A woman has told how her dad murdered her mum when she was 12 years old – before shockingly trying to blame the sick crime on her.
Hayley Cole, now 31, told how her dad Brad Reay 47, killed mum Tami at the age of 31. The killer then tried to blame his only child for the stabbing.
Hayley says her mum disappeared out of nowhere. Her dad told her she’d run off with another man, before asking her not to tell anyone that her mum was missing.
She told the Sun: “I knew something was terribly wrong, because there was no way she’s have left me.”
In the days that followed in February 2006, the truth began to unravel. Hayley’s panicked aunt Raquel had phoned her school as Tami’s mum Bonnie hadn’t been able to get hold of her – they spoke every day without fail.
Hayley was then told the shocking truth that her dad had been arrested of murdering her mum, who was found with 37 stab wounds inflicted on her.
The schoolgirl was then uprooted from her home in South Dakota to move 500 miles to live with her mum’s parents in Wyoming.
Hayley’s dad denied murdering her mum, but she got an even bigger shock when the case went to trial almost a year after the brutal killing. Her lawyer explained that Reay was blaming her for the murder.
Hayley recalled: “In the opening statement of the trial, his defence team claimed he’d seen me in a trance-like state holding a knife at mum’s bedside after I’d become upset about the divorce. He said he’d dumped her body and covered up the murder to protect me.
“I was stunned. I felt used and so angry, but everybody said that all I had to do was tell the truth – so that’s what I did.”
“When I took the stand, dad sat in his orange jumpsuit, taking notes and watching me, trying to intimidate me. His attorney kept throwing difficult questions at me, trying to twist my answers, but although I was scared, I stayed strong, determined to get justice for mum.”
During the trial it emerged Hayley’s mum had been having an affair with a colleague that her dad had found out about, leaving her “shocked and surprised”.
Her dad was eventually found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Hayley said: “I knew I’d never forgive him. I didn’t want to see or speak to him ever again – the courthouse was the last time I saw him.”
She received a phone call from the prison saying he had died earlier this year. Hayley added: “If anything I felt sad because he lived such a waste of a life.”
