On Thanksgiving afternoon in 2021, emergency medical technician Dennis Hobson was summoned to a home in the small village of Farmersville, Illinois. It was the house where his friend Chris Smith lived with his dog Tiki.
What he encountered is the subject of “Fatal First Date,” an all-new “48 Hours” reported by correspondent Erin Moriarty, airing Saturday, Nov. 2 at 1/9c on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.
Someone had called the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office to 911, and Hobson found himself in a bloody scene.
Bethany SmithStephan/Sharon Costanza
The side door of Smith’s home was broken and Hobson found his friend – barely alive – lying on the floor of the blood-soaked kitchen. Smith had a gunshot wound to the head and a woman, later identified as Leslie Reeves of nearby Troy, Illinois, lay dead on the living room floor with a single gunshot wound to her head, according to a sheriff’s report.
Friends later told sheriff’s deputies that the couple had gone on their first date the night before after meeting online. In the early hours of the investigation, no one knew what had happened, but investigators believed a third person was involved because no weapon was found at the scene.
Smith survived the shooting, but remembers nothing of that Thanksgiving Day. Hobson later told him some details. “He said I had no pulse,” Smith told Moriarty. “He screamed my name three times, I gasped and said, ‘Denny, I’m fucking cold.’”
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Hobson later told Smith that Tiki likely helped save his life. The temperature in the house was much colder than normal that Thanksgiving Day because the suspect had broken the glass on the side door.
“But someone kept you warm,” Moriarty said. “I had Tiki there,” Smith replied. “My little girl, my little four-legged daughter.”
Smith had owned Tiki, a beagle-terrier mix, for three years. He says he found her in a Craigslist ad and adopted her when she was a puppy. Tiki apparently was Smith’s lifesaver as she huddled with him and provided much-needed warmth in the 12 hours before he was rescued.
“Tell me about (Tiki),” Moriarty asked Smith.
“Well… she apparently – when Denny came in and saw her laying next to me… I was… in the fetal position… and she was cuddled next to me,” he replied.
The dramatic story of Smith and Reeves’ “Fatal First Date” and Smith’s remarkable recovery is told for the first time on “48 Hours.” The broadcast includes an exclusive interview with Reeves’ convicted killer, an ex-boyfriend of hers named Robert Tarr, who denies he was the shooter.
A Montgomery County sheriff’s report later pieced together what happened that night. Smith and Reeves had returned to his rented home in Farmersville after a night of bar shopping and getting to know each other.
Sometime around 1 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning 2021, authorities believe an assailant broke into a side door while Smith and Reeves were in the main floor kitchen heating up a frozen pizza.
A sheriff’s deputy told a friend of Reeves that she died immediately and “didn’t suffer.”
Investigators later concluded that the attacker that night was Robert (Bobby) Tarr, an ex-boyfriend of Reeves who had secretly followed her to Smith’s home, said Andrew Afrunti, the prosecutor in the case.
Tarr was convicted of murder and attempted murder in April 2024 and was sentenced to 85 years in prison.
Smith, who suffered three strokes and was put into a medically induced coma while in hospital, is recovering from the shooting and making progress. He still uses a wheelchair and a cane, but has returned to singing in his rock ‘n’ roll band and is looking for work.
While he recovers, he cannot care for Tiki himself, but she lives nearby and they see each other often. Smith has also started a business as a motivational speaker and created a website: ChrisSmithmotivatingyou.com. He also bought a new house and just proposed to his girlfriend, now fiancée, Michelle Albrecht.