UPDATE: Opening Statements Begin in Trial of Alleged Oklahoma Serial Killer

Tiffany JohnstonWFOR

The trial is over a 25-year-old murder.

You may recall the author’s reporting on William Reece here.

Reece was charged in the 24-year-old Oklahoma murder of 19-year-old newlywed Tiffany Johnston after DNA linked him to the cold case. Reece later confessed to abducting her from a carwash in the city of Bethany, Oklahoma on July 26, 1997. He sexually assaulted, then manually strangled her.

Police originally found Johnston’s Dodge Neon at the carwash in question. The keys were still in it – Tiffany Johnston, however, was gone.

Johnston’s nude body was found the next day about 36 miles west of Bethany in a field in Canadian County, Oklahoma. She had been savagely raped and strangled.

Soon after this, authorities cast a wide dragnet looking for a suspect. They were unsuccessful and the case went cold.

In 2015, investigators found and tested the DNA from what remained of evidence in Johnston’s case. It inculpated the monster William Reece who was already in prison in Texas for kidnapping and raping another teen girl.

The Texas victim managed to escape his clutches and testify against the monster.

In 2016, Reece led investigators to two more bodies in Texas. With this finding, and if he is guilty of Tiffany Johnston’s murder, he would fit the “serial killer” definition of three separate murders separated by a cooling off period between each.

The main developments in the trial so far have been the opening statements beginning and the prosecution trotting out witnesses who testify to having been sexually assaulted or raped by Reece, thus establishing a pattern of behavior for the jury to take into consideration.

Stay here for more as the trial progresses.

Journalist and dogged student of all things forensic, Wess Haubrich, examines the nitty, gritty details you didn’t know about infamous (and not so infamous but equally weird) crimes and their unseen motivations. Thanks for reading!

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