Victim in 20 Year Old Utah Cold Case Identified as Lena Reyes-Geddes

April 02, 2022

In Garfield County, Utah in April of 1998 a civilian passing through State route 276 milepost 8 noticed something suspicious on the roadside near Lake Powell and Ticaboo. A large bundle, roughly the length and dimensions of a human body, had been discarded just off the side of the road. The passerby contacted the local Garfield County Sheriff’s department and officers were quickly dispatched to the scene. When they unrolled the large rug they discovered a sleeping bag inside. Inside the sleeping bag was a patchwork of various plastic trash bags secured with duct tape and bound with rope. Nobody at the scene had a good feeling about what they were about to discover as they cut away and peeled off the layers of tape and plastic.

Inside the discarded bundle they found the body of a woman who had had wounds indicating that she had died as a result of a gunshot to the head. Autopsy would later confirm this to be true. Her fingers had been cut off in what is thought to have been an attempt to conceal her identity. The woman came to be known as “the maidenwater victim”. Her stats were input into online databases which described her as Hispanic or Native American with dark eyes, dark shoulder length hair, a freckled complexion and tattooed brows.

(Source. The Utah department of public safety released an autopsy photograph in an attempt to identify the victim)

Despite efforts to identify her nobody came forward and she remained nameless for over 20 years- that is until, an online sleuth with an interest in unsolved cases and missing people came across the autopsy images of Jane Doe on an online database for unidentified people. She compared the image of the nameless victim to that of many missing women matching the description of Jane Doe and eventually stumbled upon someone she believed shared a likeness. She tipped off the relevant authorities who then got to work testing the DNA of the unidentified woman and comparing it to the DNA submitted by the missing woman's family members. The results came back a positive match and Jane Doe was finally identified as a woman who had been missing for 20 years named Lena Reyes-Geddes.

 The police contacted Geddes’ sister in Mexico who filled in the blanks. She explained that Lena was also from Mexico but had moved to Ohio around 1996, just a couple of years before she had went missing. Because her family expected her to make it to either Dallas or Mexico, they did not consider looking for her elsewhere.

She was married to a man named Edward Geddes and the two resided in Austintown, Ohio. Lena had plans to travel to Dallas, Texas and then on to Mexico to visit family and friends leaving on April 8th, but she never made it. After she failed to make contact with family for several months her husband officially reported her missing to the police.

Her husband was originally considered a suspect in the case right up until his suicide several years later. Police admitted to the media that they no longer considered him a suspect in the case. Although they are elated that the “Maidenwater victim” has been identified after all these years the question still remains- who killed Lena Reyes-Geddes and why?

Convicted killer Scott Lee “Hannibal” Kimball is also considered a possible suspect in the case as he was in the area at the time the crime and he was known for using the same knots as those found to bind Geddes’ body.

 Kimball was doing time for various crimes including fraud, when he managed to convince the FBI that he would be useful as an informant. He was released to track a witness in a case revolving around a meth ring, the witness was a 25 year old woman named Jennifer Marcum and the case was being built around her ex-boyfriend Steve Ennis. Ennis and Kimball were prison friends.

Scott Kimball befriended Marcum and convinced her that he could get her a better job, she eventually moved in with him. Later, Kimball informed the FBI that Jennifer had caught a flight to New York City with the intention of killing another witness in the case. Her car was parked in the parking lot but there was no record of her ever catching a flight to NYC. They would later discover that he had killed her.

He would go on to kill three more people (including his own uncle) throughout 2003 – 2004.

He killed 24 year old LeAnn Emry in 2003. Emry told her parents that she had plans to travel with friends to Mexico and go on a caving trip, but in reality she had gotten herself tangled up with Kimball, who was going by the name “Hannibal”. She reportedly got too deep into money laundering and fraud with Kimball and realized her life was in danger. She had a prison boyfriend that no one in her family knew about and was leading a secret double life in the criminal underground. She was eventually found murdered in a Colorado forest with a bullet wound to the head. Her car was found abandoned in Utah. Emry had struggled with bipolar disorder and had suffered at the hands of an abusive partner. She, like all of Kimball’s victims, was vulnerable- just the way he liked it.

 19 year old Kaysie McLeod went missing after an argument with her mother. She fell in with the wrong crowd at school and started using meth. Luckily she managed to get clean, swore off drugs and managed to get her life on track and get a job at the local Subway. When her mother found drugs in the house she accused Kaysie of using again, Kaysie denied the drugs were hers, even offering to take a test to prove it. She ran out of the house after the fight and was never seen again. Her parents became worried after she neglected to show up to her shift at Subway, which was very out of character. They reported her missing but since she was an adult the police told them there was nothing they could do and that she had voluntarily left of her own accord.

Kaysie’s parents had split when she was a kid and her mother had recently got into a relationship with Scott Lee Kimball. Although her new boyfriend had been unaccounted for on the same weekend that her daughter went missing, she failed to see him as a suspect and instead thought of him as a valuable asset to finding her teenage daughter. She believed that since he worked as an FBI informant that he had connections that could help her find Kaysie. In reality he strung her along and fed her lies about sightings and witness accounts confirming her to be alive and in the area. The tragic reality was that he had killed her after offering her a lift to her job from the hotel she was staying at. Evidence was later found amongst Kimball’s things, including part of her uniform, shoes and cable ties.

Kimball even killed his own uncle when he came to visit in 2004. After the man went missing Kimball told anyone that asked that his 60 year old uncle had won the local lottery and ran away to Mexico with a stripper. In reality, his uncle had recently divorced and was carrying all of his money in a suitcase that he kept very close to him at all times. It is believed that Scott Kimball murdered his own uncle for money. Police were lead to the body and it was revealed that the man had been fatally shot in the head.

Scott Kimball is considered a potential suspect in the murder of the maidenwater victim because the crime fits his M.O. Check back for updates in the case.

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