Debra Reiding

Warning. This episode contains graphic crime scene detail as well as talk of sexual assault. Please listen with discretion. Warning this episode contains graphic crime scene detail. Please listen with discretion. All witnesses, suspects, and pursons of interest are considered innocent until proven guilty in a. Court of law. Welcome to Primetime Crime. I'm your host, Kylie. Let's talk right now in true crime, and then together we're going to work on warming up some cold cases. Let's go. Hey, guys, welcome to this week's episode of Primetime Crime. It's Kylie. We are going to get into right now in true crime. And it has been a week right now in true crime. I am trying my best to keep up. Keep in mind, I'm recording this Wednesday afternoon, April eighth, So there is going to be something that I talk about here. We're probably going to have resolution in it within the next couple of days. Stay tuned to my social media for that. And that is the sentencing of Tanner Horner. So he was set to stand trial for the kidnapping and murder of Athenis Strand in twenty twenty two. So in November of twenty twenty two, Tanner was working as a delivery driver and he went to Athena's home to deliver a package, ended up abducting her and ending her life. And he has been in prison ever since awaiting trial, and the trial was scheduled to start this week and then he suddenly changed his plea to guilty. So what's going on now is there in the sentencing phase he faces either life in prison or the death penalty, So that is ongoing now. They're still going through the motions in this sentencing phase, the penalty phase. But what is basically happening is he is claiming that he had this alter ego named Zero, and basically that's what happened here. His alter ego took over and that alter ego is the one that took Athenis life. I don't know, guys, it's very interesting to watch all of this go down. I do expect that they are going to probably wrap this up in the next day or so and they will make their decision on if it's going to be life without the possibility of parole or the death penalty. I will be sure to keep you updated. But this is a really interesting one to keep up with. I am going to put a link below where it basically goes minute by minute and talks about everything that is going on right now during the sentencing phase. So it is very interesting. And I guess it's the week of pleading guilty because I heard rumblings of it last week, but I didn't want to speak on it until it happened. Rex Huerman, known as the Long Island serial killer. Has pled guilty. So he pled guilty to all seven murders that he was set to be tried for, and he also admitted to an eighth that he had not been charged with. And trigger warning because this is one sick guy. They asked him. The judge asked him if he feels that it isn't his best interest to plead guilty, and he said, yes, I do, And then they asked him how he killed each of the victims and went through. Them one by one. The hearing went on for twenty minutes and they named off all of the victims and asked him how he killed them, and he said strangulation for all of them. So Rex was arrested in twenty twenty three and he has maintained his innocence. He said he wasn't involved, even though DNA from his family members was found on some of the victims, and he had a whole a log of all of the things that he needed to buy and hide. And dispose of, and all of that on his computer. So he said he hired the women as escorts, he killed them, He bound them in burlap and left them along Ocean Parkway, and like I said, admitted to the eighth murder, which he had not been charged with. So because he did enter the guilty plea, he is not going to be charged with Karen Vergatta's murder, even though that is the one he admitted to. His victims are really what matter here, and the fact that they took this investigation, which initially there was not much movement at all, and they formed a task force and that is what led to this thing being solved and then finally being able to make an arrest. We're gonna touch on the victims a little bit. Sandra Castillo. She was twenty eight years old. She was from Trinidad and Tobago. She is the earliest known victim. She was killed in nineteen ninety three and she had been living in New York City at the time of her disappearance. Her body was discovered in November of nineteen ninety three, and like I said, was the first known victim of the Long Island serial killer Rex hu Wereman. And then we have the Gilgo four. These are victims that were discovered in December of twenty ten. We have Marine Brainerd Barnes. She was twenty five years old when she disappeared. She was last seen on July ninth of two thousand and seven. She had plans to go spend the day in New York City. She was a mother of two. She had worked as a telemarketer, unfortunately found her way into the sex work industry and was really struggling at the time of her death, and her body was then found in December of twenty ten. Melissa Barthelemy was twenty four years old and from Erie County, New York. She went missing July twelfth of two thousand and nine. She had been living in the Bronx and had been working as a sex worker through Craigslist. She ended up disappearing and then her sister received phone calls basically mocking and being very vulgar and disgusting. A lot of people do suspect that this was the killer. It probably was Rex, because he is that type of person, and he was using her phone to call her sister and basically mock her and call her names, and it was just all around terrible. Megan Waterman was twenty two. She is from Scarborough, Maine. She went missing on June sixth of twenty ten after she posted an escort advertisement on Craigslist. She was also a victim of sex trafficking. Her boyfriend ended up being arrested on sex trafficking charges on April eleventh of twenty twelve. Although he is not believed to be. Connected to her disappearance or her death, that definitely was a factor in Megan becoming involved in this lifestyle. Unfortunately, so she was officially reported missing on June eighth of twenty ten after she failed to check in on her three year old daughter, who she had left with family. These women were her daughters, mothers, sisters, girlfriends. These were real people and unfortunately they fell into a bad time in life when they had to turn to sex work for one reason or another, and this predator, man Rex Huerman, took advantage of that. And these women were also all very petite, which I think is interesting as well. Amberln Costello was twenty seven of West Babylon, New York. She went missing September second of twenty ten after she left to meet a stranger who had called and offered her twenty five hundred dollars for her services. At the time, her family did believe that she was in a drug rehab center, and they didn't initially report her missing when she had stopped responding to messages and calls because they thought she was. In this rehab facility. Her roommate was able to provide police with the description of the man that she was meeting's vehicle, which she described as a first General Chevy Avalanche, and that information, more than a decade later, helped lead investigators to Rex Ewerman because he in fact owned that same type of vehicle. Amber had previously lived in Clearwater, Florida, with her second husband. She had worked as a waitress. She was a very strong and dedicated student, but unfortunately had turned to drugs as a teenager. She had also been. Sexually assaulted as a child, so I can only imagine that did not set her up for success later in life, and unfortunately she also became a victim of Rex Ywerman. Valerie Mack was twenty four. She was living in Philadelphia and working as an escort. She went missing in two thousand. Unfortunately, she had been in foster care from an early age and she was never reported missing. She was the mother of a young son. Her remains were found on November nineteenth of two thousand, but not identified until twenty twenty. Jessica Taylor was twenty years old and living in Manhattan. She went missing on July twenty first of two thousand and three. Partial remains were discovered on July twenty sixth of two thousand and three, and additional remains were found in twenty and eleven and they were positively identified as belonging to Jessica Taylor. Jessica worked as a sex worker in Washington, d C. In Manhattan and was last seen working near the Port Authority bus terminal in Manhattan between July eighteenth and twenty second. Karen Vergata was thirty four years old from Manhattan and was working as a sex worker when she disappeared in nineteen ninety six. She was last seen around February fourteenth of nineteen ninety six, but was never reported missing. She was unidentified for twenty seven years, she became known as Jane Doe Number seven and five Island Jane Doe. She was officially identified through genetic genealogy in twenty twenty three. Valerie Mac's son has filed a wrongful death suit against Rex Humerman and his family, and I am hopeful that that is. Successful for them. This guy is a monster, and I am so glad that he is off of the streets. Who knows how many more victims would be out there if this man was still out and about A true predator in every sense of the word. And I don't know if there is more victims out there. He pled guilty to seven, he admitted to an eighth. Could there be more? That is the question at this point in time, at least a question for me, because we don't really know. If he started killing in the nineties, it's twenty twenty six. A lot of time has passed since then. So did he stay local? Did he travel? I have questions. So that is the latest in all of that. I will keep you guys updated on anything else that comes out. But I think this week that was really really big news that he officially changed his plea to guilty. I never thought i'd see the day that he would admit to what he did, but here we are talking. About it on this very day. So I did want to take a little time in the episode to focus on the women and who they were as people. They were way more than what happened to them and how their life ended. And I think that that is such an important thing for us to realize. They are way more than just victims. All of these women had families that loved and cared for them, and that's important to remember, way more important than talking about the horrific human who took their lives. I will keep you guys updated if anything more else happens or comes out, but we are going to go ahead and get into this week's episode. All righty, guys, Today we're jumping into a brand new unsolved case. In today's episode, I'm going to be telling you about the nineteen seventy nine murder of eighteen year old newlywed Deborah Sioux reading out of Austin, Texas. Deborah's case was cold en dormant for many years until twenty thirteen, when it was reopened and officially looked into following a twenty seventeen search word and a twenty eighteen arrest. The case against the main suspect was dismissed in twenty twenty. Let's talk about where the case stands today and why after all this time, Deborah and her family are still waiting for justice to be served. Deborah Sue Wilt Reading was born in Eden, Oklahoma, on October eighteenth of nineteen sixty to her parents, Harvey and Dolores Wilt, who were both from Montana. Deborah went by the nickname Debbie, so that's what I'm going to be calling her throughout the episode. Debbie had a younger brother named Rodney Now. Eventually, Debbie and her family would move from Oklahoma to Fairfield, Montanne, where Debbie graduated from Chatteau High School in June of nineteen seventy eight. Rodney, who like I said, was Debbie's younger brother, was a junior at the time of her death. He remembers his sister as cheerful, outgoing, and always willing to help. Just a few months after Debbie graduated, on November eighteenth, she married Robert Bob Reading. Bob was twenty years old and he had graduated just a few years before Debbie and was also a local to Montana. He was a football star in high school, and they got along very well. They were young and in love. Debbie yearned to get out of a small town. She'd pretty much been in that small town her whole life. She had dreams of becoming a cosmetologist. Bob had an uncle that had lived down in Austin, Texas, and he ran an air conditioning parts manufacturing plant, and he had went ahead and offered Bob a job down there in Austin, and eagerly wanting to escape the Montana winter, Bob and Debbie decided that they would temporarily move to Austin, Texas. They drove down and made their way to Austin in December of nineteen seventy eight. They moved into an apartment located at one two to two Algary to Drive, which was located in South Austin. The apartment complex in which they moved into was called the Cascades, and they settled into their new life as husband and wife at apartment number one thirty seven. Debbie got a job at a place called the Montana Mining Company Restaurant, where she worked as a hostess. The restaurant was just a few blocks from the couple's apartment, so it was nice and convenient for Debbie to be able to go to and from work. Debbie typically worked the lunch rush shift, however, sometimes she would pick up other shifts at the restaurant as well. She didn't make much money, but it was something that she felt like she was at least contributing to the bills, and as a newly married couple, they very much had to cut some expenses to make ends meet. The couple didn't have a landline phone, and they typically would go and use payphones if they wanted to make a phone call. I'll be honest, it was really weird for me to say landline. I feel like we're so far away from that life as a society, and things have just evolved so much in the technology realm. But a phone wasn't always a necessity in those days. It was kind of a luxury. Especially back in those days, everyone that knew Bob and Debbie loved them as a couple. They got along really well and they seemed to really love one another. They did struggle financially, like I said, but they were a newly married, young couple living in a new place, so that of course was to be expected. They also had gotten a new dog, which Debbie really loved, having a campaign to keep her company while Bob was at work. So what happened next would change Bob's life forever. On the afternoon of Monday, January twenty second of nineteen seventy nine, Bob walked into the couple's apartment, having just finished up a long day at work. It was about five forty five pm when he entered the couple's apartment. Debbie was not in sight, which was pretty unusual because she would typically be close by once she heard Bob coming into the apartment. Bob walked into the couple's bedroom and that is where he found Debbie in their bed, covered with the covers. A pillow had been placed over her head. He of course removed the pillow, pulled back the covers, and what he found was terrifying. Debbie had been bound, gagged, and was posed in a way to suggest a sexually motivated crime. He ran to a local convenience store to call nine one one. Remember they did not have a phone in the apartment. Austin police arrived and they started their investigation. They did have a reason to believe that this crime against Debbie had a sexual motivation and that may actually be the key to solving it. Debbie was in her nightgown and her robe. She had been bound with her hands behind her back, strangled, and had some light cuts on her neck and shoulders. They were cuts that weren't deep enough to have ended her life, but more of a way to torture her. Her cause of death was officially ruled as exphyxiation and she had been sexually assaulted. They believed that the time of her death was between seven am and eleven AM. Bob had just left the apartment a little before seven for his shift at work, and Debbie was set to work a shift at the restaurant she worked at eleven am. Investigators believe Debbie Eve likely knew the person who had attacked her, or she opened the door to him and he forced his way inside. According to investigators, there was no sign of forced entry, and very quickly they ruled robbery out as a motive. However, I will say the patio door was left unlocked, so that is another way that the perpetrator could have gotten inside the whole no forced entry thing always really bothers me because nine times out of ten It usually comes down to there being another way without the perpetrator breaking in that they could have gotten in, and in this case, because the patio door was left unlocked, this could have been the entry point. It also could have been a stranger who could have come to her door under false pretenses, she opened it, and he forced his way in. There doesn't need to necessarily be a sign of forced entry for it to mean that this person forced his way uninvited into their apartment. I do think that this person could potentially had snuck inside while Debbie was sleeping, because she was still dressed for bed. Whoever this person was, I do believe that he likely could have been watching Bob and Debbie and. Knew their routine. He maybe even. Saw Bob leave for work that morning and decided that that was the time that he was going to strike. I don't believe that this was just a random situation where he happened upon an apartment patio door that was open and a woman who was alone inside. He may not have known the couple, but I think he was definitely familiar with them and their routine. Bob pretty much was cleared right away of having anything to do with Debbie's murder. Nobody at the apartment complex recalls hearing or seeing anything unusual that day. Even Debbie and Bob's upstairs kne didn't hear anything out of the ordinary that day. Investigators very much thought that the killing was ritualistic and that whoever did this likely had done it before, and they were very concerned that he was going to do it again unless he was caught. There was some speculation that Debbie's case could be connected to two other murders that had happened not far from Debbie and Bob's apartment. We are going to talk about. Those now because they could have some merit and relation to Debbie's case. Twenty one year old Phillis Budo was killed in February of nineteen seventy five at the apartment she shared with her husband in Southwest Austin. She had been stabbed multiple times. Phillis worked at her apartment's leasing office. In June of nineteen seventy five, Martha Lynn Reid was stabbed by a person who was posing as someone interested in viewing an apartment where Martha Reid lived and worked also at the leasing office. Both of these crimes seemed to be connected Martha and Phyllis's. Both women were young and lived at the apartments where they also worked. Both murders also were committed on a Monday, just like Debbies. In June of nineteen seventy seven, Victoria Palmer was found brutally murdered and her apartment set ablaze in south central Austin. She had been shot and her throat had been slashed. Her murder occurred on a Tuesday. She was only twenty three years old. Her case remains unsolved. All of these murders occurred within a two mile radius. All of these murders also remain unsolved, and there is some similarities between them, of course, especially the first two with whoever did this posing as being an interested potential leaser for an apartment, So that little tidbit is very interesting. But law enforcement soon stated that they did not believe that the cases were connected. They were hopeful that the case in Debbie's case could soon be solved. They questioned everyone that had any connection to Bob and Debbie. Now, Bob and Debbie were still pretty new to Austin, so they didn't really have a lot of close friends, mostly just acquaintances. Now, Debbie did not have a car, so she would often rely on different people that she worked with at the Montana Mining Company restaurant to take her to and from work. Like I said, she lived very close, so it wasn't really that big of a deal for her to hitch a ride to and from with a coworker. So investigators questioned everyone, friends, family, all the people that Debbie worked with, and one individual in particular that was questioned which did spark some interest, was a man named Michael Galvan. He was twenty five years old at the time and he had worked with Debbie at the Montana Mining Company restaurant, but had left that job about a week before Debbie's murder to go work at another restaurant. When he was brought in for questioning, he denied even knowing who Debbie was, which of course wasn't true because he had given her a ride home a time or two. But there really wasn't anything else for investigators to go on that said that this Michael Galvan was their guy, and the case ended up going cold. Rodney, Debbie's brother, would still talk with law enforcement and not let them forget about Debbie's case. In two thousand and three, the Austin Police Department formed a cold case unit ten years later. In twenty thirteen, Debbie's case ended up on the desk of Detective Jeff Gabler. He ended up going back the. Case file and was intrigued by the fact that there was a person that was questioned in Debbie's case that was never really able to be ruled out as a suspect. Somebody that had been questioned a few times. Somebody that had also refused many times to provide the Austin Police Department with the DNA sample. Everyone else who had been questioned willingly gave their DNA, but this particular person didn't. And who was that person you ask? None other than Debbie's former co worker, Michael Galvan. So Jeff was very intrigued by this lead, as well as the fact that Michael also did have some priors. He had an arrest in nineteen eighty one for peeping into windows and a nineteen eighty seven charge for assault against his girlfriend. In April of twenty thirteen, they were able to start surveilling Michael and were able to get his DNA after he had used a toothpick after finishing a meal. Now somewhere along the line. I don't really know what happened, but it wasn't until twenty seventeen when law enforcement officially were able to obtain a search warrant to obtain Michael's DNA, and once they obtained this DNA, it was a match for the DNA that was left behind on Debbie's nightgown. Now, initially he ended up sticking to his original story of not knowing Debbie, and then he changed his tune and said that he did know her and had driven her home a few times. Once the results came back that said that this DNA matched, he changed his story again and said that they had been having an affair. So he was very much all over the place. He kept changing his story. It seemed like the walls were closing in. Michael had spent most of his life living in Austin and also was working as a barber. He was now in his sixties, and in May of twenty nineteen, he was arrested after a jury indicted him on one count of capital murder and another count of murder. His trial was set for September of twenty nineteen. Just days before the trial was set to begin, Michael was released from the Travis County Jail. They said that there was some additional testing being done on some other items in the case and that they couldn't go forward with the trial until that testing was complete. They rescheduled the trial for April of twenty twenty, but as we know, COVID happened and everything there was postponed due to the shutdown. By November of twenty twenty, the Travis County District Attorney had some concerns about the strength of the evidence against Michael. There was a motion file to dismiss the case, but Michael's attorney, Amber Vasquez, fought this as she felt he deserved his day in court. She was also in the midst of doing her own type of investigation, one that she believed if her client got his day in court, he would be found not guilty. Amber said that the DNA evidence on Debbie's bathrobe was linked to Michael, but it was because the two had an affair. None of the other evidence tested by the state was linked to Michael. In fact, Amber said all of the other evidence taken from the scene excluded him. And if this is true, which I really do believe that this is the case, because they ended up dismissing it. This is another instance of investigators having tunnel vision. They focus in on one person, they set their sights on that person, and they just go for it. Amber called it a travesty of justice for investigators to arrest Michael and hold a news conference on one single piece of evidence. So, all these years later and a perpetrator behind Debbie's death still remains a mystery. We do also have here a potentially wrongfully accused individual, and still no arrests have been made. I'll be honest. When I first was researching this and I learned of Michael and his arrest, I did believe that he likely was the number one suspect, and obviously it's able to tie him to Debbie because of the DNA, but you can't convict based on that one piece of evidence when everything else doesn't line up. And truthfully, I just don't think the evidence is here for this one. I think if it was, it would have gone to trial, but that day never came and Debbie's case remains unsolved to this day. So this whole turn of events for me is so interesting because there likely is a reason that Michael initially lied to police and investigators, and that reason very well could have been because she ended up getting brutally murdered. They might have been having an affair. Maybe that is a true statement and a true fact. And he was terrified because obviously he was tied to her via DNA, and he probably thought he was probably the most likely suspect and did not want to be accused and charged of a crime that he didn't commit. I think this is where it's really important to take a step back and look at all of the evidence. While I do think it is intriguing, nonetheless, if the DA decides that they do not have enough evidence to take it to trial where they think they're going to win, then they do not have enough evidence. If the other evidence that was tested at the apartment doesn't show any connection or link to him, then he is likely not that guy. He's likely not the suspect, and at the end end of the day, Debbie's case it being solved and it being the right person that gets charged and ultimately convicted for This is important because if somebody that really truly is innocent goes to jail for something they didn't do, then that is not justice. That is just another travesty. And another miscarriage of justice. So at this point in time, Debbie's case still remains unsolved. With all of the other evidence that they have that they have been supposedly testing, I am hopeful that maybe they are on their way to finding a real potential suspect here and they're able to find enough evidence to bring charges against that person. But at this point in time, that is pretty much what we have. Debbie was young, she had her whole life ahead of her, she was newly married, she had just moved to a new place, and she was looking forward to the rest of her life. I know her brother Rodney still very much keeps his sister. Story out there. He does everything he can to try and keep Debbie's name alive. And as always. With all cold cases, I do think there is a possibility that Debbie's case is going to be solved one day. Technology is advancing rapidly, and I always say time is running out for perpetrators who think that they've gotten away with something for such a long time, because technology is not on their side, and law enforcement keeping up with these cold cases, keeping them afloat, not letting them gather dust at the bottom of a pile of a filing cabinet. That is the reason that I'm able to bring you all of these new case updates with this one's been solved, that one's been solved, because people are working so hard to try and solve these cases. And I know that the Austin Police Department is trying to solve Debbie's case and all the other ones debbies because there was a lot of murders around that time in Austin that have gone unsolved, and I don't know, maybe they are all connected. I think there is a possibility that at least some of them might have some relation to each other. So it was worth mentioning earlier in this episode. But thank you guys so much as always for listening. I appreciate each and every one of you, and I will see you next week for a brand new case. I hope you have a great weekend and stay safe. Bye.