Amanda Dean: How A Terrible Lie Hid A Monster In Ohio For Five Years

Amanda Dean had four kids. She lived in a small shack in rural Collins, Ohio. Then one day, she just disappeared.

Her family wanted answers. Instead, the people meant to protect them fed them a terrible lie for years. And all that time, a monster stayed hidden. Here’s what happened.

What Everyone Missed in Collins

Amanda was 36. Her sister called her a “spitfire.” Sadly, she was stuck in a bad cycle of domestic violence with her boyfriend, Frederick Reer, 34.

As he kept smashing her phones, she’d wait until he passed out to text for help.

After one beating left her with a black eye, she texted her sister: “At least they know what he’s doing to me.”

But knowing didn’t stop it. So, when Amanda vanished in July of 2017, her family got suspicious fast. At one stage, Reer’s mother texted them saying Amanda had left the cabin. Hoping she was okay.

The Sherrif Wasn’t Helpful

Dunring a recent episode on The Law&Crime Network, the recap shown by Jesse Weber reminded true crime followers that the Huron County Sheriff’s Office messed up the search from day one.

When Amanda’s family tried to organize a search party on July 12, Sheriff Todd Corbin’s team warned them off the Reer property.

Hours later, police called the family in. Good news, they said. Amanda was safe at a domestic violence “shelter.”

One catch: she didn’t want to talk to her family.

A Fresh Look At The Missing Person Case

For five painful years, Amanda’s mom, Caroline Tokar, and her sons sent birthday and Christmas cards to the sheriff’s office. Please deliver these to her, they begged.

Nothing ever came back: because it was a lie.

Then December 2022 came. The family teamed up with Cleveland Missing, an advocacy group. Newburgh Heights Police Chief John Majoy helped force a fresh look at the evidence.

So, the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) dug a bit more.

What They Found in the Backyard

BCI quickly realized Amanda had disappeared from national missing person databases. Actually, that mostly came because of the sheriff’s earlier claims about the shelter.

Well, as things progressed, in November of 2023, state agents showed up with excavators and K9 units.

Then things got gruesome.

Reer’s non-verbal autistic brother used gestures to show something terrible happened inside the couple’s camper.

Witnesses stepped forward. One person saw Reer scrubbing blood off the cabin floor with rags. Another watched him burn a massive pile of debris for four days straight after Amanda vanished.

The Plea Deal

The evidence seemed on the nail. Certainly, it seems as if it heavily suggested that Reer chopped up Amanda’s body. It leaned toward him burning her remains on a mattress. And then scooping the ashes into a bucket.

It seemed overwhelming, and that led to him taking a plea deal. During a formal interview, he confessed and led investigators to a bridge over a nearby creek. That’s where he’d dumped the ashes.

In January this year, his sentence landed him in prison for 14 years. But one of those years was for the mutilation of her body.

Instead of a murder charge, his conviction arrived as “involuntary manslaughter, gross abuse of a corpse, and two counts of tampering with evidence.”

The courtroom was packed. Family members held up photos of Amanda so her face was the last thing her killer saw.

A New Law

Still, they felt cheated. One year for mutilating her body? Her family called it a “slap on the wrist.”

That anger soon took hold and reactions saw Ohio lawmakers introduce a new bill called the “Amanda Dean Law.” It’s a bill that makes disposal of a dead person through dismemberment or secreting it away, a second-degree felony.

Whereas previously, those true crime actions would have been a fifth-degree felony. The difference is that instead of a possible one year sentence, the felon will face a sentence of eight years.

It isn’t cleared all the way yet, but it did clear the House Public Safety Committee. That shows progress.

In the meantime, the family of Amanda Dean go ahead with their lawsuit against Sheriff Corbin and his department. However, most of those files remain under a gag order for now.

Viewers React

In the comments section of the YouTube video, one viewer opined, “They need to arrest the sheriff that was lying to the family. All along.”

Here are a few more responses from the discussion that followed:

• When are they going to arrest the sheriff that told the family she was safe in a shelter for obstruction of justice??
• Are we supposed to just forget that the Huron County Sheriff told Amanda Dean’s family that they found her alive, when in fact she was dead? How did that happen?
• Why didn’t they charge the sheriff for covering up the murder? He lied and said she was safe in a shelter & called off the search for Amanda. He should be in prison for that.

What are your thoughts on it? Let us know in the comments. And come back soon for more true crime updates. Also, remember we have a crime channel on TikTok that you can follow.