It was a neighbor who found Jane Stokes on the floor of her East Ridge home on June 15, 2011. The 71-year-old’s head was wrapped in cellophane, her hands bound behind her back, zip ties around her wrists. Stokes had died from suffocation, and police quickly zeroed in on Randall “Randy” Reed, a man who’d done work on her fence that April and May.
More than seven years after her murder, Chattanooga prosecutors Tuesday began trying Reed in Hamilton County Criminal Court – for the second time. Though prosecutors introduced evidence that showed Stokes’ DNA and makeup on Reed’s shirt and earned a first-degree murder conviction in 2013, the Tennessee Criminal Court of Appeals sent the case back to Hamilton County last year, saying that a local judge allowed prosecutors to improperly mention a polygraph test. Those tests are considered inadmissible evidence in Tennessee.
“Our evidence is going to show you Randall Reed took Ms. Stokes’ credit card. He stole it,” Assistant District Attorney Jason Demastus told jurors. “He extracted the PIN number necessary to take money from her accounts, directly after he committed this crime.
“Not only did he take her PIN number, but he took her life,” Demastus continued. “And for that, he must pay the consequences.”
Reed, 50, doesn’t deny that he used Stokes’ credit card; he pleaded guilty to his multiple counts of fraudulent use of a debit card before Judge Tom Greenholtz. But Reed denied doing the killing, and his attorneys Tuesday made a similar argument to one heard by jurors in 2013: That Reed, who struggled with a crack cocaine addiction, was staying at a hotel in Chattanooga with his ex-wife and using drugs. He received a call from his alleged dealer, Milo Geiger, who wanted him to use a credit card in exchange for more crack cocaine.