Reginald Reed’s story of tragedy and healing revealed in new book
Author Reginald Reed Jr.’s mother, Selonia Reed, was brutally murdered in 1987 when he was six years old. Thirty-five years later, his beloved father was convicted of the heinous crime.
Although Reed’s story has been widely reported, including in a recent article in Newsweek, his new book is the first time he tells his own story. The day my mother never came home.
Part true crime, part memoir, Reed’s book traces his long journey from tragedy through confusion, mental difficulties and disillusionment to healing, professional success and starting a family in San Antonio.
Reed is humble about his circumstances. “I’m a regular person who has worked really hard, who has faced a lot of challenges in life and who continues to overcome challenges and just keeps fighting forward,” he said.
First a nightmare, then torture
The challenges Reed endured are nightmarish in every sense. In the book’s third chapter, he recounts his reconstructed memories of August 22, 1987, that fateful day in Hammond, Louisiana, when his mother never came home from a girls’ night out.
That lazy Saturday started with her cooking eggs and bacon before taking the family to the mall and buying a chocolate chip cookie that she still remembered. While his mother went out, Reed figured he and his father would play Nintendo late before falling asleep together in the living room.
Her life changed forever the next morning when the police arrived with the terrible news. The subsequent investigation did not find enough evidence and the case was closed.
Reed moves back and forth in time throughout the book, which is divided into four parts. The “Before” section offers details about his vibrant, loving mother and his own innocence as a young boy.
“The Now” begins with a Mother’s Day visit on behalf of his father to the Tangipahoa Parish Jail in Louisiana and ends with a nostalgic visit to the old family home. Reed shows deep compassion for the situation of the man he grew up with, now in prison suffering abuse and neglect, committed to the Bible and maintaining his innocence.
Part three, “The Wait,” reveals the frank but nearly incomprehensible details of his mother’s violent death in the official autopsy report and in a crime scene video that leaves him miserable on the courthouse bathroom floor after it is shown at his father’s trial.
The final section, “The Trial,” details the ordeal he and his father endured during the trial, which resulted in the jury finding his father guilty of joint murder after three hours and eleven minutes of deliberation and sentencing him to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Love for family
Reed openly admits that he still finds it difficult to tell his story, but believes that sharing is a crucial part of the healing process.
“When I tell the story, sometimes I’m still human and I catch my breath because it’s true. It’s real life. And it goes on,” he said.
In the book, he reveals both his healing process and details of the crime that haunted his life.
Through self-awareness, he learned that he tends to protect himself by holding back his feelings and keeping others at a distance, which is a natural, limiting behavior in people who have experienced trauma in their childhood. Yet his determination to love his family has helped him open up to the vulnerability he needs to feel in order to overcome the challenges his past has forced upon him.
When asked what coping mechanisms he uses when he feels overwhelmed, Reed bluntly replied that he remembers to take deep breaths and that an informal meditation practice in which he sits alone in a quiet place has helped him immensely.
Reed now works in the pharmaceutical industry and is raising a young son with his wife, who is a lawyer. The couple recently welcomed a daughter.
The ongoing part of the story is that it remains unresolved. A heartbreaking chapter at the end of the book, titled “Dear Papa,” is a letter to his imprisoned namesake, a frank confrontation with some incriminating facts that may have sealed his father’s fate. But Reed’s tone is loving, and he explains in the next chapter that he takes his father’s collect calls from prison, no questions asked, whenever they come in.
At the end of the book, Reed makes it clear that love in the family is always renewed, regardless of the circumstances, and this is reflected in the names he and his wife chose for their son and newborn daughter.
Copies of his book will be available during an author event with Reed at Barnes & Noble, 321 Northwest Loop 410, at 1 p.m. Saturday and can otherwise be ordered online.
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About The Author
