William Lewis Reece

William Lewis Reece (born July 1, 1959) is an American serial killer, rapist and kidnapper.

William Lewis Reece was born on July 1, 1959, in Oklahoma, one of 13 siblings.

He spent his youth in the cities of Yukon and Anadarko.

Due to his parents' financial issues, he was forced to quit school after the ninth grade and take on a job as a farm laborer.

In 1979, he married Judy Flaming after she became pregnant.

After their marriage, Reece enlisted in the Oklahoma National Guard, but left after some time.

His wife divorced him a year into their marriage.

Reece convinced her to remarry him, and the couple had a second child shortly afterward.

Flaming said Reece began drinking heavily and became physically abusive.

In 1982, Flaming went to the police after a beating and said that her husband had threatened to kill her with a knife and shotgun.

She divorced him.

Reece remarried, but his second wife divorced him a few months into their marriage.

In April 1986, Reece kidnapped the 19-year-old daughter of a sheriff's deputy.

The woman was driving to a local gym when her car stalled.

Reece, who worked as a truck driver at the time, lured her into his truck with the promise of taking her to the nearest payphone.

Instead, he tied the woman up and raped her.

Reece then drove the victim to a nearby motel, where he rented a room for the night.

He allowed her to use the bathroom, giving her an opportunity to escape and call the police.

Reece was arrested and charged but was released from custody after paying his bail.

While at large, a month after his release, he sexually assaulted another woman and was re-arrested.

He was put on trial for both rapes, found guilty, and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment.

His attorneys appealed the conviction to a criminal court, which granted a review of his case.

The results indicated that there were procedural errors in Reece's criminal case, causing his sentence to be reduced and leading to his parole in October 1996.

After his release, Reece moved into his mother's home in Anadarko, Oklahoma.

In early 1997, he regained his driver's license and moved to Houston, Texas.

In the fall of 1997, Reece became a suspect in the kidnapping and attempted rape of 19-year-old Sandra Sapaugh.

According to her testimony, in May 1997, Sapaugh stopped her car at a gas station in Webster to use a pay phone, where she was spotted by Reece.

She got into her car and began to drive, but after a few minutes she realized that one of her tires was flat and was forced to stop.

Reece, trailing behind her in his white truck, stopped and offered to help her.

After luring her inside his truck, Reece overpowered Sapaugh and bound her wrists before continuing driving along I-45.

Sapaugh managed to break free from the restraints and jumped out of the truck, sustaining severe injuries to her body in the process.

She survived and was taken to a nearby hospital, where she contacted the police.

She described her attacker, but as she could not recall important details, she was put under hypnosis.

In her hypnotized state, Sapaugh was able to recall Reece's license plate number.

Sapaugh singled Reece out as the assailant in a police photo array, which led to his arrest.

Reece was convicted of the kidnapping charged in 1998 and sentenced to 60 years imprisonment.

Police became suspicious that Reece was involved in the disappearance of three teenage girls from Houston and the surrounding suburbs, one of whom was last seen alive and later found murdered near his workplace.

After his conviction for kidnapping and rape, Reece was transferred to the Ellis Unit to serve his sentence.

In 2015, he was linked via DNA to the 1997 cold case murder of a woman in Oklahoma, for which he was subsequently convicted and sentenced to death.

Not long after, he confessed to three murders associated with the Texas Killing Fields, for which he was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2022.