An Arkansas Woman Is The Only Survivor After Her Ex-Husband’s Shooting Spree

Lisa Reeves remembers the day she met Randy Gwathney — she was at a concert in Memphis, Tennessee, less than an hour from her small hometown. It was 1997, and she kept eyeing the man in the flight uniform; he looked incredibly familiar.

She struck up a conversation with him and as they talked, they realized they did know one another. They had attended the same church when they were children. The man, Randy Gwathney, told Lisa that he was now in the U.S. Air Force reserves and he was fresh off training exercises at nearby Fort Smith.

Lisa was smitten. She liked a man in uniform, and Randy was funny, smart, and charming. He called her not long after the concert and they began a romantic relationship. He was proud of his military service, and Lisa’s parents were happy that their daughter had found a good man.

After three years of dating, Lisa and Randy married and bought a small house not far from her mom and dad. She was under the impression that they were a solid couple working on a firm foundation, but she soon began to see the cracks in an elaborate facade.

After nine months of marriage, Randy informed Lisa that he’d never love her as much as he loved his first wife. It turned out, Lisa was Randy’s third wife, and Randy also had three children that he’d never mentioned to Lisa.

She was shocked and flabbergasted. Randy displayed no emotion as he revealed the secret. Lisa immediately began to question everything she thought she knew about her husband. One day while Randy wasn’t home, she decided to look through a briefcase he kept in a closet. The contents sent Lisa reeling.

Randy wasn’t in the Air Force Reserves at all. He was an Army sergeant who had never flown a plane at all. His stories of fighter jets and recovery missions were just lies. Lisa couldn’t even find any evidence that he’d ever even seen combat.

She confronted Randy when he came home, and he immediately grew defensive, telling her a little white lie doesn’t hurt anything at all. The damage, however, was already done. Lisa left Randy and moved back in with her parents and elderly grandparents.

There were some talks of reconciliation at first, and Lisa attempted to make it work for the first couple years of their separation, but eventually she just wanted a divorce. Randy, however, held his ground and refused to sign the papers. As the years went on, she still spoke to him a couple times a year, asking him to grant her a divorce, but he still held his ground, declaring that she would never be able to divorce him.

Things took a violent turn in 2007, the year after Lisa’s father died. She, her mother, and her grandparents turned in for the night, but something woke Lisa up just before 1 a.m. on Feb. 13. There was a noise down the hall near the back of the house.

Lisa left her room and crept towards the back of the house in time for Randy to burst through the back door. His normally blue eyes were black, and the expression on his face chilled her to the bone. Randy lunged at her, his hands tight around her throat.

Find out how Lisa escaped with her life but lost her whole family on Evil Lives Here: Shadows of Death on ID on Oct. 9 at 9/8c. More episodes are available now on discovery+.