UPDATED: 5 p.m. ET
The woman who has worked as the Kirbyville High School principal’s secretary for the last year has posted a Facebook message clarifying that she is not the woman referred to in the police news release about the circumstances surrounding Dennis Reeves’s apparent suicide. Police reportedly told KFDM the alleged affair was with a former secretary and any relationship had ended by the time the woman made the accusation.
Earlier story:
The Texas high school principal who died of an apparent suicide last week was distraught moments before his death, say the school officials who last saw him alive.
According to a written statement from school administrators who met with Dennis Reeves just before his death last Tuesday, the Kirbyville High School principal was visibly shaken as he wrote his resignation letter just before his death.
As Crime Online previously reported, Reeves, 45, died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head in the parking lot of Kirbyville High School, where he had been called to a meeting by Superintendent Tommy Wallis and Assistant Superintendent Georgia Sayers to discuss allegations that Reeves had been having an affair with an employee who he directly supervised.
KFDM reports that the employee was Reeves’s secretary, but it is unclear from documents obtained by the news station whether the alleged affair was ongoing at the time of the accusation, or if the employee who reported the affair was still working for Reeves.
Wallis and Sayers gave written statements to Kirbyville Police, who shared them with the news station. Both of the statements describe a confrontation between the principal and the superintendent during which Reeves denied the allegations about an affair. Wallis wrote in his statement that he told Reeves the school district would be placing him on administrative leave while they investigated the employee’s claims, and that if they were found to be true, Reeves would be fired. Wallis said in his statement he asked Reeves to hand over his computer and keys, and that Sayers asked for his phone.
Reeves was reportedly given the option of resigning voluntarily and avoiding an investigation if he admitted to the affair. The principal then said he would resign, but neither school official’s statement says that he admitted to the affair in agreeing to resign.
The statements the school officials provided to police contradict statements that Superintendent Wallis gave to reporters last week. He told KFDM that the meeting on Tuesday was supposed to be a “basic meeting,” to discuss “a couple of things – summer school, staffing patterns, several things to discuss.”
Wallis declined to tell the news station why Reeves resigned. He also reportedly told the news station that he called the police after seeing that Reeves had been sitting in his car in the school parking lot for an hour, claiming that he did not want to create a disturbance by walking to the car himself.
But the documents police provided to KFDM contradict that: Wallis’s own statement says he contacted the Kirbyville Consolidated Independent School District president, who then appears to have contacted the Kirbyville mayor, who then contacted Kirbyville Police Chief Paul Brister, according to the police chief’s written statement.
Chief Brister told Crime Online that he believed Superintendent Wallis did not have the chief’s cell phone, which may have been why he contacted a school official instead of police.
Asked if Kirbyville residents had a means of contacting police outside of reaching the department chief directly on his cell phone, Brister said yes.
The police chief declined to speculate on why Wallis did not contact police himself immediately, suggesting that we speak to Wallis, who has not responded to multiple interview requests.
Superintendent Wallis’s statement indicates that he was alone with Reeves at the school for a brief period before Chief Brister arrived. In his statement, Wallis writes that he asked a maintenance director, who had come to the school to change the locks to the principal’s office, to take Sayers to the administrative offices where the employee who made the claim about the alleged affair was writing her own statement. His statement indicates that he contacted the school official just after Sayers and the maintenance director left.
Chief Brister said the administrative offices are about a mile from the school.
Wallis’s statement says that he was concerned about Reeves continuing to sit in his car, believing that he may have been intending to confront school officials. Wallis also writes that he remembered the employee saying that Reeves threatened to kill himself if the alleged affair was exposed.
“She stated Mr. Reeves told her that if their relationship was uncovered he would kill himself and make it look like an accident so the insurance company would pay his family,” Wallis wrote in his statement.
The school officials’s statements also show that Reeves returned to the school once after exiting the building, to return some tools that were in his car. At that point he addressed Sayers directly, by her first name, and said “I’m not good… I’m not good.”
Sayers reportedly replied by saying, “I know, Dennis,” before Reeves went back to his car.
If you or anyone you know are experiencing suicidal thoughts, please contact the National Suicide Hotline 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at 1-800-273-8255.
Police seek answers in mysterious Texas principal suicide [EXCLUSIVE]
Texas principal resigns, then walks to parking lot and shoots himself
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