In July 1988, two women and three children were killed when someone set fire to their home. The following month, a convicted felon serving time in a downstate prison called detectives and promised information about the murders in exchange for a transfer to a work-release program. He told the detectives that Reeves and another man had separately called him and confessed to the murders, which was not true. The detectives and an assistant state's attorney had the informant call the two men at least 36 times to try to get them to admit to the crime, but neither did so. Nevertheless, officers arrested one of the men and brought him to a police station, where they beat him with a blackjack, telephone and telephone book and kicked and punched him repeatedly over several hours. Eventually, the man gave a false confession, implicating himself and Reeves in the murders. Reeves was arrested in August 1988, and the two men were charged with the murders. They were both convicted. In 1995, their convictions were vacated, but they were re-tried and re-convicted in 1997, again based almost entirely on the informant's false testimony. In 2009, after evidence of the practice of torture by the "midnight crew" led by Cmdr. Burge and the other defendant officers had been uncovered, Reeves was exonerated and released from prison after 21 years.