Dennis Reese and Michael St. Clair
Real Name: Michael St. Clair and Dennis Reese
Aliases: None known
Wanted For: Murder and Escape
Missing Since: October 1991
Case[]
Details: In September 1991, Michael St. Clair was sentenced to three life terms for two murders. He was involved in drug trafficking; when he learned that his Uncle Ronnie was attempting to steal some of his customers, he hired a man to murder him. After he was killed, St. Clair killed the hitman, William Kelsey Jr. Then, on September 19, 1991, St. Clair and another prisoner named Dennis Reese, who was awaiting trial in a beating and strangulation death, escaped from the Bryan County Jail in Durant, Oklahoma and soon went on a murderous crime spree over eight different states.
Two days after the escape, newspaper reporter Tom Mullins received a call from St. Clair; he stated that he would not be taken alive and that he would kill any law enforcement officer that tried to apprehend him. Three weeks later, on the evening of October 8, near Elizabethtown, Kentucky, a state trooper pulled over a pickup truck which was seen fleeing from a burning vehicle. As it pulled over, the passenger (St. Clair) got out and fired at the state trooper; fortunately, the trooper was not injured. Just minutes later, the truck was found abandoned on the side of the interstate; Reese had tried to cross the interstate, and when doing so, blew out the front tires.
The truck was determined to belong to fifty-five-year-old Kentucky resident Francis Chandler "Frank" Brady, who had vanished twelve hours earlier after cashing a check at a convenience store. His body was later found about twelve miles north of Elizabethtown; he was handcuffed and had been shot execution-style in the back of the head. Interestingly, he was murdered in a nearly identical fashion as St Clair's Uncle Ronnie was killed years prior.
Authorities discovered that the vehicle that St. Clair and Reese had set fire to belonged to a twenty-two-year-old Denver paramedic named Timothy Wayne Keeling. Like Francis, he had vanished after patronizing a convenience store. His body was found in a roadside ditch outside of Clayton, New Mexico. He was believed to have been murdered on September 27.
Five days after firing on the state trooper, St. Clair and Reese apparently struck again. Two men matching their description robbed and executed a video store clerk named Kathy Stoots in Milan, Tennessee. Thirty minutes later, they robbed another video store just eight miles away in Atwood, Tennessee. They also killed the clerk, Tammy Tidwell. After these murders, they disappeared and have not been seen since.
Extra Notes: This case first aired on the December 4, 1991 episode.
Results: Captured. St. Clair was apprehended on December 19, 1991, in Hugo, Oklahoma. Reese was arrested in Las Vegas, Nevada, on January 5, 1992. They were both convicted in the murder of Francis Brady. Reese was sentenced to life in prison while St. Clair was sentenced to death.
St. Clair is facing retrial in two counties in October 2011 and January 2012 for the death penalty that was previously overturned. In 2011, Reese confessed to murdering Timothy Keeling and pleaded guilty to the crime. In 2012, St. Clair was charged with Timothy's murder. In 2014, he was convicted in that case. For unknown reasons, neither St. Clair nor Reese were ever charged with the murders of Kathy Stoots or Tammy Tidwell.
Unfortunately, Frank's daughter, Melisa Sloan, vanished in 1994 and hasn't been found.
Links:
- Michael St. Clair on Murderpedia
- 2 State Escapees Still Suspects in 2 Tennessee Slayings
- Convicted Murderer Captured After Three Months of Freedom
- Judge sentences escapee to death in 1991 slaying
- Widow revives 20-year-old case about husband's murder
- Justice at last in 1991 murder
- Francis Brady on Find a Grave