A serial killer already on death row in Oklahoma pleaded guilty Wednesday to three cold-case murders in Texas and was sentenced to life in prison.
William Lewis Reece, 62, first pleaded guilty in a courtroom in Galveston in the 1997 slayings of 12-year-old Laura Smither and 17-year-old Jessica Cain.
He was then transferred to nearby Angleton to enter a guilty plea in the disappearance and murder of 20-year-old Kelli Cox.
In each of the three cases, Reece received a life sentence, which he cannot appeal.
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Reece was serving a 60-year prison sentence for the 1998 Texas kidnapping of Sandra Sapaugh in 2016 when he began cooperating with investigations of the other cases.
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Gay Smither, Laura’s mother, thanked her daughter’s killer for telling the truth about what happened and told him she forgave him, after languishing in “a prison of anger and rage.”