TV show to feature case with local ties

Twenty-five years after a 19-year-old woman was kidnapped from a Bethany carwash, brutally raped and murdered,10 years after a Kingfisher man was instrumental in getting the case reopened and eight months after the killer was sentenced to death, Bill Kurtis will be talking about it on Cold Case Files.

The popular A&E true crime documentary series will feature an episode this Friday, March 11, at 8 p.m. entitled “One Tough Mother,” examining the 1997 murder of Tiffany Johnston and the subsequent capture, trial, conviction and sentencing of admitted serial killer William Reece, 62.

The episode’s title is a tribute to Johnston’s mother, Kathy Mobry, who remained doggedly persistent to track down her daughter’s killer, even after law enforcement said the case had gone cold.

“I can’t think of a better title for that show,” Rick Hankins of Kingfisher said. “That completely describes Mama.”

Mobry isn’t Hankins’ biological mother, but he became close to her in junior high when he and Tiffany developed a friendship that lasted through high school graduation.

And he became closer still in the last 10 years, when the two of them worked side-by-side to get the case reopened and then supported each other through the subsequent investigation, trial and aftermath.

“We talk on the phone all the time. She calls me son and I call her Mama,” he said. “We’ve known each other most of my life, since I was in the eighth grade.”

It’s All About Tiffany

Hankins became friends with Tiffany Mobry as a junior high classmate in Chickasha, where both graduated high school in 1996 and also worked together for a time.

“Tiffany was quite a character,” Hankins told the Times & Free Press in 2016. “When she walked in, you just started smiling because you knew she was going to make you laugh.”

Their paths diverged after graduation, when Hankins moved to Texas and Mobry moved to Bethany and began working two jobs to save for college tuition.

In April 1997, she married and planned to enroll in OSUOKC the next fall.

When she left work on July 26, 1997, she headed to the Sunshine Car Wash in Bethany to spruce up her white Dodge Neon in anticipation of a three-month anniversary date with her husband.

That’s when she caught the attention of Reece, whom authorities now believe was in the middle of a four-month killing spree that started and ended in Texas.

Reece lived in Anadarko with his mother, who did ironing for Kathy Mobry’s family and Kathy had met him prior to Tiffany’s abduction and had given him a ride to Oklahoma City once as a favor to his mother.

Kathy knew that Reece had recently been released from prison, but she was not aware of the nature of his crimes: He’d been convicted of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a 19-year-old woman and then raping another woman while out on bond for the first crime.

Ironically, Reece had never seen Tiffany and did not know who she was when he spotted her alone at the car wash.

“He didn’t know that was Kathy’s daughter,” Hankins said. “He had never met her face-to-face. He just happened to see her at the car wash and decided she’d be his next income.”

At 12:30 a.m. the next morning, Kathy Mobry received a call from the Bethany Police Department reporting they had found the car, along with Tiffany’s purse, pager, paycheck and cash, still parked in the car wash stall.

Later that afternoon, her body was discovered.

Hankins’ Involvement Hankins didn’t learn

Hankins didn’t learn about Tiffany’s death until six months later when he returned from Texas and tried to track down his old friend.

Kathy Mobry, aided by other family members, never gave up on finding her daughter’s killer, even hiring a private detective to conduct a separate investigation, but in 2005 the case was declared inactive.

Hankins was not aware the investigation had stalled when he moved to Kingfisher in 2009 and began working at Ace Hardware Store.

(Hankins did not know when he moved to Kingfisher that Kathy Mobry also lived here briefly a few years previously, working at the old Walmart and a local motel office.)

But in 2012, when another 19-year-old girl was found murdered in Bethany, his memories came flooding back.

Although that crime proved to be unrelated, the news reports prompted Hankins to reach out to Kathy Mobry, who told him the search for Tiffany’s killer had gone cold.

At that point, Hankins began talking to everyone and anyone, contacting local and state media and flooding social media in an effort to revive interest in the case.

But the two people who helped get the ball rolling were actually two local men he talked to face-to-face in the hardware store – OSBI agent Steve Neuman and former State Rep. Mike Sanders, Hankins said.

“I just asked them both, can you look into this case for me?” he said. “Those guys went back and started asking questions.”

Not long after, the OSBI announced that the case had been reopened and a new agent assigned.

“I would not have been able to do any of what I did if I didn’t work at Ace Hardware in Kingfisher, America, and got to know the people I know,” Hankins said. “That’s my little, small part in this.”

The Rest of the Story

Reece, who had been interviewed early in the investigation but dismissed as a suspect, came back into the picture thanks to advances in DNA analysis not available in 1997.

At the time, he was back in prison in Texas, serving time for the kidnap and rape of another woman who ultimately escaped and identified him.

He was extradited to Oklahoma and convicted last summer for Johnston’s murder, one of several to which he confessed after DNA matched him to the crime in 2016.

An Oklahoma County judge sentenced him to death in August, based on the jury’s recommendation.

Johnstons’ mother and stepfather sat in the courtroom each day of the trial and debriefed Hankins by telephone each night on the days he couldn’t attend in person.

“It was tough to hear, but at the same time there was nothing there that I didn’t already know,” Hankins said. “The hardest part for me sitting in the courtroom was watching the family, seeing people I love in such pain.”

He also felt sympathy for the jury, who was hearing the gruesome details of the crime for the first time.

“We had 20 years to prepare for this and we knew what was coming,” he said. “They didn’t know anything about this when they walked into that courtroom.”

After the verdict, Hankins and the Mobry family took time to meet with the jury and Hankins thanked them, “not for the verdict but for doing their jobs.”

That brief meeting turned into some lasting friendships, including a get-together at one of the juror’s homes.

Due to the grisly nature of his serial crimes, Reece’s conviction and sentencing drew national media attention, and eventually the interest of Cold Case Files producers.

Hankins was interviewed, along with law enforcement, Tiffany’s family members and others, but he doesn’t know if his contributions will make it on the show.

“I just had a small part, but Mama has waited 8,789 days to see her daughter’s killer sentenced to death,” he said.

“Talk about a ‘tough mother.’ She is the very definition of a Mama Bear.”