[MUSIC]
>> Welcome back to 48 hours post-mortem.
“I'm your host Ann Marie Greene, and today we're talking to CBS News National correspondent”
of Vladimir Dutier about the murder of Selonia Reed in Hammond, Louisiana in 1987. Selonia's husband, Reginald said that she went out to a local bar with a girlfriend
and that she never came back home.
Reginald filed a missing person's report the next day and gave a description of the card that she drove. Well, shortly after that, a patrol officer discovered Selonia's car parked at a nearby grocery store. Inside, they found her body, ship, and stabbed 16 times.
Selonia's son Reggie Jr. was only six years old at the time, and for over three decades her murder went unsolved. And then in 2012, 25 years after the murder, Reggie was shocked to learn that his own father was a prime suspect in the case. So Vlad, thanks for joining us today.
>> It's great to be here. Thanks, Henry. >> We want to remind everyone that if you haven't checked out this episode of 48 hours, head on over to the podcast feed and look right before this, and you'll see the episode go over and listen, and then come on back, and we're going to talk a little bit more about
it. Alright, Vlad, let's get into this. Back in 1987,
“there were actually already a couple pieces of evidence that pointed to Reggie Jr., right?”
There was a witness. A witness that came forward spotted Reggie Jr., and spotted his friend, Jimmy Ray Barnes, at the crime scene that night that she was murdered. The witness wrote down his license plate. Investigators also discovered that Reggie Jr., taking out several life insurance policies
on her, leading up to the murder.
If you watch 48 hours, you know, life insurance policies, like that's always, that's always
a little suspect. That's a red flag. Why wasn't he charged in the very beginning? >> It's probably one of the most confounding questions of this investigation that we did. First of all, the DA from back in 1987 has died, so we can't understand or know why he didn't
“charge Reggie Jr., but we do know that Lieutenant Barry Ward, who helped solve the case,”
admits that even with the evidence that he just cited, there was really no smoking gun back in 1987. And the lawyers who represented Reggie Jr., explained that they thought that the eyewitness who wrote down the license plate number of the car that she thought was suspicious vehicle the night of the murder might have been coached.
There was something in the way that the notes were written by this eyewitness that were suspicious according to them. So there was that. And also something that we all found, incredibly fascinating, is when there was a photo array, a photo line up of the potential suspects, all of the photos that were used were pictures
of either Reginald Reed's seniors, brothers, or the Barnes twins, siblings. And somehow, this eyewitness picked out Reginald. >> Yeah. >> So we don't know why in 1987, there were no charges block, but again, this is all speculation because the District Attorney in 1987 has long died.
>> You flash forward, right? And then there's new evidence that's discovered at the crime scene, police found,
Winston cigarettes, or A cigarette, in 2012, Lieutenant Ward was finally able to test what
he found, and they get a match, right, encoders, which is the FBI's National DNA database. There is a twist, though, because the match is to Billy Ray Barnes, the twin brother of Jimmy Ray Barnes, and of course, the witness identified Jimmy. So when I saw that in the hour, I thought this is where the twist is going to come in to tell you the truth, because I knew with identical twins, I had the same DNA, and that
could be quite complicated. >> So first of all, until, and I've been a reporter now for over a decade, this was the first that I knew that identical twins shared identical DNA. I didn't know that. And so when I discovered that, that was sort of a moment for me, had exploded, moment, and
that became a huge complication in figuring out who was ultimately the responsible party for that Winston cigarette that was found in the car. >> So then was Billy Ray Barnes ever suspecting this case?
>> No, he was not.
Detective Ward told us that they questioned Billy, he cooperated, he was in the photo line
up, but in the end to your question, he was never identified or classified as a suspect.
“>> What is really kind of unique, I think, about this 48 hours episode, is that so much of”
it is told through the lens of Reggie Junior, who was a child, a small child, he was only six years old and watching him in the police video is just heartbreaking. >> I took myself in his shoes at six years old, I thought of my daughter who's only two, but I could imagine just like any parent could, when it would be like to have an adult that you've never met before, asking you questions, and even though they're perfectly nice,
you know that children, even if an adult is nice, they are reticent, they are, they cling to their parents until there's a level of comfortability and when you hear him start
to cry for his mother or his father, it just blew me away, it really was a moment where
I had to pause in the interview while watching that. >> He is leaning on his father to show him some sort of tenderness, because that is, that's his safe island, and I just found myself sort of reading everything into his father's body language internally yelling at the screen, saying hug him, hold him, protect him, do something. >> Yeah, that's, that is another mystery, his father was a Marine, and their tough, they're
known to be tough, a lot of the lessons that Reggie Junior and parted on Reggie Junior are based on his experience and the lessons that Reggie Junior learned in the Marine Corps according to Reggie.
“>> And remember, Reggie Junior was also still fairly young man, and you know, you know, if”
you're not used to dealing with something like this, look, everybody's afraid in the face of police officers, maybe your tense too, and so your kid is tense, but your tense, and you know that you want the child to be able to answer the questions that the police officials are asking, so you sort of leave them out there on that branch alone while they try to get answers from from your kid, because maybe you think that hugging the child or might be seen
as somehow coaching or prodding the child to do something, and so maybe I don't know, these are, yeah. >> Yeah. >> And this is just me watching the video the same way you did in the same way are audience that I'd be very curious to see what the audience says, I know that 48 hours and a lot
“of people who chat on Reddit and who chat on social media about an episode, what it would”
be like to have you go into an interrogation room with the six-year-old child, your six-year-old child, and have them being interrogated, even into the child knows nothing, what would they do, how would they react, and when they start to wine, and then they start to cry, what do you do in that situation? I don't know.
You've fast forward to 2012, right? In Reggie Junior, he's 31 years old, he's living in Texas out of the blue, Texas Rangers
come to his door, and they tell him something he has never considered in his life.
That his father is a suspect, the main suspect, in his mother's murder. Um, they're from a small town, we know it, I mean, people talk, Reggie Junior had never heard this at all, I thought it was odd as well, Emory, you're in a small town, you know, this is a family that people know, people talk, Reggie Junior maintains that he never heard anyone saying that his dad was involved in the murder of his mother.
And his father actually sort of, in a way, kind of rearranged his life, like he moved into another school and everything, right? Yeah, I moved into a Catholic school. Now he later wondered if this was intentional, uh, perhaps, uh, they wanted to remove him from neighborhood gossip regarding his mother.
So we'll talk a little bit about him and right, it's up town in the south. Yeah, about 22,000 residents, uh, small town, uh, Reggie Junior had, uh, 16 siblings. But there's a big family. Big family didn't come from money. They weren't wealthy, but perhaps by some standards in, in that small town as an African
American family, uh, they were perhaps, uh, social mobility wise, uh, step above, uh, some of the other folks in the community. The other thing that it is sort of interesting when we, these questions around whether the family was quote unquote connected or not, or whether they had connections, um, when
Reginald senior took out life insurance policies on Solonia, uh, he didn't ge...
from his wife, Solonia Reed.
“And the insurance, uh, guy, uh, objected at first, but because he knew the Reed family, uh,”
he let it go. Right. He later testified in an in court that he knew that he had messed up that he'd made him mistake, a grave error by not getting Solonia Reed's signature on those life insurance policies.
Right. So to the pros and cons of kind of a small town community, right, you love that familiarity. And then sort of on the flip side, though, here you have the situation where this, um, insurance agent, uh, probably risks his own license, I mean, because you're not supposed to do that. Of course, opposed to no when someone's taking out a life insurance policy on them.
Welcome back. So Lieutenant Wards investigation really did a lot to push the case forward, but he still could not get a DA to actually charge Reginald Reed. And until prosecutor Taylor Anthony got on the case, and this isn't 2018 now, um, and he actually went with Lieutenant Ward to Atlanta to offer Jimmy Ray Barnes a deal to testify
in court. Now, just so people know, DAs don't do that. They sit in their office, police present the evidence to them, and they say thumbs up or thumbs down or like, go out and get more evidence, but they don't go out. I'm how unusual was this.
I thought it was incredibly unusual for the prosecutor, uh, to go on a road trip, like the one Anthony and Ward took it to Atlanta, um, but, you know, the case would not have been solved if they hadn't had this sense of purpose, the sense of mission. Taylor Anthony, the way that he spoke about it to me, it, the way he spoke about justice
for Solonia, he struck me as somebody who was on a mission and ultimately he wanted this
young mother to have, in a sense of justice, um, and he talked about how this was also for, for Reggie Junior.
“That's, that's how he feels Taylor Anthony.”
But yeah, it also speaks to the fact that Taylor Anthony was able to get, uh, uh, Ward to agree with his sense of purpose and the sense of mission to take the trip. Uh-huh, um, they do not get Jimmy Ray Barnes to agree, though. They can't convince him. Yeah.
He, uh, ended up refusing the testify, um, he was scared. He talked about, you know, instances where he felt his life had been threatened by Reggie Junior. Mm-hmm. And for those reasons, he was afraid of testifying, so he said at the time, um, uh, and
after Jimmy Ray was was ultimately arrested, uh, he cut a plea deal with assistant district
attorney Anthony, uh, uh, that was actually ultimately it turned out to be worse than the deal that they originally offered him in this new deal. Jimmy Ray was sentenced to five years in prison in exchange for, for testifying, uh, against Reggie Junior. Mm-hmm.
Yeah. I mean, when, when they come knocking the first time around, that's probably the best deal. Yeah. So, regional reads trial, murder trial begins November 14th, 2022. It is more than 30 years after Sloania's murder.
He was defended by a mother daughter team, Vanessa Williams, very memorable name, and Latjoya Williams, Simon.
“I don't think I've ever seen a mother daughter defense duo before, what were they like?”
An incredible duo, these two women, uh, I told them, I told my producers, these women
need their own reality show. The mother went to law school with her daughter. Like, can you imagine them with her daughter? Yep. Yeah.
I don't remember how old she was, but she would take classes with her young daughter there. Okay. Okay. I first thought they went to law school at the same time, but she's got a little kid doing her little kid homework.
Okay. She's doing her law school homework. Exactly. Right. Exactly.
Right. Um, they were just so interesting and, um, and captivating and charismatic as, as defense attorneys, but also incredibly buttoned up. They came with reams and reams and reams of documents that they were willing to spend hours with me going through if I wanted to.
Did you get the sense from them that they felt this is a bad case, like a poor case against him, or this guy didn't do it.
He's being railroaded.
Yeah.
“I don't know whether they believe or don't believe that regional reed committed this”
crime.
I just know that they passionately, fervently believed that the state did not prove
beyond a reasonable doubt that regional reed killed saloney. What they said over and over again is every time the prosecution, um, put something out there for the jury to absorb. There was evidence that they uncovered that would lead a normal person to have some reasonable doubt.
So they say there was a lot of evidence that they just can present that the jury didn't hear. Like what? So Vanessa and Latoya explained to me how completely not credible Jimi Ray Barnes was. That Barnes had been arrested for a number of violent crimes.
In fact, some of the crimes that he had been arrested for, uh, and that he had served time for were assault, battery with deadly weapons. Right. So something that the jury did hear about, though, from Taylor Anthony, the prosecutor was about the life insurance policy.
He said $700,000 worth of reasons to kill this woman. There you go. So that's a lot of money today. It was a lot more money, you know, 30 years ago. So what happened with that money?
So we do know that with the money that regional reed senior received, he was able to open up a nightclub. He bought a car. He was able to send Reggie Jr to private school. The insurance company set up a trust fund for regional junior, $248,000 that he could access
when he turned 18, uh, he says he never got the money, Reggie.
He never got the money. He never got the money. So he paid his own way to college, according to a detective ward. Reggie says that the day that he turned 18, his father woke him up, got him out of bed, and signed some papers or asked him to sign some papers, but don't know what those are.
“Reggie doesn't remember, but he never got the money.”
Vanessa and Latoya Williams told me he took out insurance policies on everybody. He took out a life insurance policy on regional junior. They say that he took out life insurance policies on family members. But I still think if you're a juror and you're hearing that, you would think it suspicious. And I think that what was fascinating to me is when I asked Reggie Jr, the questions that
I'm asking you, where's that money? Why do you take out a life insurance policy on you? Have you asked him? Yeah. And what does he say?
And he sort of hems and hauses to what his father answers. His dad is convicted, right?
The jury finds a regional read guilty on November 18, 2022, he's guilty of second degree
murder.
“And here's the thing that he remains connected to his father, but he is not connected to”
his mother's family. Sonya Sister, Gwen Smith says she's worried about him. Why does he not have a connection to his mother's side? This is this part of the story is incredibly murky even for us to understand. It goes into family dynamics.
The family of Sonya read beliefs that regional senior killed Sonya read. There's no doubt in their minds that he did it. And because of that, and because Reggie himself has questions that linger, it's it has led to this tension. And so for Reggie, it's hard.
You've got this enormously large family and everybody's got an idea of what they think happened or what they think didn't happen. So I can imagine the turmoil that he feels. Yeah. You know, we want to believe often as humans that people can be all one thing that we can
put them in a box. And for Reggie, no, his father is not all one thing. And whether he believes that he killed his mother or not, that's not all he is to Reggie knows. And you can see that this will be a lifelong struggle for him wrestling with this.
Right. He named his daughter, Sonya, which I thought was beautiful. And I found it fascinating that he was willing to share as much as he shared with me and to not be definitive about what he believes or what he doesn't believe or you don't
Any mean like he didn't say my dad didn't do it.
Right.
“He was just sort of like, what you think that you would say to a reporter, right?”
No, my dad could never do that.
He raised me. He's a great guy. He didn't say that to me. He just said, you know, I don't know man. And I just found that to be really interesting from Reggie St. Journalist perspective.
And then you have Taylor Anthony, the assistant district attorney who believes, perfectly,
that in 1987, the young black woman was brutally murdered and no one did anything about it, at least the way he sees it. And he was going to do something about it. And people don't like it if people who are family members don't like it. He sympathizes.
But in his mind, he believes that Sonya Reed is a resting easier today because he put behind bars the man he believes killer. Well, it's a great hour, Vlad. It's an incredible story and you didn't excellent job. It was really an incredible experience.
This is only my second 48 hours hour and I always appreciate the opportunity to do a story
like this where I can spend a lot of time digging into the details, conducting a long interviews with people as much as long as I need to do them.
“And that's what we were able to do here.”
Spend a lot of time with this as attorney spent a lot of time with the cops on the case and with the original junior himself, I'm appreciative that he was so willing to open up to us. And you know, we spent hours and hours together, like hanging out and it's like we've developed this relationship.
Now, you know, he expressed to me in the interviews that we did, the hours of interviews
“that we did, I think how he truly, truly feels.”
Absolutely. So, thank you for joining us. Thanks, Sam. And I want to remind you listeners that if you like this series, post-mortem, please write and review 48 hours on Apple Podcasts and you can also follow 48 hours wherever you get
your podcast and you can listen to add free with a 48 hours plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. Thanks again for listening.
