Family of murdered Fort Worth woman reflects on how serial rapist, killer could’ve been stopped
A crowd of people packed into a Tarrant County courtroom Tuesday as family members of two murdered women and sexual assault survivors took the stand to directly address the man who changed so many of their lives.
The family of Molly Jane Matheson, 22, sat in the front rows of the 213th District Court. Molly was murdered in her Fort Worth apartment in April 2017. She had been raped, beaten and strangled. Nine days later, 36-year-old Megan Getrum’s body was found in a Dallas-Fort Worth lake.
On Friday, Reginald Kimbro pleaded guilty to murdering the two women and raping four others; three in Collin County and one in south Texas. He was given three life sentences. His trial, at which he could have faced the death penalty, was scheduled to begin Tuesday before he took the plea deal Friday.
Molly’s parents and aunt, Megan’s mother, a woman Kimbro raped in 2014 and the mother of another woman sexually assaulted by Kimbro in 2012 took the stand Tuesday. A woman who was raped by Kimbro in 2012 had also addressed the court Friday during Kimbro’s plea hearing.
Several of the speakers condemned a system that they say allowed Kimbro’s pattern of violent sexual assault to continue until he escalated to murder.
Molly’s dad, David Matheson, said as he took the stand in the courtroom Tuesday that he had nothing to say to the man who murdered his daughter. Instead, he thanked prosecutors with the Tarrant County District Attorney’s office and the Fort Worth Police Department for helping bring justice for Molly and Megan. Most of all, he thanked the women who came forward about Kimbro’s sexual assaults before his daughter’s murder.
“You were not believed, you were dismissed and you were abandoned by the very system that is supposed to help you,” he said to the women, many of whom were packed in the crowded courtroom Tuesday. “I hurt for each of you. Because I know you did everything you could to put this person behind bars.”
During the investigation into the Molly and Megan’s deaths, Fort Worth police learned Kimbro had been accused of rapes in various Texas cities, including Allen and Plano. He had never been charged and victims say police did not believe them and instead protected Kimbro from arrest.
“This has to change,” David Matheson said.
A spokeswoman for the Plano Police Department said the department is working on a response to allegations made at the hearing. A public information officer with the Allen Police Department did not immediately respond to requests to comment Tuesday.
Reports of rape ignored
Exactly 1,807 days ago, Tracy Matheson found her daughter’s body on the floor of the shower in her Fort Worth apartment near Texas Christian University. Molly was kind, she said, and funny. She had a tattoo that said “Beloved” that Tracy Matheson did not know about until after her death. The tattoo symbolized that Molly was Beloved in God’s eyes, Tracy Matheson wrote on the website of Project Beloved, a nonprofit Molly’s family founded in her honor.
The anger in Tracy Matheson’s voice was palpable as she spoke steadily and clearly to Kimbro in the courtroom Tuesday.
“Our decision to accept your guilty plea to avoid the death penalty has absolutely nothing to do with mercy,” she said. “You have done nothing to deserve that. Instead, it has everything to do with silencing your voice. No longer will you be able to sit behind a lie of innocence. There will be no doubt as to who raped and killed Molly and Megan.”
Tracy Matheson said Kimbro “had accomplices along the way who are responsible for growing you from a serial sexual predator into a serial, murderous rapist.”
Those accomplices, Tracy Matheson said, have the privilege of hiding behind their jobs as police officers. In 2012, she said, “the Plano Police Department had an early opportunity to save Molly’s life.”
“You got lucky when the detective decided in that case that you were credible, and she was not,” she said. “He was an ally to predators like you.”
A woman, who did not give her name, gave her statement in court Friday about how Kimbro raped her in 2012. She said the Plano detective who was assigned her case did not believe her.
When she explained how Kimbro held her down, the detective told her to “get on the floor and show it to me,” she said.
That Plano detective, Tracy Matheson said, should have identified Kimbro as a significant threat due to his pattern of strangling women and history of rape accusations. Instead, in 2014, Kimbro raped another woman and strangled her, leaving her for dead.
The Allen detective who took the woman’s case, Tracy Matheson said, once again decided to believe Kimbro — who said he had nothing to do with the attack — over the woman he had raped.
Allen police had another opportunity to stop Kimbro in 2017, Tracy Matheson said, but again failed. The woman in the Allen case had undergone a rape kit in 2014. Three years later, the DNA from the kit was confirmed to belong to Kimbro. However, Kimbro was not arrested. Forty-one days later, he murdered Molly.
On Friday, Kimbro pleaded guilty to raping the woman in the Allen case.
“Your guilty plea to that violent rape cements the truth that if (the detective) had paid attention, had he done something — anything — at any point during those 41 days, Molly and Megan just might be alive today,” Tracy Matheson said.
In November 2019, the Allen detective was transferred to the patrol department, WFAA-TV reported at the time.
‘We continue with our lives’
A woman in a black and white blouse, who also did not give her name, said Kimbro raped her in 2014 while she was on spring break.
“Then to hear there were other others before me,” she said. “I will never understand why we were never heard or believed.”
She described how after he raped and strangled her, she felt ashamed and voiceless. But on Tuesday, she said as she looked at Kimbro, who was handcuffed and in a jumpsuit, “it’s the time for you to have no voice.”
“So who is strong?” she said. “The person sitting in a jumpsuit? Or us women, who get to continue with our lives.”
In Molly’s honor, her family started Project Beloved, a nonprofit focused on ensuring sexual assault victims are heard, believed and find justice in the legal system. They also led the charge for the creation and passage of Molly Jane’s law in 2019, which requires law enforcement investigating sexual assault cases to put information such as the suspect’s name into a national database, which helps police identify serial offenders before they attack again.
“I am beginning to see the start of a revolution, a movement,” Tracy Matheson said Tuesday. “I will spend the rest of my days making sure that this battle is won. The conversation about sexual assault will change and victims will be empowered to find their voices.”
Megan Getrum
Megan was taking an evening hike at Arbor Hills Nature Preserve near her home when Kimbro attacked her on April 14, 2017. Her body was found five days later.
Megan’s mother, Diane Getrum, placed a picture of her daughter on the judge’s bench as she sat at the front of the courtroom Tuesday. The photo, displayed for everyone in the room to see, was of her daughter smiling brightly in a hat.
Diane Getrum described her daughter’s many adventures, including hiking the Guadalupe Mountains, traveling through India with her grandparents and camping near Machu Picchu. She had a habit of finding and trying the strangest foods she could find when she traveled. She loved her cats and yoga.
Megan’s death “ripples throughout family,” Diane Getrum said. Megan’s brother was close with his sister and said he “lost the best sister he could hope for,” she said.
While she said she had never met Kimbro before Tuesday’s court hearing, Diane Getrum said he has haunted her.
“But my life is too short to spend any more time of him.” she said. “Today, I am going to walk out that door because I have mountains to climb and silly snacks to sample and people who love me and who I love in return.”
This story was originally published March 22, 2022 at 2:34 PM.
