Louisiana man convicted in mother’s 1987 Hammond murder after decades-long probe

A Louisiana appeals court on May 13, 2025, upheld the murder conviction and life sentence of Reginald Reed Sr., closing a decades-long hunt for the killer of his wife, Selonia Reed. The ruling kept in place a sentence of life imprisonment at hard labor without parole, probation or suspension of sentence.

Selonia Reed was 26 when she was killed in Hammond in August 1987, and her son, Reggie Reed Jr., was 6. Reed Sr. reported her missing on August 24, 1987, telling police she had not come home after a night out with a friend. Officers later found Selonia Reed’s body in her vehicle near John’s Curb Market in Hammond. An autopsy determined she died the night of August 23, 1987, from multiple stab wounds to the chest and neck.

Court records show Reed Sr. was considered the primary suspect early in the case, but no arrest came for more than three decades. Investigators documented scratches on his neck after the killing, and Reed Sr. said they were caused by the family dog. Records also show he had taken out several life insurance policies on Selonia Reed that were active at the time of her death. Detectives later found that the missing-person account Reed Sr. gave did not match the friend he named, and testimony described the Reed home as recently cleaned and “immaculate.”

The case remained cold until a renewed review pushed it back to the forefront. In 2012, a Texas Ranger visited Reggie Reed Jr. in San Antonio to ask questions about his mother’s murder, helping revive the inquiry. Louisiana State Police detective Barry Ward and others later reopened the investigation, which led to indictments against Reed Sr. and Jimmy Ray Barnes in 2019. Reed Sr. was arrested on June 21, 2019, and sentenced on January 30, 2023.

For Reggie Reed Jr., the case carried a private rupture as well as a criminal one. CBS’s 48 Hours revisited the case on June 27, 2026, focusing on the shock of learning that the man who raised him and whom he called his “rock” had been the main suspect from the beginning. The program also noted that Reggie was interviewed by police as a child while sitting next to his father, and that Reed Sr. said he was playing video games with his son during the time in question, raising the possibility that Reggie had been used as an alibi.

Reggie Reed Jr. later turned that history into a memoir, The Day My Mother Never Came Home, published in 2024. The book lays out the confusion, psychological pain and unanswered questions that followed Selonia Reed’s killing, a grief that lasted from the 1987 homicide to the final appellate ruling nearly 38 years later.