A killer with ties to Wichita Falls will not go free anytime soon, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
The TDCJ website said Jack Wayne Reeves was denied parole on April 14.
Reeves, 85, was raised in Wichita Falls and married Sharon Vaughn here in 1961. A week after she served him with divorce papers in 1978, she was found dead from a shotgun blast in the couple’s Copperas Cove home.
Although Sharon Reeves’ death was initially ruled a suicide, her body was later exhumed, and in 1994, authorities in Coryell County charged Reeves with her murder. He was convicted and sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Records show Reeves married Emilita Villa in 1987. She was reported missing in October 1994. Hunters found her body in a shallow grave at Lake Whitney in central Texas about a year later.
Court records show Reeves was convicted of killing her in 1966 and was sentenced to an additional 99 years in prison to run concurrently with his first sentence.
He became eligible for parole on Feb. 6.
The TDCJ said on its website Reeves’ parole was denied because he “repeatedly committed criminal episodes that indicate a predisposition to commit criminal acts” and because his offenses have “elements of brutality, violence, assaultive behavior, or conscious selection of victim’s vulnerability” and poses a continuing threat to public safety.
Besides his convictions in the U.S., Reeves was convicted in Italy in1967 of killing Vittorio Fraccaroli.
A March 5, 1968, article in the Times Record News reported President Lyndon Johnson was presented a petition signed by more than 700 Wichita Falls residents urging him to intervene. Johnson did so, and Reeves was released after four months in prison.
Reeves’ crimes have been featured on several true crime television shows.
Marriage records also show that Reeves married Myong-Hi Chong in Wichita County in 1980. She drowned in Lake Whitney in1986. It was ruled accidental.
Reeves’ next parole review is set for April 2031 when he will be 90 years old.
This article originally appeared on Wichita Falls Times Record News: Convicted killer with Wichita Falls ties will remain in prison
Reporting by Lynn Walker, Wichita Falls Times Record News / Wichita Falls Times Record News
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