Left: Prosecutors Ryan Calvert and Alyssa Killin and Investigator Keith Kunz pose with Mandy Reynolds’ dog, Titan (McClennon County District Attorney’s Office). Upper right: Mandy Reynolds (KWTX). Bottom right: Derek Daigneault (McClennon County District Attorney’s Office).
A Kansas man will spend the rest of his life in prison for shooting his cousin and burning her remains – all because he left her faithful labradoodle Titan alive and well with her; the dog had a microchip that led back to the victim and to the killer’s arrest.
Derek Joseph Daigneault, 29, learned his fate on Thursday in the death of Mandy Rose Reynolds, 26, prosecutors said in a press release. Daigneault’s sentencing was marked by drama when the defendant yelled at the victim’s brother and was escorted out, and a fight broke out between members of Daigneault’s family and Reynolds’ family, local CBS and Telemundo affiliate KWTX reported.
“Like I told the jury if they knew nothing else about Derek Daigneault other than what he did to Mandy Rose Reynolds — shooting her in the head, driving her body here to McLennan County and setting her on fire like a piece of trash — if that’s all they knew about him, that alone would have been enough to justify a life sentence,” said Ryan Calvert, McLennan County assistant district attorney, after the trial, the outlet reported.
“But once we got into the punishment phase, the jury learned he had been in trouble his whole life, he was a multiple-time convicted felon, he had been in prison in Kansas before for violent offenses, they even learned he had shot another individual as a juvenile,” Calvert said. “He is just an extremely violent individual, and he cannot be trusted with the safety of this or any other community. So life, we felt, was the only just verdict.”
The series of events leading to the murder started on the morning of April 4, 2023, when authorities said surveillance video from a Walmart showed Daigneault buying a large plastic storage container, a shovel, and a gas can. Walmart video also showed Daigneault leaving the store in Reynolds’ car and showed Reynolds’ dog sticking his head out the car’s window.
Daigneault later killed the woman, burned her remains in the container and left the dog at the scene of the crime.
The murder was uncovered on April 5, when police responded to a reported brush fire in a field on Heston Circle in Robinson, just south of Waco, Texas.
There, police found a body on fire, burned beyond recognition, but identified the remains through dental records as belonging to Reynolds. A white dog was also found nearby, barking frantically at police, refusing to leave the area and refusing to be corralled.
The following morning, after the body had been removed, a resident found the dog sitting at the spot where the burning body had been found the previous night. That person notified animal control officers, who learned the dog, Titan, was microchipped and belonged to Reynolds.
At Reynolds’ apartment, police found that her belongings had been removed and that her Honda Accord was missing. The car was tracked down in Wichita, Kansas, several days later. Local police spotted the vehicle on April 8 and tried to pull it over but got into a high-speed chase that ended in a crash.
The driver ran into a nearby grocery store, where he was arrested, hiding on a shelf behind canned goods. Police found a .380 pistol in the driver’s seat floorboard of Reynolds’ car, the one authorities said was used in the killing.
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