Killers in the Family

by Robert L. Snow

  The Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University in Great Britain conducted one of these studies, which was reported in 2009. This research involved 411 men that the researchers followed from age eight to age forty-eight. The researchers found that in this group, 48 percent of the men with fathers who had been convicted of a crime also eventually became convicted of a crime, compared to only 19 percent of the men with fathers who hadn’t been convicted of a crime. Also having a significant effect on a study subject’s likelihood of criminal activity, the study found, was having a sibling involved in crime.

  Interestingly, the study also found that the fathers with a criminal conviction often married women with a criminal conviction. The researchers reasoned that this was likely because these types of individuals ran in the same social circles, and shared many of the same values, which would then attract them to each other. As might be imagined, the researchers found that this marriage of individuals with criminal convictions increased their children’s likelihood of also being convicted of a crime.

  The researchers also discovered that although a majority of the convicted mothers in the study were married to convicted fathers, even when the researchers cancelled out this factor, they found that having a mother who had been convicted of a crime significantly increased the probability that any male children would also be convicted of a crime. In the study, the researchers found that 54 percent of the men that had a mother who had been convicted of a crime also eventually became convicted of a crime, compared to only 23 percent of the men whose mother had not been convicted of a crime. And as might be imagined, having both parents convicted of a crime increased those chances even more. The researchers discovered that in three-fourths of the families with both a convicted father and mother, a male child would also eventually have a criminal conviction.

  The Cambridge researchers concluded in their study, which, according to the September 5, 2012, issue of The Independent, was published in the Journal of Legal and Criminal Psychology, “A convicted family member influenced a boy’s likelihood of delinquency independent of other important factors such as poor housing, overcrowding, and low school attainment.”

  But one of the most interesting findings of this study was how crime appeared to cluster in certain families. The researchers found that only 6 percent of the families they studied accounted for half of all the criminal convictions in their research.

  Other research projects have shown similar results. For example, a study in Sweden, conducted between 1973 and 2004, looked at 12.5 million individuals. The researchers obtained information on criminal convictions from the Swedish Crime Register and were able to establish family connections between the study subjects via the Swedish Total Population Register and census data, as well as other population registry information. The study found a strong correlation for crime to run in families; the closer the family members, the stronger the correlation. The strongest threat for crime running in families was in groups of close genetic relatives living together. The study, though finding significant correlations for crime between parents and children, and between siblings, interestingly enough, didn’t find any correlation for criminal behavior between biologically unrelated adopted siblings living together.

  In a similar, but much smaller, research project, the Pittsburgh Youth Study, researchers looked at 1,500 males starting at age seven and continuing up until they were thirty. The results showed that having a father, mother, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, grandfather, or grandmother convicted of a crime increased the chances of the study subjects also being convicted of a crime. The Pittsburgh Youth Study found that the father above all other relatives turned out to be the best predictor of a son’s future involvement in crime. However, in an interesting finding of yet another similar study, researchers found that the arrest records of stepfathers and biological fathers were similarly correlated with a male child also being arrested and convicted of a crime, which seems to point to the importance of environment in promoting criminal behavior.

  Young female family members can also be adversely affected, though in a lesser way. For example, a study published in May 2011 in Trends & Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice found that a daughter who had a father with a criminal record, but a mother with no criminal record, had a 26.7 percent chance of eventually having a criminal record herself, whereas for a son under the same circumstances the chances were 48.5 percent. For a daughter with both a father and a mother with a criminal record, the odds of the daughter having a criminal record rose to 43.8 percent, compared to 66.9 percent for a son.

  According to an article in a 2009 issue of Criminal Behavior and Mental Health, titled “Association of Criminal Convictions between Family Members: Effects of Siblings, Fathers, and Mothers,” social scientists studying criminal families have come up with five possible reasons for this clustering of statistics. The first reason is that criminal families may be trapped in environments that tend to raise the likelihood of crime (such as poverty, substandard housing, poor discipline practices with children, and having teenage parents with poor parenting skills). The second reason is that individuals with criminal records often tend to gravitate to each other, and consequently infuse their children with their own antisocial attitudes. The third reason is that children tend to imitate their parents and older siblings, and if these individuals are criminals, then it is likely that the children imitating them will be criminals also. The fourth reason has to do with labeling—for instance, whether the authorities are more likely to investigate and prosecute an individual from a known criminal family such as the Jukes, the Bogles, or the Reeses than an individual from a family not known to the authorities. Likewise, scientists also wonder whether the family members of a clan well known to the police see prosecution as almost inevitable, therefore reasoning that the police will eventually stop and arrest them for some reason, so they might as well just go ahead and commit the crime, thus bringing about a self-fulfilling prophecy. The final reason goes back to the days of eugenics and suggests that crime clusters in certain families because of genetic traits passed on from parent to child; that the children in certain families, because of their genes, simply have a greater disposition toward crime.

  Researchers of inherited traits have found in a number of studies that certain psychological and emotional problems can definitely be passed on from parent to child through their genes. Some researchers have argued, however, that the environment the individuals with these psychological and emotional problems are raised in, rather than the genes themselves, will often decide whether or not these problems will result in a life of crime. Consequently, criminality itself may not be inherited, but the psychological and emotional problems (which with the wrong environment can lead to a life of crime) may be. However, occasionally there are also biological causes. In an article by H.G. Brunner, appearing in a 1993 issue of Science, researchers in a study of tendencies toward violence passed on from parent to child looked at a large Dutch family that had a long history of violent crime among the male members. The researchers found that the men in the family who exhibited violent tendencies had a defect in a gene that controlled an important neurochemical in their brain. The men lacking the neurochemical in their brain were prone to committing acts of rape and assault.

  Of course, many researchers believe that it is more likely that a combination of environment and heredity is what causes the problem. Whatever the answer, the members of the Reese family continued to rack up one criminal conviction after another, year after year. Police officers involved in the many criminal investigations of the Reese family never saw much improvement or any signs of positive change within the family. And some police officers, such as Detective Sergeant Roy West, never forgot their involvement with the Reese family, or in his case, his vow to one day solve the Dawn Marie Stuard murder.

  It would be more than a quarter of a century before he finally got his chance.

  SIX

  The onset of J
une in Indiana often brings with it hot, sultry weather that can last until the middle of September. The hot and sticky weather seems to shorten tempers and bring about an increase in violence. June 2008 was no exception—and it began a summer season of violence during which the murder rate increased greatly compared with the winter and spring months. By July 2008, the police in Indianapolis were responding to a murder every other day.

  Naturally, this large number of murders garnered a considerable amount of news media coverage, which in turn put the police department under a lot of added pressure to do something about the violence. Not surprisingly, the murder rate is often seen as a measure of the crime level and safety of a community. The police department made a number of public promises to do all they could to stem the violence, but most of this was simply verbal self-defense. There was little that the police could really do to prevent these murders. Most murders occur on the spur of the moment and happen inside residences or in secluded areas, or they occur because a person has become so enraged that he or she loses control, and no amount of increased patrol will prevent any of those crimes. The best the police can do is to try to take a known dangerous person off the street. This won’t necessarily stop more murders from occurring in the future, but it is all the police can do.

  Homicide detectives in Indianapolis in June and early July 2008 found themselves working overtime, trying to investigate their previous cases while also handling the sudden rush of new cases. Every one of the homicides they investigated was in itself a tragic case, with victims whose lives had been cut short. But three of the murders committed in July 2008 were different: They appeared to be connected. The police quickly realized that the three had all apparently been committed by the same killer. The homicide detectives knew that they needed to apprehend this murderer quickly. If they didn’t, this person would very likely kill again.

  The first of the three murders believed committed by this serial murderer was that of Clifford Haddix, a sixty-nine-year-old United Auto Workers retiree with no police record, and who was by all reports a solid, upstanding citizen. On July 6, 2008, he died during an apparent robbery at his house in the 3000 block of East Newton Avenue. A neighbor, William Rinehart, was sitting on his porch and saw Haddix come home at 9:10 P.M. At 10:20 P.M. Rinehart saw that the lights were still on at Haddix’s house. Rinehart knew that Haddix always went to bed before that time, so he walked over to check on him. He found the front door open and saw Haddix on the floor. Rinehart immediately called 911.

  According to the police, it was later ascertained that at around 10:00 P.M. someone had kicked in the front door of Haddix’s house and murdered him before ransacking his house and taking a number of valuable items, including firearms and jewelry. Witnesses later said that they had heard three shots, which unfortunately wasn’t uncommon for that area. People living in bad neighborhoods usually seek cover when they hear gunshots; they don’t go out to investigate them. The police officers answering the 911 call found Haddix lying on the hallway floor near his bedroom, with gunshot wounds to his head. The coroner officially pronounced him dead at 10:34 P.M. Homicide detective Randall Cook, the lead detective on the case, recovered three spent 9 mm casings and two spent bullets at the scene. The autopsy would show that Haddix had died from those three gunshots to the head. The neighbors who lived nearby were stunned upon hearing of Clifford Haddix’s murder, as they all knew him to be a kind old man who had never done anything to deserve such a death.

  “Sat on the porch and we talked every day, seven days a week,” neighbor William Rinehart told the news media.

  Within a week, the police would arrest Brian Reese for the burglary and murder of Clifford Haddix. They would also arrest Brian’s father, Paul Reese Sr., and Brian’s girlfriend, Lona Bishop, charging them as accessories to the crime.

  According to homicide detective Randall Cook, Brian Reese and Clifford Haddix had never met before that night. Reportedly, Brian, when looking for a house to burglarize, would knock on the door and even on the windows of a likely target. If the residents answered, he would ask them about doing odd jobs, and if they didn’t answer he would burglarize the house.

  Haddix had apparently been targeted by Brian because he kept his house in such good shape. “He kept his house and yard in immaculate shape,” Detective Cook said about the reason Brian likely targeted Mr. Haddix’s house. “He was pretty well-to-do for that neighborhood, and his house showed it.”

  On the evening of July 6, 2008, according to Detective Cook, Haddix had gone to bed a half hour or so before Brian knocked at his door and on his windows. Haddix either didn’t hear the knocking or chose to ignore it, and Brian, thinking that no one was home, forced open the front door. This got Haddix out of bed, and he confronted Brian in the hallway of his house. Brian shot Haddix multiple times, killing him. Brian then ransacked the house, taking firearms, jewelry, and other items.

  An overheard conversation soon cracked the case. A local deputy sheriff who worked off duty as a security officer at an apartment complex spoke to a man who worked maintenance there, and who told the deputy sheriff that he had overheard a conversation between two people discussing a burglary where the victim had been killed. The maintenance worker didn’t have any names, but it was enough to give the detectives a place to start, and after considerable investigation, it led them to Brian Reese’s girlfriend, Lona Bishop, and through her to Brian Reese.

  Lona Bishop eventually turned State’s Witness and gave the police detailed information about the Haddix murder and other crimes. She told the police that on the night that Clifford Haddix was killed, she had been walking with Paul Reese Sr. on East Newton Avenue, headed toward the Big Lots store in the nearby Twin-Aire Shopping Center, when Paul Sr. received a text from his son Brian. After reading the text, Paul Sr. told Lona that there was a change of plans, and they were now going to go meet Brian. As they neared Haddix’s home on East Newton Avenue, Lona said, she saw Brian knock on the front door and then walk around and knock on the windows on the east side of the house. When he received no answer, she said, he then walked up to the front door and forced it open with his shoulder. She added that all this time Paul Sr. was acting very suspicious, seeming nervous and jumpy. Lona told the police that soon after Brian entered the house she heard three gunshots. She insisted that she waited down the street during the Haddix burglary, but that Paul Reese Sr. acted as a lookout outside the house and kept in contact with Brian over a walkie-talkie. She and Paul Sr. met Brian a few minutes later. She said Brian was out of breath, panicked, and nervous. He also carried a black backpack. The two men, she claimed, then dropped her off at her house on Hamilton Avenue and left. However, when the police later served a search warrant on Lona’s house, they recovered a United Auto Workers watch that had belonged to Clifford Haddix, some of his other property, and several items the officers believed had been taken in other burglaries.

  —

  On July 8, two days after the Haddix murder, the police answered a call about gunshots at a house in the 200 block of North Hendricks Place. There, uniformed officers found the bodies of twenty-eight-year-old Crystal Joy Jenkins and twenty-two-year-old Demetrius Allen. Both had been shot to death. The officers called for Homicide.

  Allen, the homicide detectives would learn, had made his living as a full-time crack cocaine dealer. Not as a high-level dealer, the police would later say, but rather one who made his money by keeping the crackheads in his neighborhood supplied. Jenkins was not another dealer but simply Allen’s live-in girlfriend and a crack user.

  The couple lived near Lona Bishop, in a run-down rented house with beat-up furniture, and kept their clothing in plastic bags. It wasn’t a very high standard of living, due to Allen not making that much money as a drug dealer, particularly since he supplied his girlfriend with drugs for free, but also because the couple knew that they needed to be ready to leave with just a few moments’ notice if they ever thought the police were onto them
. And while Allen and Jenkins did everything they could not to come to the attention of the police, they always made certain that the local crackheads knew where to find them. This would be their undoing.

  Through their investigation (and an eventual confession by Paul Reese Sr.), the homicide detectives learned that on the day Jenkins and Allen were murdered, Brian Reese, Paul Reese Sr., and Brian’s girlfriend, Lona Bishop, had been smoking crack cocaine in Lona’s house at 215 North Hamilton Avenue, on the east side of Indianapolis.

  Both Brian and Paul Sr. would later talk to the authorities about their heavy drug use. Paul Sr. said that he started drinking at fourteen, first used marijuana at age twenty-three, and started using cocaine in 1994. Paul Sr. admitted that he used cocaine heavily, on a daily basis, and that he would inject it. He said he would use it every day if he could afford it, and that he had been on a three-week binge just before his arrest in 2008. He also used heroin and LSD. He added that he would have anger control problems while on drugs; that absolutely anything would set him off.

  His son Brian also had a long history of substance abuse. According to a self-report in a court document, “He began using alcohol and marijuana at a young age. He reportedly consumes alcohol ‘all the time,’ and uses marijuana every now and then. He uses cocaine and methamphetamines ‘all the time.’ He said he was under the influence of cocaine at the time of the [most recent] incident.”

  On July 8, 2008, Lona and Paul Sr. had been smoking crack all day long; Brian, however, had been doing it for several days. Consequently, he was flying high from the drug when he suddenly realized that they were out of crack. They had smoked it all and needed more. But there was a problem. They didn’t have any more money. They had already spent everything they had on the drugs they’d smoked that day.