Tracy Thom found evidence that convicted suspected serial killer, Fred Reer

Amanda Dean gets justice thanks to advocate, but Ohio AG Dave Yost won't release the records

NORWALK — She never met Joshua Dean in person until months after responding to a Facebook post he made about his mom, Amanda Dean. “I’m just a boy looking for his mother,” he wrote.

Tracy Thom stands at a microphone during a protest outside the Huron County SHeriff’s Office in December 2022. Thom organized the protest to make a public demand of the sheriff to investigate Amanda Dean’s homicide. (Photo/Matt Westerhold)

Tracy Thom, a self-styled advocate, a businesswoman, mother and grandmother, could not look away. She sent him a message.

“Hello, I’d like to try to help you,” Thom wrote.

The post Thom replied to was the first message on a Facebook page Josh created, (The Official) Help Find Amanda Dean (Family Page.) After that day — Oct. 17, 2022 — Thom and Joshua Dean began having text message conversations about his mother over the next three months.

His best friend

He was just 17 when his mom disappeared; his three brothers were still in middle school, Josh explained. They weren’t as aware as he was, however, what a nightmare living with Fred Reer Jr. in an outbuilding on the Reer family property off Wells Road in Collins, Ohio, had become for their mom.

Joshua Dean stands with his brothers in Huron County Common Please Court on Jan. 5, where they gave victim impact statements during Fred Reer’s sentencing hearing. (Screenshot/Matt Westerhold)

He’d seen her there, with a black eye and with other injuries from when Fred assaulted her. Fred threatened him too. He would go there and try to protect her. He was a boy and at times he felt helpless, unable to comfort her. He remembers one time Amanda telling him she just wanted to die.

In January that year, the year she disappeared, Huron County sheriff’s deputies got a good close look at the kind of abuse Fred was inflicting. They were called there and Amanda, again, had a black eye. She didn’t want to report it, she told them, so they didn’t file charges. They didn’t even bother to talk with Fred, or tell him to stop beating on Amanda.

Ghost call

Just six months later — on July 11, 2017 — her family reported Amanda missing. They told Huron County Sheriff Todd Corbin they feared Fred killed Amanda, inside that outbuilding, that shack on the property. They wanted Corbin to search the property; they wanted him to find Amanda. They wanted him to find Fred.

Huron County Sheriff Todd Corbin, right, with his cousins, former Deputy Detective Sgt. Shannon Lyons never questioned Fred Reer after he assaulted Amanda Dean in January 2017, or after her family told Corbin they feared Fred killed her, in July that year. Fred had indeed killed her, but he was never investigated for it by the sheriff. (Photo illustration)