Just In: Rodney Leed To Be Executed After 30 Years On Texas Death Row for the murder of a woman….

On November 20th, 2019,    Rodney Reed was just hours away from being executed by lethal injection at the Huntsville unit in Texas. He was 51 years old, strapped to a gurney, minutes from death for a murder he has always claimed he didn’t commit. But then, something extraordinary happened.

The execution was stopped. In this video, we will talk about what happened, the shocking confessions that emerged, and why this case has divided America. But to uncover the events of that fateful day and why Rodney ended up on death row, we have to go back to an April morning in 1996 and the murder of a young woman in Bastrop, Texas that would expose the darkest secrets of a small town.

April 23rd, 1996, Bastrop, Texas. A small rural town about 30 miles southeast of Austin, where everybody knows everybody, where Confederate flags fly from pickup trucks, and and where  the color of your skin still determines how people treat you. That morning, a 19-year-old white woman named Stacey Stites was supposed to show up for work at the HEB grocery store in Bastrop.

Stacey worked the early shift, which meant she had to leave her apartment before sunrise to make the drive from Giddings to Bastrop. Her shift started at 3:30 a.m., but  that morning, Stacey never showed up. Her coworkers waited. They called her apartment. No answer. They called her fiance, Jimmy Fennell, a police officer in Giddings.

He said Stacey had left for work hours ago. She should have been there. Something was wrong. Hours later, around noon on April 23rd, 1996, a body was found on a remote stretch of road in Bastrop County. It was Stacey Stites. She was lying partially clothed in a wooded area near the roadside. They said she had been strangled with her own belt, which was still wrapped around her neck. Her pants had been removed.

There were signs of sexual assault. Stacy Stites, a 19-year-old white woman engaged to be married to a police officer, had been raped and murdered. The town of Bastrop erupted in shock and rage. Who would do this? Who would kill a young woman on her way to work? Investigators responded to the scene immediately.

The Bastrop County Sheriff’s Office, the Texas Rangers, forensic specialists, everyone descended on that rural road to collect evidence. They found Stacy’s red Mazda pickup truck parked about a mile from where her body was discovered. The truck belonged to Jimmy Fennell, Stacy’s fiance. He had lent it to her so she could drive to work that morning while he slept.

Inside the truck, investigators found fingerprints belonging to Stacy and Jimmy. No one else’s prints were found. The keys were still in the ignition. There were no signs of a struggle inside the vehicle. It appeared that Stacy had been attacked outside the truck, perhaps after she stopped for someone or was forced off the road.

Forensic examiners performed an autopsy on Stacy’s body. She had been strangled to death with a belt. The pressure so intense it crushed her larynx and cut off her airway. She had defensive wounds, evidence that she fought back against her attacker. And critically, forensic examiners collected semen from inside Stacy’s body. The semen would become the most important piece of evidence in this case, the evidence that would send a man to death row and spark a controversy that would last for decades.

Investigators immediately focused on Jimmy Fennell, Stacy’s fiance. He was a 23-year-old police officer in Giddings, and in cases like this, the intimate partner is always the first suspect. Fennell was interviewed extensively. He told detectives that he and Stacy had been together that night.

They had gone to bed around midnight. Stacy’s alarm went off early, around 2:50 a.m., so she could get ready for work. She got up, got dressed, and left the apartment around 3:00 a.m. to drive to Bastrop. Fennell said he stayed in bed and went back to sleep. He didn’t hear anything unusual. He didn’t know anything was wrong until Stacy’s coworkers called him hours later to say she hadn’t shown up.

Fennell’s story seemed straightforward, but investigators were suspicious. Fennell was calm, almost too calm, for a man whose fiance had just been murdered. They asked for a DNA sample. Fennell agreed. His DNA was tested against the semen found in Stacy’s body. It didn’t match. Fennell’s DNA was not a match for the semen inside Stacy Stites.

That should have cleared him as a suspect, but investigators weren’t convinced. They kept digging. They interviewed Stacy’s friends, her coworkers, her family. Was Stacy having an affair? Was there anyone else in her life who might have had access to her? No one knew anything. Stacy was engaged to Jimmy Fennell.

They were planning a wedding. She was a good girl from a small town who worked at a grocery store and was about to marry a police officer. There was no indication she was involved with anyone else. The case went cold. Weeks turned into months. Investigators had no suspects. They had the semen, but they had no one to match it to.

And then, in 1997, more than a year after Stacy’s murder, a break came. Rodney Reed was a 29-year-old black man living in Bastrop. He had been arrested in connection with an unrelated sexual assault investigation. As part of that investigation, police collected Reed’s DNA, standard procedure.

They entered his DNA into the system, and then the system flagged a match. Rodney Reed’s DNA matched the semen found inside Stacey Stites. Investigators couldn’t believe it. They had their killer. On May 2nd, 1997, Rodney Reed was arrested and charged with the rape and murder of Stacey Stites. When detectives first questioned Reed, he denied ever knowing Stacey.

He said he had never met her, never spoken to her, never been anywhere near her. But the DNA didn’t lie. Reed’s semen was inside her body. How could that be if he had never met her? Faced with the DNA evidence, Reed changed his story. He admitted that he knew Stacey Stites. In fact, he said they had been having a secret sexual relationship for months.

They had been sneaking around, meeting in secret, because Stacey was white and engaged to a white police officer, and Reed was black. In rural Texas in 1996, an interracial relationship was still taboo, still dangerous. Reed said they kept the affair hidden because they were afraid of what people would think, afraid of what Jimmy Fennell would do if he found out.

Reed told investigators that he and Stacey had consensual sex on the night before her murder, which is why his semen was found inside her body. But he swore he didn’t kill her. He said someone else must have murdered Stacey after he last saw her. These prosecutors didn’t believe him. They had the DNA. They had a black man claiming he was sleeping with a white woman engaged to a white cop.

In Bastrop, Texas, that story sounded like a desperate lie. The case went to trial in 1998. Rodney Reed was charged with capital murder, rape, and kidnapping. The prosecution’s theory was simple. Rodney Reed randomly encountered Stacey Stites on the morning of April 23rd, 1996, as she drove to work. He forced her to stop, dragged her out of the truck, raped her, and strangled her with her own belt.

Then he dumped her body on the side of the road and fled. The DNA evidence proved he had raped her. The brutality of the crime proved he deserved the death penalty. The defense argued that Reed and Stacey had been having a consensual affair. They said Reed’s semen was inside Stacey because they had consensual sex the day before her murder, not because he raped her.

The defense tried to present witnesses who could corroborate the affair, but no one came forward at trial. No photos, no love letters, no one who had seen them together. It was Reed’s word against the prosecution’s evidence. And in Bastrop, Texas, in 1998, the word of a black man accused of killing a white woman didn’t carry much weight. The jury was all white.

Not a single black person sat on the jury that would decide whether Rodney Reed lived or died. The racial dynamics of the case were impossible to ignore. A black man accused of raping and killing a white woman in rural Texas, tried by an all-white jury. It was a story that could have come from the Jim Crow South. During the penalty phase of the trial, now prosecutors presented additional evidence to convince the jury that Reed deserved death.

They brought forward four women who claimed Reed had raped them in the past. One of the accusers was 12 years old at the time of the alleged assault. Reed had never been convicted of any of these rapes, but the prosecution used the allegations to paint him as a serial rapist, a predator who targeted women and deserved to be put down like a rabid dog.

The defense presented mitigating evidence. They talked about Reed’s upbringing, his family, his lack of a violent criminal history. But, it didn’t matter. On May 29th, 1998, the all-white jury found Rodney Reed guilty of capital murder. And on the same day, they sentenced him to death. Reed was transported to the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas, where death row inmates are housed.

Now, he would spend the next 21 years there waiting to die. For years, Rodney Reed’s case languished in the appeals process. His attorneys filed motion after motion challenging the conviction, challenging the DNA evidence, challenging the all-white jury. But, every appeal was denied. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed his conviction.

The federal courts refused to intervene. Reed’s execution date was set multiple times. In 2015, he came close to being executed, but his lawyers secured a stay at the last minute based on new evidence. That stay bought Reed more time, but it didn’t change his status. He was still a man on death row, still waiting for the state of Texas to kill him.

And then, in 2019, everything changed. New witnesses began coming forward. People who had been silent for more than 20 years suddenly started talking. And what they said was shocking. They said Rodney Reed didn’t kill Stacy Stites. They said Jimmy Fennell did. The first witness to come forward was Arthur Snow, a former member of the Aryan Brotherhood who had been incarcerated with Jimmy Fennell in 2010.

Fennell had been sent to prison in 2008 for kidnapping and raping a woman while he was on duty as a Georgetown police officer. Yes, the same Jimmy Fennell who had been Stacy Stites’ fiance, the man who who to love her, had gone on to kidnap and rape another woman. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and served his time alongside hardened criminals, including members of the Aryan Brotherhood.

Arthur Snow came forward in October 2019, just weeks before Rodney Reed’s scheduled execution. Snow submitted a sworn affidavit stating that Jimmy Fennell had confessed to murdering Stacy Stites. According to Snow, Fennell told him during their time in prison, “I had to kill my N-word loving fiance.” Snow said Fennell bragged about the murder, describing in detail how easily a belt would break when you strangle someone with it.

Snow’s affidavit was explosive. Here was a man with no reason to lie, a former Aryan Brotherhood member who had nothing to gain by coming forward, saying that Jimmy Fennell confessed to the murder. But Snow wasn’t the only one. A second inmate, Michael Bordelon, also came forward. Bordelon submitted an affidavit stating that Fennell had told him, “I took care of the problem.

I took care of her, and that damn N-word is going to do the time.” Two separate inmates, incarcerated with Fennell at different times, they both saying he confessed to killing Stacy Stites. But the revelations didn’t stop there. More witnesses emerged, people who had known Fennell before Stacy’s murder, people who had heard him make threats, people who should have been interviewed by investigators back in 1996, but never were.

Charles Wayne Fletcher, a Bastrop County Sheriff’s Officer who had worked with Fennell, came forward and said that 1 month before Stacy’s murder, Fennell had told him that Stacy was sleeping with a black man. Fennell used a racial slur and expressed rage about the affair. Fletcher’s testimony corroborated Rodney Reed’s claim that he and Stacy were having a relationship.

If Fennell knew about the affair a month before Stacy’s murder, that gave him motive to kill her. Mary Blackwell, a police officer who had gone through the police academy with Fennell, submitted an affidavit saying that during their training, Fennell had made a chilling statement. He told classmates, “If my girlfriend ever cheated on me, I would strangle her with a belt.

” That statement, made before Stacy’s murder, was eerily prophetic. Stacy was strangled with a belt. An insurance salesperson came forward and said that when Fennell and Stacy were applying for life insurance, Fennell had threatened Stacy in front of the salesperson saying, “If I ever catch you messing around on me, I will kill you and no one will ever know it was me.

” Stacy’s coworkers at HEB came forward and said Stacy had confided in them that she was having an affair with a black man. They said Fennell was very jealous, very controlling, and threatening. They had seen bruises on Stacy’s wrists like someone had grabbed and pulled her. They said Stacy was unsure about the wedding, which was just days away when she was killed.

Stacy’s own cousin came forward and confirmed that Stacy and Rodney Reed were romantically involved. Curtis Davis, who was Jimmy Fennell’s best friend and a fellow Bastrop County Sheriff’s officer, came forward and said Fennell had given inconsistent accounts of where he was the night of Stacy’s murder. Fennell initially told Davis he was out drinking that night, but later changed his story to say he was home with Stacy.

Jim Clampet, a Lee County Sheriff’s deputy, came forward and said he witnessed Fennell make an alarming statement at Stacy’s funeral. Fennell looked at Stacy’s body in the casket and said, “You got what you deserved.” All of these witnesses are coming forward decades after the murder, painting a picture of Jimmy Fennell as a violent, jealous, controlling man who had threatened to strangle his girlfriend with a belt if she cheated on him, who knew she was having an affair with a black man, and who may  have killed her in a

jealous rage. But, the new witness testimony wasn’t the only evidence pointing to Fennell. Forensic experts also came forward to challenge the prosecution’s timeline. Dr. Roberto Bayardo, the original medical examiner who had testified at Rodney Reed’s trial, had told the jury that Stacy died between 3:00 and 5:00 a.m.

during the window when she would have been driving to work. That timeline supported the prosecution’s theory that Reed intercepted her on the road. But, in 2019, Dr. Bayardo admitted in a sworn statement that he couldn’t actually pinpoint the exact time of death. He said his original testimony should not have been used at trial as an accurate statement of when Stacy died.

He acknowledged that the semen found inside Stacy’s body could have been deposited more than 24 hours before her death, which was consistent with Rodney Reed’s claim that they had consensual sex the day before she was killed. Dr. Michael Baden, one of the most renowned forensic pathologists in the world, reviewed the case and concluded that Stacy likely died earlier than the prosecution claimed, possibly while she was still at home with Jimmy Fennell.

Dr. Baden’s analysis suggested that Fennell could have strangled Stacy at home, placed her body in the truck,    and staged the scene to make it look like she was attacked on her way to work. Three other leading forensic pathologists reviewed the case and reached similar conclusions. One stated that the forensic evidence renders the prosecution’s theory about time of death medically and scientifically impossible.

Another concluded beyond a reasonable degree of medical certainty that based on all of the forensic evidence, Rodney Reed is scheduled to be executed for a crime he did not commit. And then there was the belt. The belt used to strangle Stacey Stites has never been tested for DNA.

Rodney Reed’s attorneys have been requesting DNA testing of the belt for years, arguing that if Jimmy Fennell’s DNA or skin cells are found on the belt webbing, it would prove that Fennell strangled Stacey, not Reed. But the state of Texas has repeatedly refused to allow DNA testing of the belt. Why? If the state is so confident that Rodney Reed is guilty, why not test the belt and prove it once and for all? The refusal to test the belt has fueled suspicions that the state knows what the results will show and doesn’t want the truth to come out. By October 2019,

Rodney Reed’s case had become a national sensation. Celebrities began speaking out, demanding that Texas stop the execution. Kim Kardashian West, one of the most famous people in the world, tweeted about the case, urging Texas Governor Greg Abbott to halt the execution. Rihanna, Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey, Meek Mill, Susan Sarandon, and dozens of other celebrities joined the campaign.

Millions of people signed online petitions calling for Reed’s execution to be stopped. Dr. Phil devoted two episodes of his show to investigating Reed’s innocence claims. He interviewed Reed on death row and concluded that Reed had not received a fair trial. A bipartisan group of 16 Texas state senators, both Democrats and Republicans, petitioned Governor Abbott to stay the execution, saying new, possibly exculpatory evidence had come to light.

Even law enforcement officials came forward. Dick Pierce and 12 other members of law enforcement with more than 250 years of combined experience filed a friend of the court brief with the US Supreme Court in favor of Rodney Reed. They said that while they understood the need for finality in criminal cases, where there is a significant risk of executing an innocent man, that need for finality must yield to the needs of justice.

The pressure on Texas officials was immense. The entire world was watching. And Rodney Reed’s execution date was set for November 20th, 2019.    As the date approached, Reed’s attorneys filed multiple appeals. They argued that the new witness testimony, the forensic evidence, and the confessions from Jimmy Fennell’s fellow inmates proved that Reed was innocent.

They argued that executing Reed would be a grave miscarriage of justice. On November 15th, 2019, just 5 days before Reed’s scheduled execution, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles held a hearing. The board voted unanimously to recommend that Governor Greg Abbott grant Rodney Reed a 120-day reprieve. It was a stunning development.

The parole board, which rarely intervenes in death penalty cases, was asking the governor to delay the execution so that the new evidence could be properly reviewed. Later that same day, on November the 15th, 2019, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued an even more dramatic order. The court granted Rodney Reed an indefinite stay of execution.

The execution scheduled for November 20th was canceled. Reed would not die. Not yet. The court ordered the case sent back to the trial court in Bastrop County to review Reed’s claims that prosecutors had suppressed exculpatory evidence, presented false testimony, and that he was actually innocent. For Rodney Reed, who had spent 21 years on death row, who had come within days of being executed, the stay was a lifeline, but it wasn’t freedom.

He was still on death row. He was still convicted of murder, and the fight for his life was far from over. In July 2021, a four-day evidentiary hearing was held in Bastrop County. 47 new witnesses testified, um including many of the people who had come forward in 2019 with evidence pointing to Jimmy Fennell. Jimmy Fennell himself testified.

He denied everything. He said Arthur Snow and Michael Bordelon were lying.    He said he never confessed to killing Stacy. He said the witnesses who claimed he made threats were mistaken or misremembering. He insisted he had nothing to do with Stacy’s murder. The state of Texas stood by Rodney Reed’s conviction.

Prosecutors argued that the new witnesses were unreliable, that they had waited too long to come forward, and that their testimony wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the trial. They argued that Reed’s DNA inside Stacy’s body proved he raped and killed her, and that  his claim of a consensual affair was a fabrication.

On November 1st, 2021, Bastrop  County District Court Judge J.D. uh Langley issued his findings. After reviewing all the evidence, all the witness testimony, and all the forensic reports, Judge Langley recommended that Rodney Reed should not be granted a new trial. He ruled that the new evidence would not have changed the outcome.

He found the witnesses claiming Fennell confessed to be not credible. He concluded that Reed was guilty, and his conviction should stand. Reed’s attorneys appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. On June 28th, 2023, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied Rodney Reed’s application for a new trial.

The court ruled that Reed had not proven his innocence, and that the conviction would stand. But Reed’s legal team didn’t give up. They took the case to the US Supreme Court arguing that Texas’ refusal to allow DNA testing of the belt violated Reed’s constitutional rights. On April 19th, 2023, the US Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 in favor of Rodney Reed on a statute of limitations question.

The decision allowed Reed to continue his fight for DNA testing. It was a procedural victory, not an exoneration, but it kept Reed’s case alive. In July 2024, the US Supreme Court declined to review Reed’s actual innocence claim, but his lawyers continue to litigate in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals over DNA testing of the murder weapon.

As of February 2026, Rodney Reed remains on death row at the Polunsky Unit in Texas. He has been there for 27 years. He has no execution date scheduled. The state of Texas continues to maintain that he is guilty of murdering Stacy Stites. Rodney Reed continues to maintain that he is innocent. So, what is the truth? Is Rodney Reed a serial rapist who murdered a young woman and has spent decades lying to save his own life? Or is he an innocent man, a black man in rural Texas who was convicted by an all-white jury for having a relationship

with a white woman while the real killer, a white police officer, walked free? The evidence pointing to Reed’s guilt is his DNA inside Stacy’s body. That is the foundation of the prosecution’s case. Reed’s semen was inside her, and the prosecution says that proves he raped her.

But Reed has always said the sex was consensual, that he and Stacy were having an affair. And now, more than a dozen witnesses have come forward saying they knew about the affair, that Stacy confided in them, that she told people she was seeing a black man. If those witnesses are telling the truth, then Reed’s explanation for the DNA makes sense, but the prosecution argues those witnesses are lying or mistaken, that they only  came forward after Reed’s execution was imminent, and that there’s no physical evidence of an affair. No photos, no

letters, no proof. The evidence pointing to Reed’s guilt also includes the allegations from other women who say Reed raped them.    Four women and one girl came forward during the penalty phase of Reed’s trial and said Reed had sexually assaulted them. Reed was never convicted of those rapes, but the prosecution used them to paint him as a predator.

The defense argues these allegations were never proven and should not have been used against Reed. But for many people, the pattern of accusations is damning. On the other side, the evidence pointing to Jimmy Fennell’s guilt is substantial and disturbing. Fennell knew Stacy was having an affair with a black man a month before her murder.

He had threatened to strangle the cheating girlfriend with a belt. He made threats against Stacy’s life. He was controlling and jealous. He had bruises on Stacy’s wrists. And then, years later, Fennell kidnapped and raped a woman while on duty as a police officer, proving he is capable of sexual violence. Two inmates say Fennell confessed to killing Stacy.

He allegedly said he had to kill his N-word loving fiance and that he took care of her while a black man would do the time. Fennell allegedly described how easily a belt breaks when you strangle someone with it. These confessions came from white inmates, members of the Aryan Brotherhood, people who had no reason to protect a black man on death row.

But the prosecution argues these inmates are lying, that they fabricated the confessions to get attention or reduced sentences. The forensic evidence also raises questions. The original medical examiner admitted his testimony about time of death was inaccurate. Leading forensic pathologists say the prosecution’s timeline is medically and scientifically impossible.

They say Stacy likely died earlier, possibly while she was still at home with Jimmy Fennell, and the belt, the murder weapon, has never been tested for DNA. Why?  If the state is confident in Reed’s guilt, why not test the belt? If Reed strangled Stacy, his DNA and skin cells should be on the belt webbing.

If Fennell strangled her, his DNA should be there instead. But Texas refuses to allow the testing. The refusal suggests the state knows what the results might show and doesn’t want to risk undermining the conviction. There’s also the issue of race. Rodney Reed was convicted by an all-white jury in rural Texas in 1998 for allegedly raping and killing a white woman.

The racial dynamics of the case are impossible to ignore. Would an all-white jury in Bastrop, Texas convict a white police officer of murdering his white fiance based on the testimony of black witnesses? Or would they be more inclined to believe a black man was guilty? Especially when the prosecution painted him as a sexual predator? The case has divided America.

Some people believe Rodney Reed is a monster who raped and killed Stacy Stites and has spent 27 years manipulating the system with lies. They point to his DNA, the allegations from other women, and the lack of physical evidence of an affair. They believe justice was served when he was sentenced to death. And they want Texas to carry out the execution.

Other people believe Rodney Reed is innocent, a victim of a racist justice system that railroaded a black man for having a relationship with a white woman. They point to the witnesses who corroborate the affair, the confessions from Jimmy Fennell, the forensic evidence that contradicts the prosecution’s timeline, and the refusal to test the belt.

They believe Reed has spent 27 years on death row for a crime he didn’t commit and they want him freed. The truth, whatever it is, matters. If Rodney Reed is guilty, then he should be held accountable for murdering Stacey Stites. But if he is innocent, then the state of Texas has kept an innocent man on death row for nearly three decades while the real killer, Jimmy Fennell, served only 10 years for raping a different woman and is now free.

Stacey Stites deserves justice. Her family deserves to know the truth about who killed her. And Rodney Reed, whether guilty or innocent, deserves a fair process. As of now, Rodney Reed remains on death row. He has been there since 1998. He came within days of being executed in 2019 before the stay was granted.

He has no execution date scheduled, but that could change at any time. Texas could set a new execution date tomorrow, next month, or next year. The litigation over DNA testing continues. Reed’s attorneys are still fighting for the right to test the belt, the one piece of evidence that could definitively prove who strangled Stacey Stites.

If the courts ever allow that testing, and if the results show Jimmy Fennell’s DNA on the belt, Rodney Reed could be exonerated. But if the results show Reed’s DNA, or if the testing is never allowed, Reed will likely remain on death row until the state of Texas executes him. The case of Rodney Reed raises questions that go beyond one man’s guilt or innocence.

It raises questions about the death penalty itself. How certain do we need to be before we execute someone? Is DNA evidence alone enough, or do we need more? What do we do when new evidence emerges decades after a conviction? What do we do when the original forensic testimony is later discredited? What do we do when witnesses come forward saying the real killer confessed? And what do we do when race is an undeniable factor in how a case is prosecuted and how a jury decides? These are not easy questions, but they are questions that demand answers

because the stakes could not be higher. If Rodney Reed is executed and later proven innocent, Texas will have killed an innocent man. There is no undoing that. There is no apology that brings someone back from the dead. And if Reed is innocent, it means Jimmy Fennell murdered Stacey Stites, manipulated the investigation to frame a black man, and got away with it for decades while that black man sat on death row.

The case of Rodney Reed is not over. He remains on death row waiting for a resolution that may never come. The state of Texas maintains he is guilty. Rodney Reed maintains he is innocent. And somewhere in that small town of Bastrop, the truth about what happened to Stacey Stites on the morning of April 23rd, 1996, remains buried waiting to be uncovered.

Serial rapist or victim of racism? Guilty murderer or innocent man? The answer depends on who you believe. And in America in 2026, unbelief is shaped by the color of your skin, your politics, your faith in the justice system, and your willingness to question whether the system gets it right every time. Rodney Reed’s story is not over, but for now, he remains a man on death row caught between execution and exoneration, waiting for justice, whatever that means.