charges of possession of marijuana, hash oil, or hashish. This is usually a Class A misdemeanor, but the court convicted Paul Sr. of the more severe Class D felony, which meant he had a larger than normal amount of the drug on him when arrested.
In addition to all of the above, the police had also arrested Paul Reese Sr. a number of times over the years for burglary, assault and battery, and even possession of a sawed-off shotgun, but those charges had been dropped for various reasons.
The matriarch of the family, Barbara Reese, like her ex-husband, didn’t set much of an example for her six children. According to the article in the Indianapolis Star, she had been arrested in the 1970s on federal embezzlement charges for stealing money from the bank where she worked. She pleaded guilty and a court sentenced her to eighteen months of probation.
Paul Reese Sr.’s older brother, James L. Reese, the same one who told Detective Roy West in 1986 that Paul Sr. had confessed raping and killing Dawn Marie Stuard to him, also shared in the family’s propensity for crime. The police in Arizona arrested him for child molestation and dangerous crimes against children. He began serving a twenty-year sentence for the crimes in December 1997 and is presently at the Arizona State Prison Complex in Tucson.
Of Paul and Barbara Reese’s six children, so far only the two girls, Jenny and Cynthia, have managed to stay out of jail. The four boys—Paul Jr., born in December 1969; John, born in January 1971; Brian, born in February 1972; and Jeremy, born in March 1973—all have criminal records, both individually and as a group; according to the article in the Indianapolis Star, in 1989 the police arrested all four of the Reese boys for the attempted burglary of an eighty-five-year-old woman’s house. From then on, the boys continued to rack up the criminal convictions.
Paul Reese Jr., the oldest son, received a two-year prison term in September 1990 for the attempted burglary. He was charged with conspiracy to commit burglary, which means that a person has agreed to and taken concrete steps to take part in a crime with others. In July 1994, he followed that up with a six-year prison sentence for a Class C felony, reckless homicide, which in Indiana involves killing someone by acting in a reckless manner but without premeditation. This can be anything from the reckless operation of a motor vehicle to shooting a gun into a crowd. And then in December 1994, a court again convicted him of conspiracy to commit burglary and sentenced him to another two years in prison.
Despite a period of avoiding serious trouble after that, Paul Jr. once more ran afoul of the law when in April 2003 a judge sentenced him to a year imprisonment for operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated and resisting law enforcement. A few years later, in June 2008, Paul Jr. received another two-year sentence for resisting law enforcement, along with a six-month sentence for mischief, defined as the damaging or destroying of another person’s property. Though usually a misdemeanor, it can rise to the level of a felony, as it did with Paul Jr., if the property loss is extensive. In November 2009, he garnered himself another
six-month sentence for mischief, and then in March 2011 he received a one-year prison sentence for possession of drug paraphernalia. This last violation involves possessing some device or raw material for use in the consumption of illegal drugs.
The next oldest son, John, has the shortest record of the four Reese boys. In addition to his juvenile record, a judge in February 1990 sentenced him to ten years in prison on two counts of burglary, stemming from the attempted burglary he committed with his brothers.
The youngest Reese son, Jeremy, also spent time in juvenile detention, and like the other members of his family, has had a number of brushes with the law as an adult. In March 1995, a court sentenced him to three years in prison for Class C felony burglary, and then two weeks after that he had six months added to his sentence for failure to return to lawful detention/escape following his failure to report to a detention facility after being granted a special leave. Following these convictions, in August 1995, he received a sentence of three and a half years in prison for theft/receiving stolen property.
Starting in 1998, Jeremy began amassing a number of jail and prison sentences for very serious driving offenses. In February 1998, he received an eight-month jail sentence for operating a motor vehicle while being a habitual traffic violator; in July 2000 he garnered himself a two-year prison sentence for operating a vehicle after a lifetime suspension; and then in December 2001 he received another two-year sentence for the same offense. In Indiana, if a person commits enough very serious driving offenses, a court can suspend the person’s driving privileges for life, after which it becomes a felony if the person is caught driving. In February 2004, a court convicted him once more of operating a motor vehicle after a lifetime suspension, but also convicted him of resisting law enforcement and possession of marijuana, hash oil, or hashish during this same incident. The court sentenced him to a total of four years in prison for these offenses. Following this, in November 2005, a court convicted Jeremy of the same three charges as it did in February 2004, and then in June 2008, a court once more convicted him of operating a motor vehicle after a lifetime suspension. In October 2008, Jeremy received a sentence of one and a half years in prison for attempted theft/receiving stolen property, after which a judge added six months to his sentence for failure to return to lawful detention/escape. Finally, in January 2011, shortly after his release from prison, a court once more convicted him of operating a motor vehicle after a lifetime suspension, along with two counts of resisting law enforcement. Jeremy received a total of eight years in prison for this incident.
Notably in Jeremy’s case, as in the case of several other members of the Reese family, they seemed to be out committing crimes when they should’ve been serving prison sentences. Sometimes they were actually already in prison when charged with other crimes that occurred before the incarceration, but the more common situation was that they simply weren’t serving the full sentence imposed. Indiana, like most states, has a “good time” rule, which gives prisoners a day off of their sentence for every day of good behavior. Also, prisoners can have time taken off of their sentence by obtaining various educational diplomas while in prison. Along with this, practically every state suffers from prison overcrowding, and many are under court order to reduce their population. Consequently, many prisoners get an early release simply to make way for new prisoners. And finally, often individuals will be out on bond, rather than in prison, while appealing a sentence.
Brian Reese, the second-youngest son, also had a lengthy juvenile record—reportedly four true findings (found guilty) for conversion (theft) in 1985, conversion again in 1987, burglary in 1988, and conspiracy to commit theft in 1989.
As an adult Brian has had a number of misdemeanor arrests, starting with resisting law enforcement, disorderly conduct, driving while suspended, and having no insurance in September 1992, for which the judge sentenced him to a diversion program. In November 1993, the police again arrested Brian for driving while suspended, and the judge again put him into a diversion program. In February 2007, the police once more arrested Brian for driving while suspended, and this time he received a fine and jail time. The police also arrested Brian for check deception in 1995, but the charges were dropped.
Along with misdemeanors, the police also arrested Brian for several felonies. In February 1991 he received a three-year prison sentence for conspiracy (again involving the burglary of the eighty-five-year-old woman’s home), and in December 1999 the police arrested him for felony resisting law enforcement. In this last case, Brian ran a sheriff’s deputy off the road and then fled from the police. And yet, despite having near constant run-ins with the police throughout his life, Brian’s real problems with the law began in 2008.
It started on May 29, 2008, with theft and forgery charges. In this case Brian reportedly entered a woman’s house on East St. Joseph Street and took, among other things, money, credit cards, several pieces of expensive and unusual jewelry, and a pad of blank checks. The detectives investigating the case found several of the blank checks had been filled out and cashed. The name the checks had been made out to: Brian Reese. Also, a quick check of pawnshops turned up several pieces of the jewelry that had been taken during the crime. In Indiana, when a person pawns something, the pawn dealer must have positive identification of the person pawning the item and take a fingerprint. The person pawning the stolen jewelry: Brian Reese. The police swore out a forgery and theft warrant for Brian. However, this crime would turn out to be minor compared to what followed soon afterward.
FIVE
Although the Reese family certainly had its struggles when it came to obeying the law, unfortunately they weren’t unique or even that unusual a crime family. Criminal conduct seems to run in families just like any other sociological trait.
The most famous family of criminals known to sociologists was the “Juke” family, a pseudonym used by the original researcher of this clan, Richard L. Dugdale. Dugdale was a nineteenth-century sociologist and a member of the executive committee of the Prison Association of New York, which, in 1874, had assigned him the task of checking out the various county jails within the state and then letting the association know about their conditions. The original intent of the study, therefore, was simply to inspect and report back on the status of the state’s county jails.
However, as Dugdale began his inspection of the county jails, he became intrigued when he discovered that many of the inmates in the various penal facilities were related to one another either by blood or by marriage. He began an investigation into one such family and assigned them the code name Juke. Through his research, Dugdale managed to trace the Jukes back five generations, to 1792. He identified 709 individuals in his study, 504 blood relatives and the remainder related by marriage. Of these 709 individuals, Dugdale managed to verify that 140 of them had amassed an amazing number of criminal violations, including convictions for theft, assault, rape, and murder. He estimated that between 1800 and 1875, the state of New York spent approximately 1.3 million dollars in legal and administrative fees, incarceration costs, and other associated expenses because of the Juke family.
Dugdale eventually published his findings in a bestselling 1877 book titled The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease, and Heredity. Although in his book Dugdale blamed most of the Juke family’s crime problems on the environment the family lived in (which he said then caused the children who grew up in these surroundings to pick up the criminal habits of the adults and pass them on to their own children), unfortunately supporters of eugenics seized on the study as proof of their argument that criminals carried bad genes.
Eugenics was a social movement popular in the first half of the twentieth century. Its adherents believed that many of the problems of society (which included, in their estimation, crime, feeblemindedness, and sexual deviancy, among others) could be traced back to bad genes, and that criminals could in addition be identified through certain physical features. Because of the growth of the eu
genics movement, and the pressure it was able to put on politicians, the idea of forcibly sterilizing undesirable individuals took root in American society and lasted until the 1960s, and is today looked upon as a shameful part of American history. But still, while the Juke family became the rallying cry for the supporters of eugenics, they, like the Reeses, were hardly unique.
Another such family was the Bogles. The police first became aware of the Bogle family in 1961 when Dale Vincent Bogle, known as Rooster, moved from Texas to the Willamette Valley area of Oregon. Rooster had already served considerable time in prison, and soon after arriving in Oregon he began instructing his children in crime, teaching them how to break into stores and steal semitrailers.
“Rooster raised us to be outlaws,” Tracey Bogle, Rooster’s youngest child, told the New York Times on August 21, 2002. It was less nature than nurture; the children said that Rooster would berate them and call them cowards if they didn’t do what he demanded. He would put intense pressure on his children to break the law. Around eighty members of the family (some related by blood, some related by marriage) have been sent to jail or prison, Tracey told KATU News in Salem, Oregon on January 10, 2010.
Then there were the Ramseys. The State of Missouri executed Roy Ramsey on April 14, 1999, for the murder of an elderly couple during a robbery he had committed with his brother Billy at the couple’s home. Reportedly, upon returning home with the loot they had taken in the robbery, the two brothers had split the haul with their mother. Nine of Roy’s ten brothers served time in prison, four of them convicted of murder, and one even became the victim of a murder himself after being released from prison.
Where Dugdale originally blamed a bad environment for the generations of Juke family crime, and the supporters of eugenics blamed bad genes, a number of scientific studies have been conducted over the years to continue examining the question of what causes crime to run in some families but not in others.