A loyal Labradoodle named Titan, who refused to leave the site where his owner’s body was burned, helped Robinson police identify the victim's remains and eventually led to the arrest of Derek Joseph Daigneault, prosecutors told jurors on Monday.
In the murder trial against Daigneault, McLennan County First Assistant District Attorney Ryan Calvert laid out a detailed sequence of events, with evidence gathered by himself and prosecutor Alyssa Killin. Daigneault, 29, from Wichita, Kansas, is on trial in Waco’s 19th State District Court for the April 6, 2023, murder of his cousin, 26-year-old Amanda Rose Reynolds.
Reynolds, who had been living with Daigneault in San Marcos, Texas, was discovered with a fatal gunshot wound to the head. Her body had been stuffed into a plastic storage container and burned in a newly developed subdivision in Robinson, a small town near Waco.
Reynolds’ father, Randy Reynolds, a Nevada resident, testified that his daughter had expressed fear of Daigneault in late March. He advised her to leave Daigneault and offered to help her move, but he never heard from her again after that call.
On the night of the incident, Robinson police, firefighters, and animal control officers responded to the scene, where Titan barked at them and remained at the fire’s location. Titan evaded capture, and severe weather prevented officers from fully processing the scene until the next morning. Early the following day, a local resident searching for his own lost dog discovered Titan, who was sitting at the spot where Reynolds' body had been found. The resident opened his car door, and Titan jumped in. Animal control officers later scanned Titan’s microchip, confirming Reynolds as his owner.
Prosecutors presented surveillance footage showing Daigneault purchasing a large plastic storage container, a shovel, and a gas can from a Walmart in San Marcos. The video captured Daigneault backing out of the parking lot in Reynolds’ Honda Accord with Titan in the passenger seat, but Reynolds was absent.
Two days later, a license plate reader detected Reynolds’ car in Wichita, Kansas. Wichita officers attempted to pull Daigneault over, but he led them on a 30-minute high-speed chase, reaching up to 100 mph before crashing. Daigneault fled into a grocery store, where officers eventually found him hiding on the bottom shelf of the canned goods aisle. Police located what they identified as the murder weapon inside Reynolds’ vehicle.
After being arrested, Daigneault was sentenced to just over nine years in prison for charges related to the police chase. The murder charge he now faces in McLennan County includes an enhancement due to a 2013 conviction for aggravated burglary in Kansas, raising the minimum sentence to 15 years and a maximum possible life term if convicted.
