Man convicted in deaths of wife, daughter in 2015

HOT SPRINGS — A Garland County Circuit Court jury took less than an hour Friday to find a Hot Springs man guilty of two counts of capital murder in the 2015 shootings of his wife and daughter.

The jury of seven men and five women convicted Eric Allen Reid, 57, in the Oct. 19, 2015, slayings. Jurors will reconvene Tuesday to decide whether Reid will receive the death penalty or life in prison.

During testimony Friday morning, Reid called the shootings of 57-year-old Laura Reid and 32-year-old Mary Ann Reid a “horrific accident.”

“I pretty much don’t remember what happened,” he said. “I saw a flash of light and blanked out.”

Reid said he remembers seeing flashes of “Mary Ann in her Giants jersey” and “red blood spray on the wall,” but he doesn’t remember what he was doing at that time.

He said he recalls his younger daughter, Heather Reid, “yelling and screaming at me — ‘Dad, you have to stop! Dad, put down the gun!’ — and then seeing a gun in my hand. It was like a fog or tunnel vision, like I was watching this happen.”

Asked by his attorney, Cara Boyd-Conners, if he intended to kill the two women, Reid replied “absolutely not” and told jurors that he loved his wife and daughter.

Heather Reid testified Thursday that in addition to tensions over family finances, there had been an ongoing dispute between her father and her sister regarding how Mary Ann was raising her son, including her not making him “eat his vegetables” and being more of a friend than a parent.

In a videotaped confession to Sheriff’s Sgt. Terry Threadgill, Reid talked about being “frustrated and angry” with his daughter and wife, and said he felt they were “ganging up on him” and plotting to “take everything away from him,” which led him to kill them.