CARROLLTON — A Texas resident says she led authorities to missing Carrollton woman Linda Reed and expects the reward that family and friends put up early in the search.
Reed, who disappeared April 29, was arrested Thursday in Longview, Texas, and charged with felony embezzlement. Lori Bess of Longview said Monday that without her tip, authorities would not have made the arrest “right then and there.”
“I didn’t know there was a reward in the beginning,” Bess said. “I would have done it because it was the right thing to do. But since there is one, I definitely deserve it.
“Anyone else trying to take credit for finding her — is bull,” she said.
Reed is accused of embezzling $20,000 from her Mississippi employer, Moore’s Fabrications in Gallman.
The reward was initially $10,000, and later Texas EquuSearch, which participated in the search, said it would add $10,000 more. They have since taken back that offer, as the Reed case changed from a missing-person case to one of embezzlement.
Bess said Monday night the reward is smaller than the original $10,000, because some people have not come through with money they promised.
Her dealings with Reed began in June, when Reed started working for the Walton Automotive Group, a mostly Internet auto sales company in Longview. They had employed Reed after her landlord told company owner Joe Walton that he knew someone looking for a bookkeeping job, Bess said.
Bess had contact with Reed “most every day,” either on the phone or in person, she said, because of her work for Reed’s landlord, an investor in Walton Automotive Group. “I was learning to do title searches,” she said.
“Reed was very competent in her job. Her bookkeeping was immaculate,” Bess said.
At first, Reed did not talk much about herself, she said.
“It was mostly a male office,” Bess said. “But in the last couple of weeks she opened up more. She had mentioned to some employees that she had run away from an abusive relationship and that her children took the side of her husband.”
Bess said Reed asked her new employer not to do a background check using her Social Security number so that her family couldn’t locate her.
Some things Reed had said didn’t add up, but “we wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt,” Bess said. “In the last couple of weeks I worked side by side with her, and she talked more. I asked her what she was going to do. She said she was going to go home.”
Bess said that answer seemed strange to her. “If you’re running away from your husband, and your children are not talking to you, who are you going home to?
“That sent up a red flag, but I didn’t give it too much thought until later that evening when I got home,” Bess said. “I put her name in the computer, not really expecting to find anything, and all kinds of things popped up — wanted by the FBI, on ‘America’s Most Wanted’ show, articles in papers. I decided I needed to call authorities in Mississippi.”
Bess called Copiah County Sheriff Harold Jones, who left Mississippi for Longview late last Wednesday evening. Jones acknowledged Monday that he did receive a call from Bess that alerted him to Reed’s location.
“I didn’t allude to a tip at first, because I didn’t want people out there to get inundated until I got her back here safely,” Jones said. “I have contacted the family about paying the reward.”
Jones has said that Reed’s attorney, John Reeves of Jackson, has asked for a mental evaluation for Reed. Since her return, Reed has had “selective amnesia” about the last few months, Jones said.
“Right now she hasn’t gone before the circuit judge,” he said. “When she does, they can request a mental evaluation.”
Bess said Reed didn’t appear to have any mental issues when she worked with her.
“She was hired as a contract employee with a tax ID number. She used her real name and gave her Social Security number, but there was no need to use it since the Walton Group would have issued a 1099 form to her and reported her income for taxes at the end of the year,” Bess said.
Bess said she believed Reed had rented her condominium for more than a year.
Walton told a Jackson television station that Reed did not seem like someone who had a lot of money.
Linda Reed’s husband, Lou Reed, declined to comment Monday on the allegations against his wife, saying, “We’re just waiting for the full truth to come out.”
Linda Reed had worked for had worked for Moore’s Fabrications since 1999. She lived in a mobile home behind the business in Gallman during work weeks and went home on weekends to Carrollton, where she lived with her husband.
She was reported missing after she didn’t show up for work April 30. Her SUV was found later that day on a logging road not far off Interstate 55 near Crystal Springs.
Jones said last week that authorities had changed Reed’s status from missing to wanted for embezzlement.
