Texas executes more death row prisoners than any other state; So far 10 have been put to death this year

At least one of Fennnell's sexual assault victims has publicly joined the effort to stop Reed's impending execution

He was never considered a suspect in the investigation, despite proving

Family members of a 19-year-old woman who was raped and murdered nearly two decades ago are now coming forward to voice their belief that the man about to be executed for her death is innocent.

Rodney Reed is scheduled to be put to death in January, after being found guilty for the 1996 murder of Stacey Stites, the engaged Giddings, Texas woman he was allegedly having an affair with at the time.

But dozens of family and friends of both Reed and the victim believe it was Stites' violent and controlling fiancé Jimmy Lewis Fennell, Jr, a former cop, who actually carried out the crime, and that he escaped suspicion due to a botched police investigation and rushed criminal trial.

Fennell is currently serving a 10-year sentence for raping a woman in 2007 while on duty in Georgetown, Texas. That victim has also joined the last-ditch effort to save Reed before it's too late.

'I just know he did [it],' Stites' cousin Judy Mitchell told The Intercept. 'We’ve got to do something to stop this execution.,'

Innocent? Rodney Reed (left) is scheduled to be executed on January 14, 2015, for the 1996 murder of 19-year-old Stacey Stites (right), a woman he was allegedly having an affair with at the time. Dozens of Stites' family members are now coming forward to say they believe Reed is innocent

Mitchell is part of a group that is sending outgoing Texas Governor Rick Perry a letter to stall the execution so that the case can be reviewed.

'We have to stand up and say, look, there are too many questions to execute a man without them all being answered,' she added.

Texas executes more death row prisons than any other state, by a wide margin. In 2014 alone, 10 capital convicts have been put to death.

Stites' body was found dumped on the side of a road the afternoon of April 23, 1996 - nearly 12 hours after she failed to show up for her early-morning shift stocking produce at a local grocery store.

History of violence: Former Georgetown, Texas police officer Jimmy Lewis Fennell Jr (above) was never considered a suspect in his fiancée Stites' murder, though he proved deceptive on polygraph tests. He is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence for an unrelated sexual assault case, and Reed's defenders believe he is the real murderer

The land appraiser who discovered Stites' body found her twisted at the waist, with her arms awkwardly positioned over her head. Her shirt was off, her pants zipper was broken and her underwear was visible.

Close by, a balled up white shirt and belt were found, with ligature marks on her throat matching those of the belt, showing that she had been strangled.

Stites was officially reported missing at 7am that morning, after her mother Carol received a phone call from a co-worker that Stites never showed up for work and that Fennell's red truck, which she was supposed to be driving, was found abandoned in a school parking lot 10 miles from her body.

Carol immediately called to inform her daughter's fiancé, who she says was sleeping in the apartment the couple shared above her home. Fennell then rushed out of the house to aid in the search for his girlfriend.

The case went cold for nearly a year, and during that time Fennell himself was never taken seriously as a suspect, with investigators saying the timeline didn't pan out.

Lead investigator Lynn 'Rocky' Wardlow said Fennell wouldn't have had enough time to kill his fiancée, drop her body, park the car before it was first spotted at 5:30am, and then walk the 30 miles back home to answer a phone call about her disappearance at 6:45am.

'Logistically speaking, it was not possible,' Wardlow said.

However, Wardlow was also the person who decided not to search the couples' home, and Fennell was never questioned about what he and Stites did the day before her murder.

We have to stand up and say, look, there are too many questions to execute a man without them all being answered Judy Mitchell, cousin of murder victim Stacey Stites

Suspiciously, Fennell also proved deceptive during a polygraph test in which he was asked to detail his whereabouts that morning and if he had strangled his girlfriend.

Instead, blame eventually landed on Reed, a 29-year-old local man who had been accused in a series of other sexual assaults - though he had never been convicted in any case. Investigators decided to compare sperm found inside Stites with that of DNA collected in a different case in which Reed was accused of sexual assault, and the samples matched.

From there, the state built their case around Reed, saying he somehow overtook Stites on her way to work, assaulted and strangled her and then dumped her body on the side of the road. They say he then abandoned her truck in a school parking lot and ran to the nearby home he shared with his parents.

DNA evidence: Stites' body was found dumped on the side of the road in April 1996. Blame eventually fell on Reed, whose DNA matched samples found on her body (pictured above)

Dating: However, Reed argued that the two were in a consensual relationship at the time and that the DNA could have been from when they had sex two days prior

While Reed at first denied any knowledge of Stites, by the time the case went to trial in May 1998, he admitted he was having an affair with her behind Fennell's back and that the sperm found inside her was from when they had consensual sex two days prior. The two apparently kept the affair a secret for fear of blacklash in the southern town, since Reed is black and Stites was white.

There were several family members and friends of Reed willing to back the relationship up, including a bail bond agent, bar owner, neighbor and others who had seen the two acting like a couple in public.

One of Reed's cousins, a man named Chris Aldridge, even provided Reed with an alibi for the time of Stites' murder, saying they hung out at a lot near his home until 5am and then walked to work together.

Aldridge also revealed that Fennell had become aware of the affair and that he was with his cousin in early 1996 when Fennelll ordered them inside a police cruiser and said Reed would 'pay' for sleeping with his fiancée, a story that was corroborated by another friend.

However, only one person testified in court to the relationship, since Reed's court appointed attorneys did not want to open up the other witnesses to tough cross-examinations which could hinder the case due to their individual criminal histories.

Appealing: Repeated petitions to get new evidence heard in Reed's case have been denied. However, a lawyer at the Innocence Project is now representing Reed and is hoping that will change on November 25, when they have a hearing to consider further DNA testing

The case also fell apart on the more damning DNA evidence, since the medical examiner at the time said the semen sample could not have been from two days prior.

Years later, he edited his opinion, saying that since he found 'very few' sperm it could have been left over from an earlier time. He also added that her injuries appeared to be 'more consistent with penetration by a rod-like instrument, such as a police baton'.

Reed's legal team could have called their own expert to testify that sperm can survive for longer than 26 hours, but it was one of the oversights they made in rushing to put together their case. When jury selection began in March 1998, Reed's lawyers petitioned the judge to grant them more time to work on the case, but that request was denied despite the fact that neither of them had spent more than 40 hours working on the case until the week before.

The trial lasted two weeks, and an all-white jury convicted Reed as Stites' murderer. Due to Texas law, several women who accused Reed of sexually assaulting them were able to speak at his sentencing hearing, despite Reed never being convicted in any of the cases.

With so much stacked against him, Reed was sentenced to death on May 29, 1998.

Losing hope: This November, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Reed's case, without issuing comment. Reed's mother Sandra Reed is pictured outside the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on March 19, 2008

A crucial piece of evidence that would have helped Reed's case, had it been highlighted when he was first on trial, was DNA evidence on a pair of beer cans found near Stites' body. One of the cans had a sample belonging to Fennell's close friend and neighbor, fellow-police officer David Hall.

That evidence was first reported in the middle of Reed's trial, and was never disclosed to his lawyers. Reed's defenders believe it is evidence that Fennell's fellow officers helped him cover up Stites' murder. In fact, Fennell, though only a rookie cop at the time of his fiancée's death, already had a history of misconduct in the department, and was aided in some of these cases by other officers .

Three incidents in which Fennell was accused of stalking and harassment happened in the months just before and after Stites' death, showing him as a man who could be frighteningly obsessive and violent.

The first complaint came from a woman named Wendy Wallace who says Fennell followed her around town and that she eventually received a call from a police dispatcher to step outside her home one night and meet with Fennell's friend Hall.

Reed (center) pictured getting a visit behind bars from his brother Richard (left) and mother Sandra (right)

Bryan McCann, a member of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, holds up a poster in support of Reed outside the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on March 19, 2008

Two months before Stites' death, a man named Mario Murillo was beaten up by two officers including Fennell who held a gun to his head during the episode, which was eventually broken up by a county Sheriff's deputy.

The third incident happened just three months after Stites' death when Fennell quickly moved on and started dating a woman named Pam Duncan. When Duncan tried to break up with Fennell for being 'possessive and jealous', Fennell went on to stalk her for month, and would drive by her house late at night shining his police light through her window and calling her a b****. When she finally filed a police report, an officer came to her house and said that Fennell would be leaving her alone. But when a friend went to go get a copy of the report, there was no record at police headquarters.

Reed pictured above with his mother and father during a prison visit in 2013

Another account that wasn't heard until 2000 comes from a Dallas-area police officer who attended crime-scene training with Fennell in 1995. The officer said that at training Fennell detailed how he would strangle his girlfriend with a belt if he ever caught her cheating, to avoid leaving fingerprints on her neck.

For unknown reasons, Fennell's department appears to have ignored these episodes and Reed's lawyers were never aware of them to paint him as a potential suspect at trial.

Eventually Fennell found himself behind bars in 2007, when he was convicted of raping 20-year-old Connie Lear - a woman he was supposed to transport to the police station.

After the attack, Fennell threatened to hunt her down and kill her if she ever told anyone, but she bravely reported the crime. During the trial, several more victims came forward with similar stories of assault at the hands of Fennell.

Reed has continued to fight for his innocence, despite roadblocks in Texas and federal court where he has not been granted hearings to review new scientific evidence or witnesses to Fennell's disturbing history of violence.

Texas' highest criminal court wrote in 2009 that the accounts 'other than showing that Fennell has engaged in despicable and reprehensible conduct as an officer…the information does not exonerate Reed of Stacey’s murder.'

On November 3, the U.S. Supreme Court also declined to hear the case, without issuing a comment. In July, his execution date was set for January 14, 2014.

Lawyer Bryce Benjet of the Innocence Project is now working to help Reed's case, and is petitioning that more DNA testing be done on the belt and parts of Stites' pants which have never been tested before.

'[F]rankly, what we’re asking for is, I think, a pretty conservative thing,' Benjet said. 'To do DNA testing of evidence before you execute someone.” A November 25 hearing has been scheduled to consider the request.'

Fennell is set to be released from prison in September 2018.



