daughters now face a future without their dad. he won t be there to walk the two younger girls down the aisle or be a loving granddad to their children or take their daily phone calls. when do you miss your dad the most, megan? when i drive home from work, i always grab my phone to call him. it s just hard without that person there that i talked to so often. reporter: it has been close to impossible for his family to understand it, a devoted educator who did so much good for so many students, ripped from their lives for something so mundane, some online flirtation, a single dinner date, more flirtation two years later, and then three quick shots. it was a complete waste. lives of kids he could have helped. who knows what path they would have taken if they had contact with him. reporter: the homicide brewed in cyberspace may sound
you can t calm people down, can you? no. reporter: but then wednesday afternoon, something totally out of the blue happened that turned the investigation upside down. the sheriff was in a closed-door meeting when his secretary interrupted. i thought it was a family emergency. her face looked like she had seen a ghost. she said, sheriff, you have a phone call that i think you need to take. reporter: a panic-stricken woman was on the phone, she needed to talk to the sheriff immediately. the sheriff returned to his office so he could take the phone call. i don t know. i don t okay. just relax. i m so scared. reporter: her name was mary taglianetti, she was calling from virginia. no one in keith reed s life, including her daughter, megan, had ever heard of her. that name mean anything to you, mary? no. that name didn t ring a bell? no.
reporter: megan s younger sister caitlin didn t know the name either but realized this woman mary was someone he had taken to dinner in 2010 during an off period with kimberly. i remember him saying he was going out to dinner but, yeah, nothing ever came from it. reporter: but now this mary was on the phone. she was very, very upset. [ crying ] stay with me. this is gonna be okay. relax. i kept her on the phone purposely, as long as i could, and while we were talking, i had my staff scrambling to get somebody in law enforcement to her home. reporter: almost 400 miles south, officers in virginia brought mary to an interview room. she was the second woman in three days investigators were speaking to about the murder of the superintendent. i m glad they have these here. i just might need them. oh, okay. reporter: mary says she and keith first developed a relationship on match.com. she d separated from her husband and had moved with her four children to upstate new york.
at a big state educator s his name. and, of course, there was no conference across the state. answer. his brother, kevin reed, a former fbi agent had a bad reporter: someone else who feeling about things when he started to wonder what was up arrived at his brother s house that saturday was caitlin. sunday night. the two spoke by phone every i went right into fbi mode. day. i didn t didn t have time to get emotional. he didn t answer my phone call on that saturday and so i thought that was a little reporter: his brother, strange. grounded, stable, reliable, was but i was really busy, so just no one s candidate to just one day go missing, especially not then. kind of forgot. reporter: by sunday, his daughter, megan, had become very concerned. she hadn t heard from him why, just a few weeks before, he had had the moment every dad either, worrying. okay, like answer the phone, lives for, walking his eldest daughter, kate lip, down the aisle. it s time to answer your phone, i
but he d never let life s difficulties distract from his primary role, dad. megan is the middle child. he loved to have fun. he would always dance crazy with us, like pick us up in the air and slide us between his legs and throw us up. reporter: and the old family snapshots, hiking in hawaii, disney world, all the christmases seemed to show a dad over the moon with his three girls. kaitlyn was a star volleyball player and all-american and knew without a doubt when her father was in the stands on game days. you could hear him? i could. yeah. everyone could. reporter: her dad was in a long-term relationship with a single mom named kimberly roush. he had three daughters and i had two boys and a lot of our time was spent being involved in their sporting events. reporter: they had been on again/off again for years, but no sooner had they decided to take one of their periodic romantic time-outs from one another and then they would