Lois Riess flashed a cherubic smile as she checked into a hotel in Ocala, Fla., hardly looking like a gambling grandmother believed to have killed her husband in Blooming Prairie, Minn., and a woman she had met just the day before in Fort Myers Beach.
"She's confident, doesn't look over her shoulder, like she's not hiding anything," said John Kinsey, deputy U.S. marshal in Florida. "She was very nonchalant."
Kinsey was describing a new set of surveillance videos released Wednesday by the Lee County Sheriff's Office which showed Riess arriving at a Hilton Hotel about 8 p.m. April 6. She's wearing a blue top similar to what she was seen wearing on April 5, the night she was chatting up 59-year-old Pamela Hutchinson at the Smokin' Oyster Brewery in Fort Myers Beach. It's also the same outfit Riess was seen wearing outside the Marina Village condo after she allegedly killed Hutchinson and stole her white Acura along with her cash, credit cards and identity.
Authorities have not said if Riess used Hutchinson's credit cards to pay for the room at the Hilton, but the video does give them a better sense of when Hutchinson's death occurred and when Riess left Fort Myers Beach. Hutchinson's body was discovered inside her rented condo April 9 after relatives became concerned they could not reach her.
Between April 7 and April 8, surveillance images captured Riess in casinos in Louisiana, Kinsey said.
Authorities have dubbed her "Losing Streak Lois" due to her penchant for gambling.
"She went from casino to casino to make money, or because she is addicted to it," Kinsey said. "She is consumed by it."
Riess was last seen April 8 in Refugio, Texas, about 40 miles north of Corpus Christi, Kinsey said. She had not been seen in Corpus Christi, which is about an hour north of the Mexican border, said Lt. John Chris Hooper of the Corpus Christi Police Department. She was last spotted driving south in a white Acura on Hwy. 77 in Texas.