She Thought It Was Just a Date… Then Everything Changed | Leslie Reeves | True Crime Documentary

Leslie Reeves, a 45-year-old woman, lived in Troy, Illinois, a small town about 30 miles east of St. Louis. A divorced mother of two, she had built a life that was entirely her own. She had a master’s degree in engineering, sharp enough for any corporate career. Instead, she chose a different path. She opened All You Studio and Party Place in Troy, a fitness studio and community space built for women.

 She taught yoga and, most importantly to her, self-defense. She believed women deserved to know what their bodies were capable of if someone actually took the time to teach them. She even posted videos to promote her classes. >> Hi, I’m Leslie from All You Studio. Empower yourself against aggression and assault as we teach you easy-to-learn self-defense techniques. Power up.

>> That phrase wasn’t just a tagline. It was what she believed and what she spent years trying to give other women. Her friends describe her the same way again and again, always smiling and warm. But, you know, there’s always a part of someone’s life that most people don’t even notice. There was a part of Leslie’s life that was harder to see.

For a while, she’d been in a relationship that frightened her. By all accounts, she was trying to move forward with her life. She had recently met a man online, Chris Smith. He was 48 years old, also a divorced father of one daughter. He worked for a pool contractor and had lived in Farmersville long enough that everyone around him knew who he was.

 Chris was a lead singer in a band group. He also had a small beagle terrier mix named Tiki. Leslie and Chris had connected online. They had never met in person. On the evening of the 24th was supposed to be their first date, their first time in the same room. They met at the Uptown Saloon where a friend’s band happened to be playing that night.

 Leslie arrived around 7:30. They talked, they had a few drinks, then they headed back to Chris’s place. The night was still early. Everything at this point was just going perfectly for them. The next day was Thanksgiving Day, the 25th of November 2021. Leslie had been gone since the previous evening.

 She was not answering her phone. She was not responding to messages. Nanette, her close friend, knew exactly where she had gone cuz she told her. They were supposed to celebrate Thanksgiving together with family and friends, but Leslie was not responding to texts or calls. At 12:42 in the afternoon, she called 911 and asked for a welfare check at a home on Nobby Street in Farmersville.

She drove there herself. She sat in her car outside and waited for officers to arrive. Around the same time, a second call came in, separate from Nanette’s. Chris hadn’t shown up for Thanksgiving dinner, which wasn’t like him. A friend went to check on him, looked through the side window, and saw blood and a man’s leg on the floor. She called 911, too.

Then EMT Dennis Hobson arrived. He’d known Chris for years. He found the side door broken, glass scattered across it. He looked into the kitchen and saw his friend lying there, barely alive. And stepping into the dining room, he found a woman on the floor. He didn’t need to check for long to know she was already gone. He called it in.

 Two gunshot victims, one alive, one not. Nanette was still outside her car when she saw the ambulance come for Chris. She watched him being taken away. She waited for Leslie to follow. A detective came to her car window. He asked for a photograph of Leslie. She unlocked her phone and showed him.

 Then the detective broke the news to her. He said, “Your friend has been murdered. I want you to know that she went very quickly. A gunshot to the head.” Nanette sat in her car. She went quite crazy in that moment. Inside the house, Illinois State Police crime scene services were going through everything.

 Josh Easton, a crime scene investigator with more than 1,800 scenes in his career, noted it all. The broken door glass, the disrupted kitchen, the refrigerator, the table, the chairs, the blood that covered the kitchen from corner to corner, on the cabinets, the countertop, the refrigerator itself. The product of 12 hours of bleeding from a man who could not speak, could not call for help, could not do anything at all but lie there while his small dog Tiki pressed herself against him for warmth in the hours before anyone arrived.

Two silver-colored 9-mm bullet casings, one in the kitchen, one in the living room beside Leslie’s body. No weapon anywhere at the scene. “One of the most horrific I’ve been to,” Easton said. That was his assessment after 1,800 crime scenes. Chris Smith was taken to St. John’s Hospital in Springfield.

 He was barely conscious when they found him. A bullet had entered the top of his skull and was still lodged in his brain. Surgeons removed a portion of his skull and bullet fragments. They put him in a medically induced coma. No one knew whether he would survive at all. Investigators started their work and talked to multiple people about the victims. Nanette had given them a name.

Another friend, Amy Steinhauer, had called the sheriff’s office separately and independently. Neither woman knowing the other had already done the same thing. Both of them had said the same name, Robert Tarr. But who was Robert Tarr? Bobby to the people who knew him, a contractor from Collinsville, divorced, father of three, a man Leslie had once cared about and was now with great deliberateness trying to leave entirely.

 According to her friends, Leslie had told them plain and unambiguous, “I could be killed by him someday if I don’t cut all contact.” She had made a decision, block him from everything, phone, email, every channel, complete disconnection. The sheriff’s deputies went to Collinsville that same evening. When they arrived at his house, Tarr agreed to come to the station without being asked twice and without asking for a lawyer.

 He sat across from Detective Roach. >> Um Leslie is dead. >> What? >> Can you help me shed some light on this? >> How did she die? >> She was murdered. >> What happened? >> That’s why we’re here with you. >> You know if I was at home alone with her I was home alone with her. You know what I just said I would do? Never been there.

 I’ve never heard of it. >> Tarr was asked where he was at the night before Thanksgiving. >> I went to a buddy of mine’s house. He left and lent me some money out of his shop. And he would pick it up. >> You know what time you came back? >> Mhm. Yeah, it wasn’t that long. Um maybe 6:30-ish, something like that. >> He said, “You can talk to my daughter about me being home.” They did.

 Her daughter, Shelby Tarr, was in a separate room at the same station. >> So, the first time he left was roughly 6:30, right? And then he he came home about a half hour later and said he had to go back. >> Right. >> And then it was 9:15-ish when he got back home. >> He gets home, he was crying. He was sobbing. He said he missed Leslie.

 He started laundry. He was pacing, walking around and he was like, “I can’t sleep.” >> The detectives went back to Tarr with her daughter’s account. He shifted his story. Then they put a receipt in front of him. License plate reader cameras had caught his Jetta near a petrol station in Troy just after midnight.

 He had bought fuel and had been out well past 8:00, well past midnight on the road between his home and Farmersville. >> So, when he got the fuel, what is that for? >> People usually talk about Robert Tarr’s actions on the night of the 24th by focusing on the lies he told investigators, the same ones his daughter challenged and exposed from a room next door at the police station.

Those lies mattered. But look closer. What really stands out, what most folks don’t talk about, is the string of decisions leading up to those lies. He made a series of deliberate moves. He went to her work. He followed her. When he couldn’t figure out where she was headed, he drove home, sat with it, then left again.

 He looked up her dates name, Chris Smith, on Facebook. He dug into how to keep his phone from being traced, bought fuel after midnight. All steps, none of them just moments of losing control. This was a plan, one choice after another, all with the same destination. When he drove out to Farmersville, that wasn’t the start, that was the end, a final step in a line of choices starting the moment he realized she was going somewhere he hadn’t agreed to.

 The VPN search says it all. Even before he left the house, he knew he planned to do something serious, something he’d have to answer for. He just hadn’t sorted out how to dodge responsibility, but that didn’t stop him. Investigators ended up putting the timeline together piece by piece. Robert Tarr left his Collinsville home around 6:00 the evening of the 24th.

 That’s about 50 mi south of Farmersville. His daughter, Shelby, 17, was at the house and remembered the time. She also noticed when he came back less than half an hour later, odd enough for her to remember. Around 9:15 that night, he left again, and this time he was gone for more than 2 hours.

 In between, he spent time on his phone. The records show it. He searched Chris Smith’s name, found his profile, scrolled through, tried to see what sort of man Leslie might be with, confirming what he’d already guessed. He messaged his friend Billy Adams, “I don’t feel like she would drive that far for a party or go out with a girlfriend.

I think it’s for a dude.” He wasn’t just snooping for names. He looked up whether police could track a phone running through a VPN. He wanted to know if his phone could be traced even before he walked out the door. Why do that unless your mind’s already made up about what comes next? Around midnight, a license plate reader caught his white Volkswagen near a Troy petrol station, an hour south of Farmersville.

He stopped, filled up, paid, and drove north. Cell tower pings placed him heading up to Montgomery County. He was going straight for Leslie. What happened in that house comes from what the investigators found. Cold facts, physical evidence, no witnesses left to speak. But the scene said plenty. Investigators believe Leslie and Chris heard what was coming and tried to hold it back.

 Chris was bracing the door with his own weight when he was shot straight through it. He dropped. Leslie ran for the living room. She didn’t make it any further. One shot to her head. She was 45, still in her clothes from work. The pizza kept burning in the oven. It would be 12 hours before anyone found them.

 It’s one of the hardest parts of this story to sit with. She spent her life teaching other women how to protect themselves, and in the moment it mattered most, she never got the chance. Tarr was arrested the following day, the 26th of November, 2021. His own daughter contradicted his alibi from the next room.

 His own phone placed him on the road to Farmersville after midnight, and his response was that he did not remember. How do you not remember where you were on Thanksgiving night? A week after the shooting, Chris Smith was still in a medically induced coma. Robert Tarr called his friend Billy Adams from the jail. Tarr was unknowingly calling from a recorded line.

>> What’s your day look like today? Cuz I need 10 minutes of your time. >> He asked Adams to go to his house and find some deck brackets. >> I got some special aluminum brackets and that I need you to get because they’re for another job that I didn’t tell Dad about yet. So, don’t say nothing to him. >> They’re loose.

>> Yeah, get them and get rid of them. >> But Adams called the sheriff’s office instead. Deputies searched the property on their hands and knees. They found deck brackets exactly where Tarr had said, but no gun. They searched the whole property and found nothing. Days later, Tarr’s own brother called the Sheriff’s office and asked them to come back to the house.

 The family handed over a Ziploc bag they said they had found in the same yard the deputies had just finished searching. Inside the bag, a Springfield Hellcat 9 mm and silver-colored ammunition. The Illinois State Police confirmed it. This was the weapon that killed Leslie Reeves and put a bullet in Chris Smith’s brain.

The ammunition matched the two casings recovered from Naugatuck Street. On the Ziploc bag, Robert Tarr’s fingerprint. On the gun itself, no fingerprints, no DNA matching Tarr. But on the guide rod, a small internal component inside the barrel, was Leslie Reeves’ DNA. Howard Bolton, Leslie’s firearm instructor, explained what that meant.

 The guide rod is inside the mechanism. Leslie’s biological material could only have reached it one way. The weapon was fired at her at very close range and the force of the shot drove material from the impact back into the gun itself. Tarr’s explanation was that the Hellcat had belonged to Leslie, that she had bought it from him.

 Howard Bolton had stood at the range beside her on multiple occasions and had never once seen her use a Springfield Hellcat. In September 2022, a grand jury added two more counts, solicitation of murder for hire. An inmate alleged that Tarr had paid him $10,000 to kill Chris Smith, the only surviving witness, and to kill the lead detective on the case.

Tarr denied it and said he borrowed the inmate $10,000 for his bond. However, those charges were eventually dismissed. What remained was still more than enough. At this point, Chris was recovering, but had no memory of what happened. He didn’t even remember who Leslie was, the only witness that would have identified the assailant couldn’t remember a thing about that day.

 Prosecutors still pushed for a trial. The trial of Robert Tarr began on the 26th of April, 2024. Prosecutor Andrew Affrunti laid out the case step-by-step. The text to Billy Adams, the Facebook search for Chris Smith, the license plate reader, the petrol station receipt, his daughter’s account of the two departures, the crying, the laundry at 2:45 in the morning, the murder weapon with Leslie’s DNA on the guide rod, and Tarr’s fingerprint on the bag it came in.

 The jail call in which he asked a friend to go to his house and get rid of something he described as deck brackets. Tarr’s defense attorney, Dan Foltz, pointed to the absence of physical evidence directly connecting Tarr to the crime scene. No blood in his car, no DNA at the scene, no fingerprints on the gun. Tarr had not testified, a strategic decision, Foltz said, to stop further damaging evidence coming through cross-examination.

The defense asked the jury to find reasonable doubt in everything that was not there. The jury deliberated for 3 hours. Robert Tarr was found guilty on four counts. First degree murder for Leslie Reeves, attempted first degree murder for Chris Smith, and two firearm enhancements. The jury delivered the verdict on his 51st birthday.

On July 1, 2024, the judge sentenced him to 85 years in prison. He got 25 years for killing Leslie Reeves, 10 for trying to kill Chris Smith, and 25 more for each firearm charge. Illinois law says he has to serve at least 85% of that sentence before parole even comes up. Do the math and you land on August 21, ’01 is the earliest possible date he’d be eligible.

 He’s at Lawrence Correctional Center in Sumner, Illinois serving every day of those 85 years. It’s the firearm enhancements that push his sentence far beyond what it would have been. Without them, Tarr would have faced 35 years, a stretch a healthy 51-year-old could possibly survive. With them, he faces 85 and parole is a fantasy.

 21, ’01 is a lifetime away. The law makes something clear. The gun wasn’t just an accessory. It was the tool that made escape impossible for Leslie Reeves. She couldn’t run or fight back. The gun was the whole plan. That choice is what turned a man’s jealousy and rage into something final. It’s worth pausing on how the prosecution managed a conviction that carried real weight considering there was no recovered murder weapon, no Tarr DNA at the crime scene, no eyewitnesses.

 The evidence was purely circumstantial and it fit together tightly. The jury took just 3 hours to decide. Tarr will die in prison. The people who loved Leslie Reeves, who knew the risks she faced, who read her warnings, have at least that much justice. Chris Smith survived, but not untouched. He still has a bullet fragment lodged in his brain, a place too dangerous for surgeons to reach.

 His left leg is partially paralyzed from the hip down and completely from the knee to his foot. While in the hospital, he suffered three strokes. Doctors had to remove then replace part of his skull to relieve the pressure. But he wakes up early most mornings, heads to the gym, and rebuilds his strength inch by inch.

 Stubbornness is fueling him. While he healed, his house got sold at auction and was eventually torn down. He moved in with his mother, Sharon. Later, he met Michelle Albrecht, fell in love, and proposed to her on stage. One thing most stories skipped, Leslie Reeves spent her career making spaces and tools for women who needed to escape controlling relationships.

 She ran self-defense classes. She taught women they could protect themselves. She even named in a text message the man she feared most, the man who did end up killing her. She wasn’t naive. She saw all the signs. This is what happens in coercive relationships, even to people who recognize every warning.

 Awareness alone doesn’t break the cycle. Knowledge doesn’t hand you an exit. Even the self-defense instructor can’t always save herself. That is the part none of the headlines carried. The story they ran was about a first date gone wrong. The story that deserved to be told is about a woman who saw the danger clearly and was still somehow not fully free of it.

 And what that says about the nature of these situations that no amount of individual capability or intelligence reliably resolves. Leslie Reeves’ two children are now being raised by their father. Thank you for watching. If you found this one worth your time, please share it. Subscribe if you haven’t already, and we will see you in the next one.