Authorities name killer in 34-year-old cold case

PINEVILLE, Mo. — McDonald County Detective Lorie Howard systematically laid out investigators’ steps and identified the killer behind the heinous torture and death of Shauna Beth Garber Harvey.

Talfey Reeves, 58, of Pineville was named the young woman’s killer. Reeves died from injuries sustained in a motor vehicle accident on Nov. 15, 2021, Howard said.

Shauna Garber Harvey was 22 years old when her remains were found in Dec. 1990.

“Talfey Reeves was a suspect in this case for years,” Howard said.  “I just couldn’t get anybody to talk to me on the record …until he died.”

Body identified in 30 year long McDonald County cold case

Reeves has been on the radar since 2010 after a letter with very specific information was sent to the sheriff’s office, she said.

The letter detailed the gruesome details of a young woman’s death, she said.

The information in the letter was confirmed by six separate sources, two witnesses and DNA, Howard said.

Det. Rhonda Wise and Howard declined to release the letter or the specifics of the letter about the investigation saying, “Other people could be harmed.”

“Talfey Reeves was well known by the community and to law enforcement,” Howard said. “Had Reeves still been alive today charges of first-degree murder would have been requested from the McDonald County Prosecuting Attorney Maleia Cheney.”

“I went to his house and said to him before you die I want to be your last phone call because I want to know what happened to her,” Howard said of her last conversation with Reeves.

“He laughed and he smiled,” Howard said. “That was pretty much to the extent of what I got from him verbally.”

Shauna’s birth name was Garber, but her legal name was Shauna Harvey, Howard said.

A tearful Danielle Pixler, of Topeka, Kansas, Harvey’s half-sister sat through the hour-long press conference hearing the details of her sister’s final hours.

“I am just happy it is solved,” Pixler said.

“I was three months old when we all got taken from my mom,” Pixler said.

Pixler blames her mother for what happened to Harvey.

Harvey’s young life was marred with torture. At age 3 her mother set her on fire severely burning her.

The little girl along with a half-brother and half-sister were put into the Kansas foster care system when she was six-years-old.  A failed adoption put Harvey back into the foster care system where she aged out. Barely 18 years old, Harvey set out for Oklahoma to live with family members of her adopted family in the Vinita and Claremore area.

HARVEY’S REMAINS FOUND

A couple found Harvey’s badly decomposed remains near an abandoned farmhouse when out for a Sunday walk on Oscar Talley Road in rural McDonald County in Dec. 1990.

Animals had separated Harvey’s skull from her torso and her torso from her legs, Howard said.

“The manner of her death could not been determined due to the amount of decomp,” Howard said, referring to the body’s natural process of decay.

There was no blunt force trauma, no gunshot wounds, no stab wounds on Harvey, she said.

Harvey’s wrists and feet were hogtied and tied to one foot.

“There were eight bindings   – six (bindings) that were with big thick ropes and a towel over her head and neck and a rope around her neck,” Howard said.

Howard said the ropes were items like phone cords, nylon rope, coax cable and a clothesline,  that were already in a truck Reeves was using that night.

“We know she was sexually assaulted,” Howard said.

Reeves overdosed Harvey by injecting her with methamphetamine, she said.

The use of DNA, advanced genealogy technology, facial reconstruction software — and investigators led to the discovery of Garber’s identity in 2021.

For years the remains at the Boone County Cornoner’s office were known as “Grace Doe.”

“We had to sit down with evil to find Grace,” Wise said of the extensive number of interviews including that of serial killers Larry Hall and Dennis Rader, also known at the “BTK Killer”

HARVEY’S FINAL DAYS

Reeves and Harvey met in the Noel area when she was being transported back and forth from Oklahoma to Hudson Foods through a work program.

A witness confirmed Reeves picked up Harvey from the Ginger Blue Resort area around Halloween, Howard said.

“She was walking to the Tanglewood Apts and he picked her up when she got to the corner,” Howard said.

Ginger Blue Resort used cloth linen napkins, white towels and recently put in cable TV.

Howard believes that accounts for the cloth napkin found in Harvey’s pocket, the white towel and the coax cable found wrapped around Harvey’s head and neck.

“While Shauna’s life and death were tragic and for most of her life she struggled to just exist,” Howard said.

She was not just a missing person – she didn’t deserve to be invisible, she said.

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