William Lewis Reece was born on July 1, 1959, in Oklahoma. He was the middle child in a large family, with 13 siblings. As a child, he lived in the cities of Yukon and Anadarko. His family faced financial problems, which affected his education. Because of this, he had to leave school after the ninth grade. To help support his family, he worked as a farm laborer.

In 1979, at the age of 20, Reece married Judy Flaming after she became pregnant. After their marriage, he joined the Oklahoma National Guard but left after a short time. Their marriage lasted only a year before Judy divorced him. However, he convinced her to remarry him, and soon they had a second child together. During this time, Judy reported that Reece began drinking heavily and became abusive. In 1982, she went to the police after a violent incident where he threatened her with a knife and shotgun. This led to their final divorce.

After his first marriage ended, Reece married again, but this marriage also ended in divorce just a few months later.

In April 1986, William Lewis Reece kidnapped a 19-year-old woman. He lured her into his truck under the pretense of helping her get to a payphone. Instead, he tied her up and sexually assaulted her. He drove her to a motel but gave her a chance to escape when he allowed her to use the bathroom. After her escape, he was arrested and charged. He was released on bail but soon after, he sexually assaulted another woman. This led to his re-arrest, and he was convicted of both rapes, receiving a 25-year prison sentence. After an appeal due to procedural errors, his sentence was reduced, and he was paroled in October 1996.

After his release, Reece moved to Houston, Texas. In 1997, he became a suspect in the kidnapping and attempted rape of Sandra Sapaugh. She managed to escape from him after he overpowered her, allowing police to identify him. He was convicted of kidnapping in 1998 and sentenced to 60 years in prison. While serving time, police suspected him in the disappearance of several teenage girls.

In 2015, Reece's DNA matched evidence from the murder of 19-year-old Tiffany Johnston. Her abandoned car was found, and her body was later discovered near a dirt road. Reece was charged with her murder. In 2016, he confessed not only to Johnston's murder but also to three other murders from the summer of 1997. He provided details of the burial sites and confessed to killing Laura Smither, Kelli Cox, and Jessica Cain, claiming he had no sexual motive in these crimes.

Reece's trials began in 2017 in Oklahoma for Johnston's murder. His trial was postponed several times and finally resumed in 2021. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. After this trial, he was extradited to Texas for the other murders, pleading guilty in 2022. He received a life sentence for the murders of Smither, Cox, and Cain.