A first date can be both exciting & nerve wracking as you interact with a new person with the pressure to impress & put your best face forward. As the date comes to an end, those involved will ask themselves if there was a connection, if there will be a second date. This particular first date ends in absolute tragedy & only one of the two involved survive.
It was the night before Thanksgiving 2021, Wednesday, November 24 when Leslie Reeves & Chris Smith met up for their first date after meeting online. Chris was a 48-year-old divorced father who worked for a pool contracting company. He was known around town as a nice guy who gave back to his community & grew banana trees & massive pumpkins. He was a laid back guy who enjoyed spending time at his house, tending to his backyard alongside his beagle/terrier mix, Tiki.
Meanwhile, Leslie was a 45-year-old divorced mom of two who lived an hour south of Farmersville in Troy. She had a master’s degree in engineering & a passion for teaching pilates as well as self-defense classes for women. According to a video she posted to YouTube, it was her mission for women to empower themselves against aggression & assault as we teach you to learn self-defense techniques.. Power up!
Despite her engineering degree, Leslie decided to pursue her passion when she opened the All You Studio & Party Place in Troy, where advocated against domestic violence & was heavily involved in her local community.
On Thanksgiving, the day after Leslie & Chris’ date, Nanette Stuiber began to worry when she was unable to get a hold of her good friend, Leslie. She knew that Leslie had been very excited about meeting Chris & hoped they would have a connection. Knowing that her friend had gone to Chris’ home in the tiny village of Farmersville, Illinois, which was 23 miles south of the capitol of Springfield.
Nanette decided to call 911 to request a welfare check & as she arrived at Chris’ house, her anxiety grew as she watched Montgomery County Sheriff Deputies & EMTs running into the house. She was sick with worry, waiting to hear what was going on when she watched as Chris was taken away in an ambulance. There was no sign of her friend & she hoped & prayed to see Leslie come out of the house.
Soon, detectives approached Nanette & asked her for a photo of Leslie. When she handed her phone over, they told her the devastating news, I’m sorry to have to tell you this.. Your friend has, um, been murdered. They elaborated that she had been shot & tried to give her at least some sense of comfort when they told her that Leslie’s death would have been very quick.
When EMTs came into the house, they found Chris inside the kitchen, barely conscious & unable to speak. He was rushed to the hospital & deputies began to search the house. They found that the glass on the side door to the house had been broken out, the refrigerator had been pulled away from the wall, a pizza was charred inside the oven, the kitchen table was shifted & the chairs had been knocked over. It was clear that chaos had occurred inside the home. With the evidence presented, paired with the fact that a gun was not located at the scene, investigators assumed that a third person had been involved.
The picture told the story that Leslie & Chris had been cooking a pizza when their assailant approached the side door. It was obvious that they’d both tried to fend off their attacker & when shots were fired at Chris, Leslie ran to the living room in an attempt to hide when she died from a single gunshot wound to the head. Bullet casings from a 9 mm gun were found in the kitchen & another in the living room near Leslie’s body.
Josh Easton of the Illinois State Police indicated that of the nearly 2,000 cases he had covered, this was the worst crime scene he had ever seen. There was wall to wall blood in the kitchen, covering the cabinets, refrigerator & countertop.
Chris’ family believe that his dog, Tiki, likely helped him get through the night by cuddling by his side for twelve hours as he lay on the floor bleeding. No one in Chris’ family could wrap their heads around who would have been capable of going to his house with the intention of killing him.
As investigators spoke with those close to Leslie, they indicated that she was a magnetic person who had the ability of making you feel like you were the only person in the world who existed. In an ironic twist, despite the fact that Leslie tried to help women in abusive relationships, she herself was having issues. Nanette explained that Leslie had been fearful of an ex-boyfriend, a contractor & a divorced father of three by the name of Robert Tarr, who went by Bobby.
Bobby lived in Collinsville, a fifteen minute drive from where Leslie was living in Troy & they had an on-again, off-again relationship. Leslie told Nanette that she was planning on blocking Bobby from all forms of communication.
As Thanksgiving wore on, word of Leslie’s murder began to spread when another friend, Amy Steinhaur, learned the horrific news. She had previously met Bobby & did not have a good impression of him. She decided to contact detectives with her concerns, but by then, they were already looking for the man.
In the meantime, surgeon’s were working tirelessly to save Chris’ life & discovered that a bullet was still lodged in his brain. Chris’ mother, Sharon Costanza, rushed to make the two hour drive to the hospital in Springfield. Chris had been placed in a medically induced coma after doctors removed part of his skull & bullet fragments from his brain.
As family gathered at Chris’ bedside, they learned that he had been on a date with Leslie at the time they were ambushed in his home. They began to look Leslie up online, never having heard her name before & soon got in touch with her best friend, Nanette. She told the family that she suspected that Bobby Tarr had been responsible for the shootings.
Meanwhile, investigators traveled to Tarr’s home in Collinsville, an hour south of Chris’ home & when he was told that they needed him to come to the station for questioning, he never asked why, but agreed to go & didn’t request a lawyer.
Despite the fact that all of Leslie’s friends indicated that they had broken up, Tarr claimed that they were still together. When asked if they had any issues in their relationship, he told them no more than the average couple. When they told him that Leslie was dead, he acted surprised as he said, What? When he asked how she died, they told him that she had been murdered & he denied any involvement in her death.
When he was asked if he knew where Farmersville was, he said that not only had he never been there, but he had never even heard of it. He told detectives that on the night in question, he had gone to a friend’s house which was near his own, to pick up some money & was home by about 6:30 pm & he stayed in for the rest of the night. According to Tarr, his 17-year-old daughter, Shelby, could verify his alibi.
Investigators believed that Chris & Leslie had been shot in the early morning hours of Thanksgiving, somewhere around 1 am. They learned that for their first date, they headed to the Uptown Saloon where Chris’ friend’s band was playing. Afterwards, they went back to Chris’ house & put a pizza in the oven.
Tarr’s daughter, Shelby, was brought into the station & placed in a separate room from her father & when she was questioned about Wednesday night, she told them that her father hadn’t actually been home all night & instead, went out twice. The first time he left was somewhere around 6:30 pm, which was the time that he indicated he came home from his friend’s house. According to Shelby, he came home about thirty minutes later. It wasn’t long before he said he had to go back out again & left the house for about two hours when he came back at about 9:15 pm. When he came back home this time, Shelby could see that her dad seemed upset to the point that he was sobbing, saying that he missed Leslie.
Shelby said that she went to bed right around 9:30 pm & woke up to the sound of her father at about 2:45 am. He told her that he was unable to sleep & she noted that he was pacing around & started a load of laundry.
With this information, detectives went back in to speak with Tarr about the fact that his story didn’t match his daughter’s recollection of events. Suddenly, he changed his story & told investigators that he’d actually gone to his friend’s house twice that night, but insisted that he was back home for the night by 8 pm.
As officers were speaking to Tarr at the station, his home was being searched & they located his phone & a Glock pistol. Shelby indicated that her father owned a different gun, one that investigators were unable to locate. She explained that it was big & Army green in color & she had last seen it the day before Thanksgiving when she went to grab a pair of socks.
As authorities continued to investigate, Tarr remained at the station overnight as evidence continued to stack up against him. His license plate was captured by reader cameras just after midnight on Thanksgiving, the day of the shooting. His car was seen near a gas station & investigators later learned that he had purchased gas there just after midnight.
When confronted at the station with the gas receipt, he was accused of being a liar & argued that he simply didn’t recall stopping for gas. This is despite the fact that he was firm on the fact that first he was home by 6:30 pm & later, by 8 pm, yet somehow forgot about being out after midnight.
The gas station in question was near Tarr’s house, an hour from the crime scene in Farmersville. This was a glaring red flag since it was in direct contrast to his initial statement that he had been home all night, on a night that an ex-girlfriend & her date had been gun down execution-style & investigators believed that it was significant because he wouldn’t have lied about it if he’d had nothing to do with the shootings. With this information, he was placed under arrest.
It was important that investigators place Tarr in custody, fearful for Chris’ safety since they had yet to locate the murder weapon. He was charged with Leslie’s murder & Chris’ attempted murder & remained firm that investigators had gotten the wrong guy.
When Tarr later spoke with journalists from 48 Hours, he finally admitted to being at Chris’ house on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. It should be noted that this was after he was firm on the fact that he’d never heard of let alone been to Farmersville. He indicated that he’d bumped into Leslie while she was working a shift at her part-time job at a Loft store.
They got to chatting & she told him that she had plans to meet some friends since another friend was playing in a band that night. She asked him if he wanted to go too, but he explained that his youngest daughter was staying with him for the week & declined the invitation.
According to Tarr, after he declined the invitation, Leslie asked him if he could follow her to Farmersville since her van was unreliable & she feared getting stranded on the side of the road. This statement made absolutely no sense to Leslie’s friends because she was terrified of him & said that she was going to block him from all forms of communication. It was very clear to those close to Leslie that this story was nothing more than a blatant lie.
In fact, only weeks earlier Leslie told her friend that while she was on a first date with another guy, Tarr had turned up. Because of this, she was growing fearful of him & his unpredictable, stalking behavior. Most chilling, Leslie had even said to Amy, I could literally be killed by him someday if I don’t cut all contact.
Tarr continued on with his story & indicated that he agreed to follow her to Farmersville & they arrived at about 7:30 pm. He said he parked in front of her van in front of Chris’ house & that’s as far as he went. He said he never went into the house. simply left & never came back to Farmersville again.
If this was the truth, why had he lied to investigators when questioned about his whereabouts on Wednesday night? He explained that because there was tension between Leslie & his daughter, he didn’t want Shelby to know that he’d been with her. Even upon his arrest, he never once corrected these lies. He was, however, very quick to point out the lack of physical evidence that would place him at the crime scene. When his white Jetta was searched, there was no incriminating evidence found inside such as blood. This was also the case when his clothing & shoes were inspected. As with the car, his DNA was not found at Chris’ home.
One week after the shootings, investigators received a phone call from Billy Adams, a friend of Tarr’s. According to Adams, Tarr called him from jail & the two spoke in a recorded conversation. Tarr told Adams that he needed ten minutes of his time & asked him to go to his house & look for some deck brackets.
He elaborated that there were aluminum brackets that were for another job & he had yet to tell his dad about them, so he asked Adams to keep quiet about it. Instead of looking for the brackets, Adams contacted investigators who believed that Tarr was likely speaking in code, fully aware that the conversation was being recorded.
With this, they headed back over to Tarr’s home & began searching the yard on their hands & knees for a gun. Rather than coming across a gun, they found deck brackets.
Several days later, they received another call, this time from Tarr’s brother. He asked them to come back to Tarr’s house & the family handed over a Ziploc bag which they’d found in the yard that had been searched only days earlier. The bag contained a Springfield Hellcat 9 mm pistol with silver-colored ammunition that just so happened to match the casings found at the crime scene.
In his defense, Tarr indicated that he has no idea how the gun got there, claiming that he must have been set up. This is despite the fact that his own fingerprint had been found on the Ziploc bag. He claimed that had he been responsible for the shootings, he would never have been stupid enough to bring the murder weapon back to his house & pointed out that neither his fingerprints nor his DNA was found on the gun. The lack of evidence on the gun only solidified that the weapon had been cleaned.
There was one spot of DNA found on the weapon, which belonged to Leslie, that was located on the guide rod of the gun. This evidence made it obvious that after Tarr utilized the weapon, he cleaned it, but happened to miss a spot. He was firm on the fact that the gun didn’t belong to him; he admitted that, yes, he had purchased it, but then Leslie bought it from him.
Investigators turned to a close friend of Leslie’s, Howard Bolton, who was also a firearm instructor & very well aware of what guns Leslie owned. He indicated that Leslie often met him at the shooting range & she was becoming a very good shot. She even arranged a class called, Girls with Guns not long before she was murdered. Bolton indicated that he had never seen Leslie utilize the Hellcat.
This told detectives that Leslie’s DNA would have gotten on the guide rod of the gun if it had been fired at her at close range.
Tarr was indicted by a grand jury on two counts of solicitation of murder based on allegations by an inmate who told investigators that Tarr offered to pay him $10,000 to shoot & kill not only Chris, but also the lead detective on the case. Tarr claims that this is a lie & the $10,000 in question was a loan he’d given his cellmate for his bond.
Chris, meanwhile, didn’t regain consciousness for another two months, in January 2022. When he woke, everyone wondered what he would remember from that horrible night. Sadly, not only did Chris not remember a moment from the night of the attack, he had no idea who Leslie Reeves even was despite the fact that they had been talking on the phone & texting for two weeks before their first date.
As Chris recovered, he focused on intense physical therapy to regain the strength he lost from being in a coma for two months. His left leg is partially paralyzed from his hip to his knee & fully paralyzed from his knee to his toes. After his release from the hospital, he worked out at the gym most mornings, hoping to one day walk again without assistance, desperately hoping to get his previous life back. He went on to recover enough to be back as the lead singer in his band despite the fact that he lives with part of the hollow-point bullet still lodged in his brain. Since the location is too dangerous, doctors have chosen to leave it in place.
Chris has since moved back in with his mom & no longer lives with his beloved dog, Tiki, but often visits her. He’s not able to see his 12-year-old daughter as much as he would like since he’s unable to make the nearly two hour drive from St. Louis where he’s currently living. He indicates that he & his daughter were always two peas in a pod & he misses her desperately.
Bobby Tarr’s trial began in April 2024, but Chris refused to attend, far too angry to sit there & listen. Meanwhile, Tarr indicated that he looked forward to convincing the jury that he was not a violent man; he indicated that it’s not in his nature & he didn’t lose it & snap.
Prosecutors told the jury that Tarr was a man who refused to allow Leslie to live a life that didn’t include him. He was unable to handle the fact that she had moved on & was going to see another man. What Leslie was unaware of as she headed to Farmersville for her first date with Chris Smith was that Tarr was secretly following her. It was clear that Tarr was aware of Chris Smith as search of his phone proved that he had tried to find his Facebook profile.
He then headed home & texted his friend, Billy Adams & told him that he didn’t believe that Leslie would drive that far away to go out with a girlfriend & he suspected that she was meeting a dude. He also made searches to determine if police would be able to track his phone if he was using a virtual private network or VPN. He was trying to figure out if it would hide his location if he did.
At about midnight on Thanksgiving 2021, he left his home & stopped off at a gas station. Surveillance videos as well as cell phone towers proved that he then drove to Farmersville with the intention of killing both Leslie & Chris.
In this case, one victim is dead & the other has zero memory of the night in question, so no one will ever know exactly what happened when he arrived. Evidence has painted a picture that he tried to enter through the back door of Chris’ house sometime after 1 am, but Leslie & Chris tried to prevent him from entering. As he gained access to the house, there was a struggle in the kitchen & glass was broken. Chairs were flipped over, the table was moved & the refrigerator was pulled away from the wall. Investigators believe that Leslie was trying to use the refrigerator to block the door & based on where Chris was shot in the head, he was likely crouched down, trying to help her at the time.
While this was happening, it’s theorized that Tarr shot through the window & struck Chris in the head. Leslie was probably shocked & terrified & fled to the living room to hide. Sadly, Tarr managed to enter the home, find her & shoot her once in the head execution style.
Defense attorney Dan Fulz argues that there is no evidence to support this theory & points out that there is no blood or fingerprints from Leslie on the refrigerator. He believes that based on the significant amount of blood inside the kitchen, Chris likely struggled with his assailant in the kitchen. Fulz indicates that this person was not Tarr & had it been, he would have been covered in blood which would have then transferred to his car.
Prosecutors argue this point by saying that the house was not bloody at the time Tarr fled the crime scene since Chris bled heavily over the next 12 hours until EMS & officers arrived. It was true that forensic evidence was lacking in this case, but the lies he told in the interrogation room, the activity found on his phone, the license plate tracking & the discovery of the gun fully proved his guilt. As the evidence came together, it painted the picture of exactly what happened that night.
All along, Tarr maintained his innocence & said that he wanted to tell his story to the jury, but when it came down to it, he chose not to testify as his attorney felt it could open the door to a slew of damning evidence during his cross examination. The defense didn’t call any witnesses forward & instead, hoped that the jury would find reasonable doubt.
After three hours of deliberation, the jury found Bobby Tarr guilty of first-degree murder & attempted murder on what was incidentally his 51st birthday. Two months later, it was time for his sentencing & this time, Chris Smith was in attendance. Chris spoke of the way that his life had been affected since that horrible night & described that he basically lost his life without being killed. While hospitalized in a coma, looters combed through Chris’ house & stole his guitar, his amps & even his above ground pool. His house has since been sold at an auction & torn down with nothing more than an empty lot to show for it.
Tarr spoke out, maintaining his innocence & the judge sentenced him to 85 years in prison.
Meanwhile, Leslie’s friends & family are left to wade through their grief & focus on keeping her memory alive. They remember her as a very good mother who lived for her kids, went through life spreading love & positivity & had always been a champion of women’s safety & protection, strongly advocating for women who were abused. They also want to remind people to be careful; if it could happen to Leslie, it could happen to anyone.
Chris Smith also advocates for men to seek help if they want to hurt a woman. He mourns his old life & is currently writing a book about what his life has looked like since he was shot. During a moment on stage, he proposed to his new love, Michelle Albrect, who accepts him just the way he is. Chris wants to remind people to never give up no matter how bad things might get in life. He hopes to one day be a motivational speaker.
Chris recently started utilizing a Bioness L300 which is a wireless device he wears on his leg to help with his mobility. He’s now finally able to move his leg & up & down & during an interview, he indicated that he was able to walk three miles over the course of two days.
Leslie’s two children are being raised by their father & Bobby Tarr is still awaiting trial on solicitation of murder charges.
It’s important to remember that love shouldn’t hurt; if you or someone you know is a victim of domestic violence, 24/7 help is available at the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233.
References:
- CBS News: An Illinois couple’s first date ended in horror after both were shot; only one survived
- CBS News: Illinois shooting survivor defies the odds after taking bullet to the brain
- The Intelligencer: 5 things to know about Leslie Reeves’ murder case on ‘48 Hours’
- 5 On Your Side: ‘Never give up’: Shooting survivor grateful for gunman’s conviction as he works to rebuild life
