Matthew Reeves
murderer
Matthew Reeves (December 13, 1977 – January 27, 2022) was an American convicted murderer who was executed by the state of Alabama for the 1996 murder of Willie Johnson Jr. Reeves's case generated attention due to claims he was intellectually disabled.
Personal life
Reeves was born on December 13, 1977. He had intellectual disabilities, with an IQ in the 60s.
Crime
On Wednesday, November 27, 1996, Reeves and his friends planned to rob a drug dealer. Reeves' car broke down in Selma, Alabama, and Willie Johnson Jr., who had a pickup truck, offered to tow their car to Reeves' house. Reeves rode in the bed of the truck. When they arrived at the house, Reeves stuck a shotgun through the cab window and shot Johnson and stole his money. At a party that evening, Reeves "pretended to pump a shotgun and jerk his body around mocking the way Johnson had died." Johnson's body was found inside his truck the following day, Thanksgiving morning.
Reeves was arrested at a house a few hours after the murder.
The public source identifies “Matthew Reeves” as murderer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Matthew, Reeves and murderer.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 13, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q110899354. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1977, 2022 and 1996.
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This entry incorporates text from “Matthew Reeves” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.