First appearance on Fox: Investigators in Missouri say they have solved the 1990 murder of a 22-year-old woman. The woman was last seen alive on Halloween of that year, months before police found her body tied up behind a barn.
According to the McDonald County Sheriff’s Office, BTK serial killer Dennis Rader was a potential suspect. So did mass murder suspect Larry Hall, who is serving a life sentence for kidnapping a girl in Illinois in 1993.
However, detectives Laurie Howard and Rhonda Wise believed that only “by the grace of God” could they discover the truth, so the victim, whose identity remained unknown until 2021, was not “Jane” but “Grace Doe.” known as, and did not kill either.
Cold case detectives continued to pursue this case for years, eventually working with the Osram Genealogy Lab to locate the estranged relative who knew “Grace” as Shawna Gerber . It was later determined that her real name was Shauna Harvey, the sheriff’s office announced Thursday.
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A facial reconstruction by artist Victoria Lywood is believed to show how Shona Harvey looked when she died. (via NamUS, Othram)
According to authorities, Harvey “encountered the devil” on October 31, 1990, in the form of a local man named Talfie Reeves.
Detectives believe Reeves tied Harvey up with multiple types of restraints, sexually assaulted her, and then killed her with a large amount of drugs.
“Shauna had a tough life,” Howard told Fox News Digital. “She was born in a car, set on fire by her mother, her adoption failed, and she was in and out of foster care facilities. She then encountered demons and became too… were also killed in a horrific manner.”
The McDonald County Sheriff’s Office said Talfie Reeves had a long history of run-ins with law enforcement dating back to the 1980s. His most recent arrest mugshot (left) was taken just days before his death in a crash on Missouri Highway 71 in November 2021. (McDonald County Sheriff’s Office)
Howard and Wise’s investigation spanned multiple states, interviewing Radar at the Kansas State Penitentiary, Hall in federal custody, and other known murderers of young female victims.
But Reeves had a rap sheet dating back to the 1980s and was well-known locally, the sheriff’s office said.
A man was killed in November 2021 when a car struck his scooter while he was making a U-turn on Highway 71, Missouri State Police said at the time. He had been arrested for driving without a license a few days before his death.
If he were alive today, he would be charged with first-degree murder, according to McDonald County Prosecuting Attorney Mariah Chaney.
Reeves’ nephew, Derek Reeves, is also being investigated in a separate unsolved death, authorities said.
Shona Harvey childhood photo. There are no known photographs of her as an adult. (Osram)
The victim’s half-sister, Danielle Pixler, told investigators that Harvey had been in foster care and state custody as a child and that she had lost contact with him since then. She had been searching for her sister for nearly 30 years.
Even photos of Harvey as an adult have proven difficult to obtain.
Howard, a cold case detective, said he was still searching for the case even after it was solved.
“I refuse to make her invisible,” she said.
Serial killer Dennis Rader stands before Sedgwick County District Court Judge Greg Waller as his sentence is read in Wichita, Kansas, on August 18, 2005. Rader received nine life sentences and a “hard 40” sentence for 10 murders committed over nearly 30 years. (Bo Rader Pool/Getty Images)
Sheriff Eddie Baden said Rader, who is serving a life sentence in Kansas, is also under investigation in other cases in Osage County, Oklahoma.
Chief among them is the death of Cynthia “Cindy” Dawn Kinney, who was last seen leaving a Pawhuska laundromat on June 23, 1976. Across the street, Radar’s then-employer, the ADT security company, was installing an alarm system. new bank.
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Police arrested him in 2005. In it, he provoked investigators and the media with messages, and was ultimately arrested after years of cat-and-mouse, in which he forced the police into his tracks for failing to cover his tracks. .
Wednesday, August 23, 2023 at the former home of Dennis Rader “BTK” in Park City, Kansas. Decades after Rader received 10 consecutive life sentences, detectives return to the scene to search for clues in multiple unsolved murders. (Aron Skye, Fox News Digital)
Rader, now 78, confessed to 10 murders after his arrest, all of them near his home in Park City, Kansas.
He denies involvement with others and continues to do so even after his health deteriorates due to illnesses such as cancer and cellulitis.
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Investigators in Oklahoma have shared several sketches from the notebooks of serial killer Dennis Rader, also known as BTK, about his preferred method of “binding, torturing and killing.” Investigators said Rader had an “interest” in the barn. Shauna Gerber was found bound near a barn in Missouri in the early 1990s. (Osage County Sheriff’s Office)
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Rader himself previously denied wrongdoing in Osage County in a letter to Fox News Digital, calling the investigation there a “waste of taxpayer money.”
Howard said investigators offered him immunity earlier this year in hopes of getting a confession in exchange for avoiding the death penalty in the new case.
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He waived his right to remain silent, spoke with them at length, and denied any involvement. other murders.
