Cindy Reese

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They were the quintessential small-town couple who were devoted to God and to each other.

Cindy and her family were at the church basically every time the church doors were open.

I thought this marriage here was going to last forever.

But on a cool February night in 2015, That forever was severed in an unspeakable act of violence.

It was really nothing short of an execution.

The whole community was turned upside down.

Things like this don't happen in Morris.

Was this the work of a stranger?

Or did this Christian community have a wolf among its devoted flock?

I think the parishioners of the church were so appalled at what was happening.

We have a jilted lover that is controlling, manipulative.

I'm went, are you saying he raised you?

He approaches these two individuals and gives a description of someone that he wants killed.

With a population of less than 2,000 people, Morris, Alabama is a small, tight-knit community.

It's the kind of place where roots run deep and violence often seems like a world away.

But when a call reaches area dispatchers just after 8 p.m.

on February 18th, 2015, it sparks a horrifying chain of events no one in this town will ever forget.

And now on?

Oh, yeah, I just got home and

stuff has been kind of doffed around in the house and I can't find my husband.

She sounded emotional.

She sounded worried about her husband.

Her house was in disarray and it appeared somebody had broken in.

Within minutes, police are on the scene.

They arrive to find Cindy Reese appearing to be shaken and upset, standing out in her front yard.

Officers enter the home with guns drawn.

They went into the house not only looking for Michael Cindy's husband, but also looking for someone who may be a potential intruder.

The living room was disturbed.

Some furniture had been overturned.

It looked like there had been a struggle.

These officers are not prepared for what they find next.

We walked to the back and that's where you see the pool of blood, where Mark was found.

He was slumped over.

There was a bullet wound to the back of his head.

There was blood on the floor.

It wasn't just a break-in.

It had turned into something much, much bigger.

Born and raised just outside Morris, Alabama, Michael Reese always considered himself a small-town kind of guy.

He liked being on the outskirts of hustle and bustle of a busy, you know, city or town.

He liked simple things in life.

While fishing was Michael's main hobby, his passion had always been computers.

If any of us had a problem with a computer, we just called Michael.

He'd come in and it'd take him five minutes to fix something that one of us had been looking at for two hours and couldn't figure out.

I was very proud of Michael of what he had done because he went to college.

He went to do what he wanted to do, being a computer technician.

After college, Michael returned to Morris and got married.

But just after five years of marriage, Michael's wife filed for divorce.

It It was really rough on him.

He just didn't like to live by himself and

he wanted to be married.

He wanted kids.

He wanted a family and he wasn't getting no younger.

He was ready to find that woman that would make his life complete, possibly children, a good loving marriage, and a good Christian home.

That's what he was looking for.

So at age 33, the divorcee reached out to his friends for help.

Michael had made a suggestion to his friend Jennifer that if, you know, if you you know any single ladies, send them my way.

She had seen Cindy at one of my children's birthday parties and talked to her before and thought that maybe Michael and her would possibly make a good match.

Like Michael, Cindy Henderson had a solid Christian upbringing and deep roots in the area.

Cindy and her family were at the church basically every time the church doors were open.

Her father was the associate pastor at Springdale Baptist Church.

I think most of Cindy's childhood and teen life was centered around her family and the church more than anything.

She didn't party.

I don't know that Cindy has ever taken a drink before.

She was a good girl.

After earning a degree in accounting, Cindy married her college sweetheart, Mike Tillery, in 1995.

under pressure from her conservative father to settle down quickly.

But I think that her family probably influenced her to go ahead and get married, maybe before she would have done it on her own.

But the marriage was troubled.

Mike had a difficult personality.

I don't think that she was happy.

She was more moody and withdrawn a lot of times.

Then in 2007, after 12 years together, tragedy struck.

Cindy had come home from work and she noticed that Mike's vehicle was outside.

She went went downstairs looking for him and found him in a basement room with a gunshot wound to his head.

Her husband committed suicide with a shotgun.

Mike's death sent Cindy spiraling into a depression for months.

Cindy really didn't want to get out of bed very much.

She didn't want to go do anything.

She didn't want to get involved.

She had just quit living her life.

But when Cindy's cousin connected her to the modest country boy, Michael Reese, Cindy agreed to give him a chance.

And when the pair met in person, Cindy's last bit of hesitation disappeared.

Michael was that type of person that you wanted in a husband, all-around good guy that you didn't mind taking home and introducing to mama.

Michael Reese charmed her.

He opened doors for her.

He was kind.

He was gracious.

After the first time she went out with Michael, she said, I had no idea that it could be like this.

For Michael, the feeling was mutual.

When they started dating, I could tell Michael was just head over heels for Cindy.

Michael was excited.

You could tell that he was acting a little different right after he met Cindy.

I think that he saw someone in her that he thought that he would be with for the rest of his life.

After a year and a half together, on September 5th, 2009, Michael and Cindy married at a small country church in their hometown.

Michael and Cindy's wedding was treated just like a first wedding would be.

Cindy wore a white wedding dress

and you would never know that they had been married before.

Everybody joked around, kidded around, and had a good time.

It was a happy day.

It was a good day for everybody.

After a dream honeymoon at Disney World, Cindy and Michael settled into married life.

Michael worked as a computer tech at St.

Vincent's Hospital in Birmingham, while Cindy was an accountant for the Jefferson County Courthouse.

And like the devoted Christians they were, every Wednesday and Sunday, the Reeses could be found in the pews of Sardis Baptist Church.

Cindy was already attending a church and was also the choir director there at that church.

So Michael started attending the church and he fell in love with the church.

He was excited, you know.

He worked the sound system there at the church.

Anything they needed done that he could do,

he would do.

Michael and Cindy even struck up a friendship with the church's pastor, Jeff Brown, and his wife, Noelle.

Like Michael and Cindy, Jeff and Noelle were at church anytime the doors were open.

The Browns and the Reeses were very close friends.

Jeff and his wife had several children that the Reeses would watch and babysit.

The four would go out on double dates.

They did a lot of things together, you know, as two couples

would normally do.

When Michael decided to officially join the church in 2014, Cindy, Jeff, and Noel were by his side.

To be a Baptist, you got to be baptized in the Baptist.

So Jeff actually baptized him to join the church.

Then, in December 2014, after five years together, Michael surprised Cindy with a second honeymoon.

And when they returned from their trip, Cindy and Michael started making plans for the future.

Michael had always wanted kids.

They had discussed it with the understanding that that would be part of their lives.

They were making an addition, I think adding an extra bedroom in the back of that house.

Michael had found the woman that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, and she had found the man that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with, and that they would just grow old together.

I thought this marriage here was going to last forever.

Unfortunately, their blissful future comes to an abrupt end on February 18th, 2015, when Morris police respond to a 911 call from the home of Cindy and Michael Reese.

That 911 call was made by Cindy Reese, and what she said said to the 911 operator was that someone had broken into her house and that her husband was missing.

That is when officers make a gruesome discovery in the couple's brand new addition.

What was originally a simple burglary call quickly turns into something much more serious.

You kind of cock your head and it looks suspicious.

Coming up, investigators speak to Michael Reese's bereaved widow.

I couldn't get Michael to answer me.

It just scared me.

And investigators zero in on a potential suspect.

She had said that there had been an unknown male walking around in a dark hoodie.

In 2015, after almost seven years together, Michael and Cindy Reese had never looked more in love.

She would always have that gazing, loving look at Michael, and Michael would have the same look back to her.

We knew that this kind man was going to take good care of her, and we felt like that she was probably going to be happy from now on.

Then came the events of February 18th, 2015.

Police Margaret, saying,

I just got home and walked in the front door, and I don't know if the house has been broken to or what the table's been knocked over.

But when Michael's body was found in an unfinished edition of the couple's Morris, Alabama home, officers realized this was no ordinary break-in.

Michael was laying on his knees leaning forward just outside the back door in the new room.

There was blood pooling beneath him.

Someone shot him from behind.

He was shot in the back of the head and it was really nothing short of an execution.

This was definitely treated as an active scene.

The officers moved pretty quickly to place Cindy into a patrol car.

At this point, they're looking at her as someone with the most valuable information in this investigation.

She was obviously upset and almost stricken by what was happening.

It was,

I can't believe that this is really a happening moment for her.

And Cindy's not alone.

In a small town like Morris, word travels fast of the unfolding tragedy.

I tell you that was the awfulest feeling run across me of any time in my life.

It's nothing like having to catch your dad in your arms because he's just going to know.

And the only thing daddy could say was, this is going to kill your mother.

This is going to kill your mother.

The whole community was turned upside down.

Things like this don't happen in Morris.

As loved ones begin to gather outside the Reese's home, Among the mourners that night is Michael and Cindy's close friend and pastor, Jeff Brown.

Jeff Brown, he drove up and and he said, where's Cindy at?

I said, she's in that cop car right yonder, but nobody can talk to her.

And he says, well, I need to talk to her.

He was following to give pastoral care and to be there with her in a very difficult time.

Inside the Reese's home, detectives find clues that would seem to support Cindy's initial 911 call.

When you walked through the front door, it appeared that there had been some sort of scuffle or someone had gone in and turned over things like a table and papers were on the floor.

They were looking at that initially as that's a possibility that a break-in or burglary of some sort had occurred.

What was apparent is there was no weapon.

There was no shell casings.

But if they used a revolver, the empty shell casing stays inside the cylinder and would not be on the floor.

The primary investigators were inside the home looking and seeing if there was anything left that, you know, would give them a clue as to how this had happened and maybe who had done it.

Detectives take Cindy to the Morris Police Department to get a formal statement.

Cindy tearfully recounts the events leading up to her 911 call.

The two of them had gone to church, had gotten something to eat at a fast food restaurant, and then come home.

Judy went through the drive-thru and got to the house because he had to bring Lucy, my dog, in because it was so cold.

Cindy says when she and Michael arrived home, she realized she'd forgotten a few items from the grocery store and needed to go back out.

She says she sets the food down and hollers at Michael going to the pig, pigglywiggly, and I'll be back in a few minutes.

She did leave and Michael went on into the house.

His mission was to let the dog in and which was at the back of the house where he was found.

Cindy says that she finished her grocery run and returned home around eight o'clock.

The minute she walked in her front door, she knew something was wrong.

She walked in and immediately saw that a table had been turned over and that, you know, stuff was on the floor.

She said that she hollered, Michael, Michael, where are you at, Michael?

I couldn't get Michael to answer me.

But Cindy says that she didn't dare go inside due to a tragedy that left her traumatized years earlier.

And it flashed back when my first one shot himself.

I understand that.

It just scared me.

It scared me.

It flooded back memories of coming in and finding her first husband deceased.

So she backed out and called 911 immediately.

As for the possibility that Michael may have been intentionally targeted, Cindy Cindy finds that scenario hard to believe.

They ask a lot of questions of his wife, but he just seems like a good guy that was nothing more than a husband and a hard-working citizen.

Michael wasn't the type of person that anybody would want to hurt for any reason.

He didn't have any enemies.

He didn't have people that were upset because of a bad business dealing or because he had done something to them or their family or anything like that.

There wasn't anybody that knew Michael that would want to do him any harm.

I did ask if there had been anybody around the scenes that looked odd or, you know, things like that.

And she had said that there had been a unknown male walking around in a dark hoodie.

As Cindy's interview continues, she also mentions what could be another important clue.

We've had some people walking around the house.

There was construction going on at the time.

As investigators know, a construction worker would know the layout of the Reese's home and might even have a key.

Here's the reality of violent crime in America, in Alabama particular.

Murder cases rarely involve a stranger.

Almost all of the time, the victim and the defendant know each other in some form or fashion.

Everybody I talked to felt like from the very beginning that this was not a random act.

But if one of these individuals had been involved, what could they have been after that night?

Besides jewelry, Cindy has an idea.

There should have been a 38

sitting on the gun rack in the bedroom.

Okay, we didn't know.

We didn't see that.

There should have been one sitting right there.

That was the only other handgun I knew about.

So where exactly would that be?

You walk into your bedroom, you've got the dresser to the left, the computer, you got your bed in front.

The gun rack behind the door.

It should have been sitting.

I don't know.

I seen the gun.

I didn't see a pistol.

I seen the long gun.

I didn't see a pistol.

There should have been pistols.

And since no shell casings were found at the crime scene, detectives know that the missing 38 revolver might very well be their murder weapon.

That night, as detectives begin to work their initial two leads, Cindy is escorted to the police station lobby.

There, Cindy's friend and pastor, 36-year-old Jeff Brown, is waiting for her with open arms.

Jeff immediately presents himself as not only a pastor of Cindy's and Michael's, but as a friend.

When Jeff went to leave with Cindy, she walked out the door.

He put his arm on her back.

Coming up, police work to find a killer.

Deputies canvass the neighborhood, talk to the neighbors, see if they heard anything, and a scandalous revelation rocks a quiet country church.

The parishioners of the church were so appalled at what was happening.

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In Morris, Alabama, Michael and Cindy Reese thought their marriage was the start of a beautiful, long-lasting life together.

But on February 18th, 2015, That dream ended when Michael was found dead in the couple's home.

Police have yet to identify a suspect, but are following two solid leads thanks to Michael's bereaved wife.

Cindy gives us a description of a possible suspect that may have been wearing a dark hoodie.

Also, Cindy brought up the fact that they were doing the construction in the back area of the house and that there were different people in and out of her house during this time.

That night and the next day, police work these two leads.

We spoke with the contractor and the electricians and the workers to try to see if there was any connection.

As it turns out, the Reese's contractor is also a member of the same church that Michael and Cindy attend.

The main contractor was at church that same night.

And again, the other subcontractors, one of them was actually a deputy sheriff.

Detectives also inquire about the suspicious man Cindy reported seeing in the vicinity of her home.

To my knowledge, there wasn't anything gleaned from the canvas of the area.

None of the neighbors saw anyone or anything unusual happening on that street that night.

Nothing was actually panning out.

Just as it seems investigators are at an impasse, they receive a call from Cindy's best friend, Lauren Kellum, who stuns everyone with a bombshell revelation.

The information that we got was that Cindy and Jeff Brown were having an affair.

For investigators, it's a twist they didn't see coming.

On February 19th, they confront Cindy Reese about the allegations.

She was very open.

I did ask her about how they met, and she openly gave a timeline.

According to Cindy, the affair began in late 2013.

when Jeff was the pastor at Sardis Baptist Church and Cindy the music director.

To be honest, when I first met Jeff,

I was attracted to him.

They worked close together in the church because she would talk to him and ask him what his sermons were going to be for that Sunday so she could, you know, get songs to go along with his sermon.

Cindy admits at the time, her four-year marriage to Michael had hit a low.

It just got to where we would come home and he would sit on one end of the couch and play on his phone and I would sit on the other end and watch TV.

It was like we were 80 years old.

That's why Cindy says it felt so exciting to spend time with her charismatic pastor.

Soon they started going to trips to different Christian bookstores, looking for music.

They started working together to plan the service for Sunday.

She had started calling Jeff her best friend, and it just seemed like they were inseparable.

But like Cindy, Jeff was married.

Struggled it off as,

you know, an affection or whatever, puppy love, crush.

But the more we talked,

the more we just kind of fell in love with each other.

So you did fall in love with Jeff?

And he...

Yeah.

Cindy admits in time, her and Jeff's feelings for one another sparked gossip amongst their fellow parishioners.

You know how girls get that little schoolgirl grin and giggly and all that?

That's how she was whenever you mentioned Jeff.

So that led to individuals within the church beginning to ask certain questions.

I think the parishioners of the church saw this affair happening right before their eyes.

People were so appalled at what was happening.

There was the assumption that they they were too close and they were asking for Jeff's resignation.

The more

we tried to fight it, the worse it got.

So I just resigned.

I did not realize he was going to do it right behind me.

I mean we we had talked about both of us resigning

but I didn't realize.

Cindy says in the aftermath of the fallout, she made a confession to her husband.

I had a lot of guilt and I told Michael that

I had an affair.

So you did tell him about it.

Yes.

Though the truth hurt Michael, Cindy says it didn't push him away.

And while Cindy admits she still has feelings for Jeff, she also acknowledges that she and Michael had been working on their relationship.

Were you wanting to stay?

I mean, were you wanting to work it out with Michael?

What was your feeling?

I really didn't know.

To To be honest, I didn't know.

I wanted to be with Jeff.

I just...

I was torn.

What was Jeff's intentions?

Oh,

he wanted to be with me.

Was he wanting to leave his wife at that point in time so y'all could be together?

He was wanting to leave.

Noel, you know, I was just still trying to figure things out.

While it sounds like Cindy genuinely loved Michael, these new revelations lead to an obvious question.

Let me ask you something.

And I'm going to ask you straight.

Did you shoot Michael?

No.

I would not be able to do that.

I can't even shoot an animal when it's done.

After concluding their interview with Cindy, detectives sit down with Jeff Brown.

Like Cindy, Jeff admits to the affair, but he also adds a stunning new twist to the story.

The story was that Michael had abused Cindy and that Jeff Brown came to her rescue.

According to Jeff, once he and Cindy had begun their affair, he had noticed something disturbing.

She had bruises on her inner thighs.

Where did she say she got them?

She wouldn't admit it.

She just said that she had run into something.

Jeff says in time, he eventually coaxed what he believed was the truth from Cindy.

She had related to him some situations that were sexually violent from Michael.

I'm like, are you saying he raped you?

Jeff says that he begged Cindy to leave Michael.

I'm not going to lie to you, it sickened me.

Him touching her.

Seeing that bruising and hearing what Cindy told Jeff really angered Jeff and created this passion in him to protect her.

Fearful for Cindy's safety, Jeff says he convinced Cindy to confess their affair to Michael in the hopes that he would leave her.

Jeff, in turn, did the same with his wife.

How your wife feels about it?

She's divorced from me.

Pretty upset about it.

Oh, yeah.

Jeff's plan at this time was to wait for Cindy and Michael's marriage to dissolve.

And once that happened, he believed that he and Cindy were going to get married.

But Jeff claims that instead of leaving Michael, Cindy forgave him.

Cindy's main holdup in going through with a divorce with Michael, oddly enough, was religion.

Jeff had left his wife, Noelle.

And once he started talking about the fact that Cindy would not leave Michael for him so they could be together.

He was visibly agitated.

Now, did it bother you at all that you were actually following through with your divorce and Cindy was not?

It concerned me.

Did you shoot Michael in the head?

No, I did not.

Do you know if Cindy shot Michael in the head?

I do not have a clue.

Don't have a clue.

You didn't corroborate, or I mean, collaborate, or

talk to, or have any conversations about killing Michael.

In fact, Jeff says that he was nowhere near Morris, Alabama when he heard about Michael's death.

Jeff had told the investigators that he had driven to another town, Aniana, which was actually almost an hour away from the crime scene.

And though investigators continue to press Jeff for the next hour, he remains emphatic about one thing.

He had nothing to do with Michael Reese's death.

I'm a preacher with two kids, right?

Two kids are one on the way.

If you're a preacher with two kids, you also have an affair with a married woman, right?

That's you're absolutely right.

You don't have to center a sin.

As investigators wrap up their interview with Jeff Brown, one question remains.

Could either Jeff or Cindy truly be capable of taking someone's life?

I had some suspicions in the interview, but nothing that could say or prove that she or Jeff Brown had anything to do with Michael's death.

Coming up, police uncover another possible motive for Michael's murder.

He approached two individuals, asking them if they would be interested in ending someone's life.

In the aftermath of Michael Reese's slaying, police in Morris, Alabama have uncovered a shocking affair between Michael's wife, Cindy, and their former church pastor, Jeff Brown.

Detectives also must contend with a new allegation levied by Jeff Brown about Michael's treatment of Cindy.

Cindy had been telling him for months and months and months that Michael Reese was incredibly abusive, that he had raped her.

But when investigators speak to Michael's family, they find Jeff's story hard to believe.

His personality, his mannerisms, his character, I just don't think he would have it in him to possibly be that way.

I don't even think he could be cruel.

Instead, they say that if anyone was abusive, it was Jeff Brown.

According to family members, Michael had taken the news of Cindy's affair better than even Cindy had expected.

Michael loves Cindy dearly, dearly that

regardless of the affair that he was aware of, he wanted to fix it.

He was willing to fix whatever was going on.

He thought that they could get through anything as long as they come clean to one another and recommitted themselves to one another.

So family members say two months earlier in December of 2014, Michael had taken Cindy on a second honeymoon to Disney World.

I know that Michael's thinking was that we'll get down here to the happiest place on earth and maybe it'll make her see that this is what we can have together.

The Disney World trip was by all accounts great for Michael and Cindy Reese.

They enjoyed every minute of it.

They really bonded.

They rekindled their relationship while in Disney World.

But apparently, there was one person who wasn't happy with the reconciliation.

I know when they came back from their Disney trip, Jeff was actually sitting and waiting for them to arrive back home.

He was mad that Cindy did not call him and tell him that they were back in town and just got really aggressive with Cindy from what Michael had said.

Michael had told me that

he had told him to leave her alone and to leave them alone.

Had Jeff finally decided to get rid of his rival for good?

We have a jilted lover that is controlling, manipulative, and was not happy that the woman was getting back with her husband.

Jeff Brown looked pretty good for the murder,

just because of all of the elements that were coming together.

Then there's a break in the case when a woman named Carla Surhan contacts investigators.

Carla explains that she and Jeff Brown had worked together after he left his pastor position at Sardis Baptist Church.

According to Carla, Jeff was abruptly terminated in January of 2015 after a disturbing incident.

It was during what I would call a water cooler conversation that he approached two individuals, asking them if they would be interested in ending someone's life.

He used the story that this man was abusing his wife, had possibly raped his wife, and that he needed to be handled.

He described the person that he wanted killed as working at St.

Vincent's Hospital driving a white Honda court.

And that's what Michael drove.

He didn't ever name Michael Reese by name, but he essentially described him to a T.

Jeff had promised to compensate these two individuals, and he spoke to them more than one time.

But but apparently jeff's plan backfired these two guys were taken aback they were offended that he approached them when they realized that he was serious and this man really was trying to hire them to kill another man they said no and they quickly walked away and they later filed a police report about it while there hadn't been enough evidence at the time to press charges Jeff Brown's alleged solicitation gives investigators probable cause to secure a search warrant for his car and apartment.

We were definitely looking at Jeff as the main suspect in this homicide.

When police search Jeff's apartment and car, they find his car title, bank statements, and lease contract.

And Jeff Brown's name isn't the only one listed on these documents.

They had a bank account together at the same credit union that we have here for our county.

She had purchased the car for him.

She had had the credit to be able to get an apartment, whereas Jeff Brown didn't, and she got the apartment for him.

That is how investigators learned that Cindy Reese was funding Jeff's lifestyle.

Cindy was building a life for Jeff Brown.

I don't believe Michael had any idea about any of that.

Based on this new evidence, investigators subpoena Jeff and Cindy's phone records for the day of Michael's murder.

On the day that Michael was killed, there were something over a dozen calls or voicemails and just connections throughout the day between the two of them.

You could see that on that day, these two are in almost constant communication leading up to the hour of Michael's death.

While Jeff and Cindy were communicating, Data from cell phone towers shows that Jeff was not an hour away in Anianta, Alabama, as he alleged.

His phone was hitting off a tower that was within several hundred yards of Michael and Cindy's house.

He was already in the vicinity of that house.

But there are two specific phone calls that night that stand out to investigators.

At 7.03 p.m., Cindy calls Jeff.

It's a 29-minute phone call, which didn't make a lot of sense to us because they had left the church at seven, which means that she had an open line inside the car.

Who does that?

I mean, why would you do that unless you needed to know where they were, what they were doing, and when they were going to get home?

In fact, just before the open phone call, records show that Jeff sent Cindy a single text message at 6.57 p.m.

Jeff sends Cindy a text saying, keep me posted.

And that's all.

Those three words, keep me posted.

Then by 8 p.m., Cindy reports Michael dead.

Keep me posted.

It shows there is some plan or some incident that these two had expected to occur.

I think that really tipped police off to thinking Cindy might be more involved than she's admitted to us.

Investigators are now convinced that on February 18th, 2015, Cindy put a plan in motion to kill her husband of five years.

I don't believe that Michael ever felt danger.

I don't think that he felt like when he walked into his home that night, he would be facing death.

She let Michael go in first and walked in behind him.

And Cindy walked right behind him and did it.

On March 11th, 2015, Cindy and Jeff are arrested outside Cindy's office at the Jefferson County Courthouse.

Cindy loved Michael.

She's not this type of person that would commit this kind of crime.

It's still hard for me to wrap it around my head.

You go back and you think over and over again:

did she do something that we missed?

She was definitely not who anybody thought she was.

Coming up, when put to the test, will one of these lovers turn on the other?

Jeff retaliated against her for abandoning him.

Jeff was going to turn the tables on Cindy.

In early 2015, friends and family thought that Michael and Cindy Reese were the perfect Christian couple.

But after Michael's brutal murder, investigators have discovered a much different side to the devout choir director, Cindy Reese.

No one could really look at the totality of her involvement in this case and not think that she was responsible for it.

She knew how and when Michael was killed.

After her arrest, Cindy makes bail immediately and is back to work that same week.

Jeff isn't so lucky.

There was several phone calls from Jeff to Cindy saying, hey, get me out, get me out, please get me out.

Why are you leaving me in here?

Jeff Brown realized very quickly that Cindy had walked off and left him.

She would not take his phone calls.

And so Jeff became increasingly angry at her over time.

And that's when the prosecution offers Jeff a deal.

Jeff would plead guilty to manslaughter.

And in exchange, he would be sentenced to 20 years in prison.

In an interrogation room, Jeff tells police that the murder was Cindy's idea.

Cindy had said to Jeff before that she couldn't divorce Michael because her family would not accept a divorce.

He had indicated that Cindy began talking to him very frequently about killing her husband.

He indicated that it almost became an obsession with her.

Jeff says that he had no idea that she was actually planning to go through with killing Michael until they were talking on the phone on February 18th, 2015.

Cindy had her Bluetooth in and she called him and it was just kind of open and he could hear Cindy and Michael talking.

She and Michael were arguing.

That's when he heard Cindy say, quote, I'm so sick of this dumb nut.

And then he heard a popping noise.

She came back to the phone and she said, I need to meet you now.

Jeff says that the pair met at a service station near Cindy's home.

He said that she gave him a gun and said, you need to get rid of the gun.

According to Jeff, he threw the gun out somewhere along the road between the crime scene and his apartment.

When Cindy's trial gets underway in November of 2016, she takes the stand to refute Jeff's testimony.

It's no surprise that she maintained her innocence through the trial.

She wants to be perceived as a respectable Christian woman.

On December 2nd, 2016, an Alabama jury hands down its verdict.

The jury came back pretty quickly and convicted her of murder.

She cried.

And then she cried even harder knowing that she was going straight to jail.

At her sentencing hearing on January 11th, 2017, Cindy is given 40 years in prison.

I understand the shame in getting divorced, but at the same time, I don't know how you can consider that a better alternative

than murder.

In 2016, the year prior to Cindy's trial, Jeff Brown married again while out on bond.

He will be eligible for parole consideration in 2023.

Cindy will be eligible for parole consideration in 2030.

For more information on Snapped, go to oxygen.com.

It's all a light-hearted nightmare on our podcast, Morbid.

We're your hosts, I'm Alina Urquhart, and I'm Ash Kelly.

And our show is part true crime, part spooky, and part comedy.

The stories we cover are well researched.

Of the 880 men who survived the attack, around 400 would eventually find their way to one another and merge into one larger group.

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Shout out to her.

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There's been like eight of them.

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