3 Wives Dead, Man Is Guilty of Killing One

GATESVILLE, Texas â€”  A man who lost three wives or ex-wives was found guilty of murder Tuesday in the 1978 shotgun death of his second wife, which was originally ruled a suicide.

Jurors took only a little more than an hour to find Jack Reeves guilty. He also awaits trial in the death of his fourth wife.

Sharon Reeves died July 20, 1978, in her home in Copperas Cove, when she and Reeves had been divorced only a week. Investigators originally concluded that she had pulled the trigger with her toe.

The case was reopened and her body was exhumed after police investigating the October 1994 disappearance of his fourth wife, Emilita, found evidence they say linked Reeves to Sharon Reeves’ death.

Sharon Reeves’ father, 86-year-old James Vaughn, said after the verdict: “It’s a good deal. For one thing, she never would have killed herself.�

Reeves, a retired Army master sergeant, faces a sentence ranging from five years’ probation to life in prison.

He faces another murder trial April 1 in connection with the death of Emilita Reeves, whose body was found in October near Lake Whitney.

His third wife, Myong, drowned while the two were fishing in 1986. Investigators have said they don’t have enough evidence to tell whether that death, ruled an accident, was also a homicide.

On Monday, prosecutors presented a courtroom demonstration aimed at showing how hard it would have been for Sharon Reeves to pull the trigger of the .20-gauge shotgun with her toe, as investigators originally said.

Defense attorney Wes Ball said it would not have been impossible for Sharon Reeves to have shot herself that way, and presented testimony from a forensic expert who reviewed blood-spatter patterns from the only surviving crime scene photograph.