Killer of 2 North Texas women, who police say was serial rapist, gets 2 life sentences

FORT WORTH, Texas — Editor’s note: The video published above is a WFAA Investigation from 2019 about the murders of Molly Jane Matheson and Megan Getrum.

A man charged with raping and murdering two North Texas women has been sentenced to life in prison for both cases, Tarrant County officials told WFAA. 

Reginald Kimbro pled guilty on Friday to the April 2017 rapes and murders of Molly Jane Matheson, a 22-year-old Fort Worth woman, and Megan Getrum, a 36-year-old Plano woman. He has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for both cases. Getrum’s murder case was handled in Dallas County.

In 2017, Matheson’s mother found her daughter raped, strangled and murdered in her Texas Christian University-area garage apartment. Kimbro had previously dated Matheson while she attended the University of Arkansas, but they had not been in a relationship for years at the time of her murder, officials said. Fort Worth police connected Kimbro to Matheson’s murder using DNA, cell phone records, electricity usage and surveillance cameras, officials said.

Days after Matheson’s body was found, Getrum disappeared from a Plano nature preserve. Her body was found the next day in Lake Ray Hubbard. She had also been raped and strangled, police said.

During a years-long investigation by the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office and law enforcement, they learned that Kimbro had also been accused of aggravated sexual assault in Plano in 2012, in South Padre in 2014 and in 2014 in Allen, officials said in a press release. None of those cases had been filed in their respective counties at the time of Matheson’s murder, Tarrant County officials said. 

After the investigation revealed these accusations, he was indicted for all cases and had been positively linked to each victim through DNA and CODIS, according to Tarrant County officials. 

“Reginald Kimbro is a serial rapist and a serial killer. He used his personality and charm to attract women or drugged them when that did not work,” prosecutor Allenna Bangs said. “He talked his way out of case after case until his violence culminated in the deaths of Molly Matheson and Megan Getrum.”

Kimbro pled guilty and was sentenced to 20 years in the Plano case, life in the South Padre case, and 20 years in the Allen case.

In 2019, the Texas Legislature created Molly Jane’s Law, which requires law enforcement officers investigating sexual assault to input pertinent information into a national database which is maintained by the FBI.