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You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Good Evening. He was evil personified in the spring of nineteen ninety seven, a serial killer held Nashville, Tennessee, in an icy grip of terror. In February, he murdered two employees at a Captain D's restaurant. In March, he struck a McDonald's just miles away, killing three people in maiming one. In April, he kidnapped and slaughtered two Baskin Robin's employees. They called him the fast Food Killer, but his real
name is Paul Dennis Reid Junior. When he was caught and sentenced to seven death sentences, yet a new chapter began in the saga of one of the most heinous serial killers in our time and the people whose lives he cut short. The victims were reduced to being called the victims of Paul. Read until now Here for the first time, and with the approval of the family and friends, are the stories of those innocent young people whose lives were ended far too soon. Is also the story of
how a crime ripped a city apart. The book they were featuring this evening is when Nashville bled The Untold Stories of serial killer Paul Dennis Reid with my special guest journalists and offer judith A. Yates, welcome back to the program, and thank you very much for agreeing this interview. Judith A y again, Hey.
Dan, Hi, thank you so much for inviting me back.
Thank you. This is last time. It was amazing. This is a far more twisted story, if that's even possible. When Nashville bled, let's get right into this because this
is such an evolved case. And I know I always say that, but as you do in the book, you talk about Paul Dennis Reid Junior and his very very eventful life and his mother Josephine Marie and they called her Joni, and she had an abusive mother, and she moved out at sixteen, and she left him for Fort Worth, Texas and met Paul Reid sor and he was working security as a security officer. Tell us a little bit
about some of his life. He was born November nineteen fifty seven, so tell us a little bit about some of the things in this eventful life that he had.
Well, his father was a security officer and then he worked as a repoman and at that time, and for Paul Senior that meant taking a bus to go where he needed to pick up the vehicle and then driving the vehicle back to wherever he needed to drop it off. And Paul Senior had a taste for alcohol, so he was also a raging alcoholic. And when they divorced, they
decided that they needed to children up. Paul Senior took Paul Junior and basically dumped him off on Paul Junior's paternal grandmother and along with a sister, and Paul Jr. Was just a terror from day one. He was just a mean little kid. He was stealing mail out of mailboxes when he was tall enough to stand on his tiptoes and reach into the mail. He was stealing the laundry off the line when he was not even old enough to go into school. His grandmother was sleeping in
her bed, woke up to the smell of smoke. He had set the bed on fire with her sleeping in it, and he would do things like close off her bedroom door and push things in front of the door so she couldn't escape. She would threaten to beat him, give him a spanking, you know, correct him for things that he was doing, and he would crawl up in the tree or up on top of the garage and just yell at her and yell horrible things at her for not being able to catch him. She was a very old,
frail woman, you know. In this last deforation, she would tie him to a chair just to keep him from hurting himself and hurting others. And finally, in just one of her last step to desperation, when he he'd thrown a toy at her and cut her forehead open. And he was also mean to other kids in the neighborhood, same thing, throwing things at them, hurting them, not sharing toys. Finally, she is called the priest. She's a very highus woman and the priest that get him out of the household
before he kills you. And this is when he was a child, and so that's what she did, is she put him in a children's thone.
Yeah, you talk about this Burnett Baylor's Boy Home, boys home in Houston, home for basically incorrigible children who were, as they put it, or you put it, a potential menace to society. And that was when he was eight. So but you also talked about there are incidents and again not to make reasons why he became the way he was, but at least documented some of the things that might have contributed to some kind of organic brain damage.
You talk about a thrown brick. Tell us a little bit about a couple of the events that were reported that occurred to young Paul.
Right now, later on in life and later on in his trial when he was of course an adult. They would contribute that, I'm sorry, attribute the things that he did to incidents when he was a kid. He was hit over the head with a brick. He was showing off on a motorbike in front of the kids at the children's home, fell off, the bike, landed on his head, and he was struck and killed. I'm sorry, struck and hit by a v hit goll very tongue tied tonight for some reason. But he was struck and hit a
vehicle of all nights, right when he was small. So again, you know, they were contributing to organic damage to his brain. I believe the attorneys were calling it a broken brain when he was being tried for these murders. You know, it did affect his hearing in one ear and supposedly affected his thought process too. Along the way, so that he did have some damages to his head when he was small.
You talk about some of the things that he he had this obvious somewhat of a learning disability. So he was slow in school, and so you talk about how he compensated in school. He was even in special ed classes, which he did not enjoy having to go on a special bus. So how did he compensate in school for this what you say, illiterate and starting school late at seven years old?
Right? And you know, according to whoever you talked to, it was the father's fault that he started school late. It just you know, forgot to enroll him, or it was the grandmother's fault. Well, you know, she's an elderly, frail, sickly woman. She relied on the fathers who enrolling, so who knows. Nonetheless, he started school late, he had some learning issues which put him in what then was called special education or did the best for special led. Well,
he was picked on, he was made fun of. So he compensated by sports and found that he was good in sports. And that's what he did to make up for being a quote unquote slow learner quote unquote special ed kid.
You also talk about that he was inspired by well known figure at the time probably to some people today, Jack Lelaine, and so he Turkey. They start taking up working out, bodybuilding, and also at that time at least decided not to smoke or drink. And you say he always this is the guy that always always had a gym membership.
Oh yeah, I mean Paul was pretty much in love with himself. So ever since he was a young man, he would belong to a gym, gout. He was obsessive about, uh, you know, always working out. Later on, when he worked in a restaurant, they would always call on Paul to lift the heavy things, to pick up the stuff nobody else could could handle. And even his restaurant manager told me, he said it was amazing what Paul could lift up
and what he could do without breaking a sweat. And one of the things he bought with the money that he stole and killed some of the kids for was a white set so he could work out at home when he wasn't at the gym. But that's what he would do. You know, he watched Jack Lelaine and he followed the laying rules and right away started, you know, his smoking and his drinking and supposedly never smoked or drank or did drugs in his life. Wow.
You also talk were very interesting that he was on medication very early, on drugs that were called anti anxiety tranquilizers. And you say a psychoactive medicine, so names like equanill pardon me in Milltown and mepro bamate. So maybe I'm mispronouncing that, but anxiety disorders at that time diagnosed, at least at that time you're talking about. Then he went
to middle school, junior high. He had gone to a different couple different schools, and now that stigma of special led was gone, at least people didn't know about it. And at that time he met somebody that's will play a bigger role in his life later, a boy named Stuart Cook, and they both lived near school and hung out. Tell us a little bit about what happens with his mother and the divorce and who was his stepfather at
that time. Danny Mores tell us what Jonie does and what Paul becomes as a result.
Well, Joni gets a good job in one of the high rise apartments in Houston at a restaurant, and she lets Paul work there. At the restaurant as a busboy, and she lets him work behind the scenes at the bar where he's running glasses and cleaning and such. And because she's working at this restaurant, she has an at this account or according to him, a free apartment at this very very nice, posh apartment complex. And so what he does is he's giving discounts under the table and
such two older young adults and according to Paul. Now see it's all according to Paul. Because Paul is an habitual liar, they are letting him in. And then after our party is where people are smoking weed and they're hanging outside on the patio smoking pod, and they're drinking and they're having this great time, and Paul gets to join them, and of course he's a hit with the ladies, because no matter what Paul is doing in life, he is always a hit with the ladies. And he meets
Stuart in junior high. They hit it off, and Stuart becomes Paul's partner in crime. And they really match up in this respect because one kind of pulls the other one along, and they get this great idea about, you know,
petty criminal activity. They both like to race cars, they both like to cruise the boulevard and look for girls and impress the girls and or try to And they basically just like to drive around and have a good time and talk to girls, and you know, just the typical thing that young men like to do and at the same time cook up these petty criminal acts.
You talk about that he lived with his mother until he was sixteen years old, but you talk about you have court records that he attempted to sexually assault his sisters and his mother and they kicked them out right, So right, So did it go any further? Was was there any charges out of that? You don't seem to elaborate on that, but suffice to say that was enough to get him basically disowned from the family at that time, wasn't it right?
You know, Paul's sisters and they really they were very afraid of him and they didn't want him around them. But yet when he was did of these crimes, they stepped in fighting for him to not be executed, and they testified for him during the trial. So that was very interesting. But I couldn't find anything as far as charges, but they did testify that he had tried to assault them, sexually assault them and One of the times was when the sister and he were using drugs and he tried
to sexually assault her. She never went into details, and she had to kick him out of the house. The mother as well and kicked him out of the house. But I couldn't, you know, as much research as I did, there just wasn't really anything existing except for you know, the records that there were. Just there's just no details to be found.
Another aspect of his strange behavior is that he was working in Houston as a security guard and he met a woman another employee named Jessica Neil. He had just met her. He proposed December nineteen seventy nine, and nineteen eighty was the he announced that he was getting married to Jessica. Tell us what Paul's sister told her about the marriage to her brother.
His sisters pulled her aside and were like woman to woman, girlfriend and girlfriend, get out, get the hell away from him before he ruined your life. And this is from someone who grew up with him. Just get out and don't do it. And that was kind of.
Wow. Yeah, you talked about that he really was in love with himself, and you said he in the book you write that he cared about his looks, his clothes, his style, and really no one else. And he's getting his old. As he was getting older, his crimes were getting more serious, things like forgery. He had charges for robbing a grocery store and those charges were dismissed. But there was some assessment at psych hospitals around that time. What did they say, was there any kind of serious evaluation?
Tell us a little bit about that.
There were evaluations, and they found him to be a seriously dangerous individual. A state must be something in the air. They designated him to be aangerously serious, serious individual. They found him to be a danger to himself and others. Right when he was he and his friend were, uh, you know, they graduated to aggravated robbery and they they
robbed a Houston steakhouse. And when he was caught and arrested and went to prison for that in the Texas prison system and was evaluated, they wrote letters stating that Paul Reid was a danger to himself, a danger to others, and he should never be released from prison. Every evaluation that I uncovered stated that.
It's interesting to you taught that you talk about that that he acted like a kid and made a paper hat put on his attorney's head, not even taking the actual seriousness of the case. And he got a stiff sentence twenty years in Texas State and with a prison that had a mean, mean reputation, never mind the notorious chain gangs. But and you say, he was a real serious author of very serious strange letters too. And he
even wrote to the prosecutor. What did he say to the prosecutor after he was given twenty years in Texas State?
He well, he put the paper hat on his attorney's head and he fell over backwards in his chair. Basically he was playing the crazy card, right, And you know, whenever Paul was caught, he would play this this crazy card. Oh, I don't know what I'm doing because I got hit in the head with a you know, with a brick when I was a kid, I fell off a motor BikeE. There's something seriously wrong with me. And having lived there a long time, and you know, I've toured the prison system.
I know about it. Texas doesn't play and Paul knew that. And he also knew that this was going to be really serious times and he was scared. It's just like he went to Brushy Mountain in Tennessee for a very short time. And of course that's further on down the interview that he was scared, and so that's when he really started playing the crazy card. So he's writing letters to his attorneys and he's saying, listen, if you get me out of here, I'll snitch, I'll snitch on everybody
in this prison and tell you what they're doing. And they're like, nope, sorry, So then he starts writing crazy letters. You know, he's writing crazy letters to legal representations, he's writing them to the governor, he's writing them to all these political figureheads, and he's just writing crazy things about mind control in the prison and you know, getting messages from outer space. And he's clever, he's no fool, so he knows that. How you know, here's what I have
to write to work the system. But nobody's falling for it.
You say, despite the Jack Lelaine fascination. He was went in prison that three hundred pounds and not one of none of it muscle whatsoever. But in there he did get a license, you say, to be an electrician, and he was paroled. Well, well, he's eventually paroled in nineteen ninety due to overcrowding. And well, I say, some professionals opposed, and why were they opposed to him getting out? We already know that.
Yeah, definitely, he had served seven years of a twenty year sentence and it was a new program to reduce overcrowding, and he was paroled. And that's despite again these letters from from mental health professionals, from legal professionals, from prison staff, and so do not release this individual, do not allow him out and to be public. You know, it's bad enough, he only got twenty years. He doesn't need to be outside. He's going to hurt somebody, and he's you know, possibly
going to hurt himself. And yet he was still And of course, as we know, the system is not always perfect. The system you know, makes mistakes, has flaws, and he walked out of there a man on parole. And what's interesting is he only had to report you know, every X number of day of days, and then after so many months, he only had to report you know, X number of months, and then down to so many times a year. Because he knew how to play the good boy.
See no more mental health quote unquote issues anymore. He knew how to play the good boy get a job. Yes, certain nos. Their report in do You're supposed to do Now?
You talk about that. He was working as a truck driver from nineteen ninety but he got in a car accident, the truck rolled and he was on workers' compensation until nineteen ninety two, so he got a twenty five thousand dollars settlement. He got braces on his teeth and plastic surgery on his nose, so it altered the way he looked forever. But they did what they could. They even put a chemical peel on his face to get rid of the acne and the acne scars, and paid for
other things at that time. But you said that his face, it gave his face an unnatural smeared look. Maybe you could describe that right.
If you look at pictures of Paul Reid, he doesn't look natural. He has almost a very strange I don't know how to explain it except to say, kind of a smeared cartoonist. Look to his face and see. He did all of these things because he was convinced that he was going to be a famous country and Western star. And he would tell people in Texas that he's going to go to Nashville, and he's going to be the next George Straight. He's going to be the next George Jones.
He's going to play the Grandell Lotpery and just blow him down. Because he was just so fantastic, and he had black and white, you know, gloss he's made of himself. He bought some very expensive guitars, who knows how he did that. He had expensive boots, Western hats, and he decided, Okay, it's time to go to Nashville and be famous and meet my destiny. And that's exactly what he did. And he was just he was ready to be famous, rich
and famous is he saw it. And when he was in Texas, he held jobs like you know, he'd pumped to gas at the gas station. He throve a truck, but he would introduce himself as doctor Paul Reed, and he'd liked to have his picture taken with real expensive cars. Now Here he is pumping gas at a gas station. And when someone would whirl up in a Mercedes, a Rolls Royce, a Jaguar, he'd run out there and he'd
shake hands with that person. He'd introduce himself as on doctor Paul Reid and he'd pumped their gas for them, and then he made sure he had his picture made with him.
What do you make of? As you write? In ninety four or ninety five, with the help of his friend, an older woman named Dorothy Medlin, he'd cook for her and he ate together because he learned at that restaurant. The chefs taught him basically how to cook, and he gave her a sign photo himself with his new Garth Brooks type transformation. Justin Parks would be a stage name. What do you make of the thirteen page letter that apparently she helped him distribute about mind control and monitoring
his bodily movements. He addressed about four hundred envelopes, placed a letter in each, wandering around the streets of forth Worth handing them out. He's near the courthouse, he isn't in prison, he isn't playing, So why would you do this?
Maybe?
What's your take on that?
You know that that was very strange, and I really I have no idea why he did that, because one of the things that she had said was he was such a quote normal person, and he was such a nice guy, and he was such like her son, you know. But then all of a sudden, he just switched and he's writing this very strange letter and he's handing it out on the street corners, and I don't know. I mean, I never got an answer for that. I just you know,
he's weird. He's not crazy, but he's weird, if that makes sense.
Now you talk about his singing career. Now, a lot of people believe they have what it takes. I'm a former musicians, so I know how you know, there's levels of being diluted. How deluded was he? How off the mark was he about a potential singing, songwriting, or anything career in music?
Oh, my god, off the chart? Bad? Well he was. He was deaf in one ear and he was tone deaf in the other, and he couldn't play guitar. I spoke to people who actually saw him perform, and they explained that, you know, here comes this guy that he looked the part, nice starch jeanged, expensive boots, hat, nice start shirt, expensive guitar. He gets a fun stage, he starts singing, and everybody's just like, there's not enough cotton in the world to plug my ears. It was that bad.
He was very wangy. He sang with an exaggerated, almost like a yodling sound, and it was bad, but he was convinced. You know, he told people, you know, next Hank Williams, next George Straight before he was ready to be famous, and then he would be talkable. I just don't understand why my music career is not taking off.
Yeah. Now you write about Caroline mast who lived with Paul briefly. They made plans to marry. One day she found his parole documents and he said he was wrongly convicted. And he told her of government surveillance and of course that he was going to be a huge singer. She saw his temper. He threw a kitten at the wall. She broke off the engagement. And in nineteen ninety five he met Cindy Wheeler, who has a role in this
as well. Very odd, odd story with Cindy Wheeler. And and he met Cindy Wheeler, and you say a week later he left, telling her he had to go. Where was he going, of course, and what was he going to do?
Right? They meet at a gym. They start talking and she feels for Paul. Boy, if somebody would just give Paul a break, you know, he's such a good guy. He's such a nice guy, and you know, he couldn't manage his money, so she started helping him with that and he just needed help. Well, they hook up and they seem like a really nice, good couple, and he says, you know, I really like you and this is a great relationship. But I've got to meet my desk and he is a famous singer. It's out there and it's
just got to grab it. So I'm going to Nashville, home of country music, but we're going to keep in touch. Packs his bags and his guitar and his hat and his boots, and off to Nashville. He goes, but we're going to keep in touch. And they do. Yo, they do, And I will send for you to come see me, and he does, but he uses some money from ill gotten very sad game.
Yes, you talk about a Nashville restaurant, a Captain d Restaurant, and it's related to the Shoney's restaurant chain. I guess it's a big corporation, this Captain D's. Tell us what kind of restaurant this is? Before and tell us who Steve Jones is and Dina Hampton.
Okay, you mean Stephen Hampton.
Hampton partes. Stephen Dena Hamptons Okay, that's.
Okay, Well is a and Captain Dee's is a fast food seafood restaurant also owned by Shoneese. And since his country and Western singing career just didn't jump off the ground right away, Paul got a job at Shoney's as a cook and his manager's name was Mitchell. And one of the things Paul would talk about is when he becomes a famous singer. Now, this is Nashville, and every other person you meet is either a famous potential singer
or famous potential songwriter or famous potential producer. So everybody's like yeah, yeah, yeah, Well Paul is one of those guys that you just love. Boy, he's so helpful and he will do extra work. And boy, if you need somebody over time, Paul as your man. And again if you need all the heavy stuff lifted, Paul is your man. You know. He just can't do enough good around the restaurant. Now near Shawnees is a Captain D's and it is in a little town called Donaldson, which is a kind
of a subdivision at the time of Nashville. Steve Hampton is the new manager at the Captain D's, and he and his wife worked together at Captain D's. Now. Steve has worked at the D's since he was young in high school and his dream was to eventually be working in the corporate sector at Captain Deeds. And his wife Deanna and he had several children. Steve was a family man. He loves his wife, he loves his kids, and what little time off that he had, it was all about
his kids. And he had something special he did with his kids, Like with one child, they would go by riding, and he and his wife had just had a baby, Steven Junior. Steve loves fille ball. His favorite team was the Dallas Cowboys. But right away Stephen had a little
Dallas Cowboy onesie and socks and a little cap. I mean, he was just an all around good guy and he had no qualms about working literally five am to close and afterwards, you know, one in the morning, to make sure that restaurant, Captain Dee's, was ran the right way and it was imtakably clean.
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Right now you talk about a couple other people introduced Jenna and Carl Jackson from Donaldson, Tennessee, six miles away, saying, their daughter's named Sarah Marie. She has a couple brothers. She likes soft. Tell us a little bit about Sarah Marie.
Sarah was a sweetheart, and she was the kind of a girl that she was just she was very involved in her church and she was such a good kid. But she also had that little devilish twinkle in her. And Sarah was just the kind of girl that would make a good buddy. She had this excellent sense of humor. But if you needed a good shoulder to cry on,
Sarah was there. And she was good friends with Deanna, Steve's wife, and she Anddiana did a lot of giggling and talking, and she and she Indiana would you know, share secrets, and they just had such a good time together.
They were Stephen. Deanna was like her second family. Sarah was very close to her mother and father, especially her mother, and sometimes she would just you know, she's a sixteen year old teenage girl, but yet sometimes she would just go to her mom and she would just hug her, just a big bear hug because she needed a big hug from her mom. And she was just a sweetheart of a girl.
Now that was These are the kind of parents too, that are protective and they're very caring people. She wanted to buy a car. They weren't really so keen on her working Sundays, working at nights. Tell us a little bit about just sort of some of their apprehensions, and then how it came to be that Sarah was going to stay over at Deanna's and Steve's one night. What was the reason for that? Then, tell us just to demonstrate, as you do in the book, their protectiveness of the parents.
Right, Sarah had worked very hard at Captain p saved every little penny that she made, scraped it together, and bought herself a car. She named her Emily, and she wanted a CD player for Emily. So once again she's saving all her money to buy a CD player. Well on Sundays her mom and daddy, of course that is, and Sarah instead, can I work Sunday morning because we're short? Steath and Steve asked me, and her mom's like, now you know, we do not work on Sundays. We go
to church. Please mom, just one time, and her mother is like, Sarah, it's Sunday. We have had this talk a thousand times, Please mom, just once I promise you it'll be the last Sunday. I just want to buy a CD player for Emily. Her mother thinks about it, much to her chagrin. She says, okay, one time, one
time only, but do not tell your father. Okay, thanks mom. Well, Steve and his wife Deanna are having a birthday party for one of their kids that Saturday night, and Sarah approaches her mother and she says, can I spend the night with the Hampton and then that morning I'll just get up and go to work that Sunday morning, And her mother's like, oh, are you sure they want you?
Or yes? Mom? Well, Deanna comes in to pick up Sarah and for the first time she talked to Sarah's mom, and Sarah's getting her things, putting them in her bag. They talk a little longer and Sarah pops out, Okay, ready to go, and she gives her mom a big squeeze and says, thanks mom, I love you. I love you too, and they leave and that is the last time that Jenna saw her daughter, And the next time she saw her, Sarah was in her coffin.
Yeah, now you talk about the movie and the Hamptons and Sarah's settling in at the movie. But meanwhile at Captain D's restaurant, these guys they're going through the shift the next day. But meanwhile in the night shift there is a Donald Carr, he's cleaning, Michael Butterworth and Jim Cassidy and they're all trying to get out of there.
They're closing up the restaurant. The front exit door open, and a large man with dark hair appeared later described as white, six foot five, maybe two hundred and thirty pounds, looking like a bodybuilder, with a slick back hair and a ponytail. And he was smiling and he wore a Shone's apron over his clothes like he had just left or he was heading to work. And they told him we're closed. So what does he do when he is told that they're closed? What does he want? And what does the boys encounter?
Right? Well, there, as you said, closing up at shown he's that Saturday night. At the same time, the Hamptons and Sarah are settling down to watch a movie and this guy who's shown up, he says, well, he just wants to put in an application. And the guy said, oh, okay, you need to talk to our manager. His name is Steve. He's not here, he'll be back tomorrow morning and you'll need to talk to him. And the guy says, oh, okay, and he turns he leaves the store. And the guys
at the time didn't really think anything of it. I mean, people come in, they asked to go out an application and they go Now, at the time, Donaldson was really you know, it wasn't as metropolitan as it is now. It's a lot of stores, it's a lot of fast food restaurants, So it really wasn't that big of a deal for somebody to come in and ask to put in an application.
Right now, you're we're talking February sixteenth, nineteen ninety seven. Sarah gets ready for work in the morning at Captain D's step and her says goodbye to Deanna. They would be finished their shift at two pm. Now, another interesting character in this is that there is a Metro Police officer named Jeff Wells, and he's always up early and goes to his waffle house for breakfast. He's a thirteen year veteran and his son, Jeff Junior, works at Captain D's.
Tell us about what this officer, Jeff Wells does, on this same morning. Tell us about this this morning. What happens We find out these details later, but what happens with the loved ones Deanna and other people Sarah's family when they believe that they've gone to work. Tell us what transpires that morning.
Okay, bossir Wells, he's making his rails and he drives through the parking lot of Captain D's and he sees Steve's car and he's thinking, okay, he's opening up. He drives through. He doesn't see anybody yet, and he's got his thermos and he's thinking, okay, well I could get phil from the kids, you know, as they're opening. Well, just as he's thinking about getting his refill, he gets
a call and he has to leave the parking lot. Meanwhile, it is Sunday morning, so people are on their way to church or you know, wherever they're going on Sunday morning, and these cars are passing the store, and it's on a pretty busy thorough way, so cars are passing by the Captain D's. The officer is driving through the parking area, you know, thinking okay, I need to get my thermis filled. Then he gets called away and at the same time,
Sarah's parents are getting ready for church. At the same time, Deanna at her house is getting up, getting the two kids ready and the baby ready for the morning. You know, life is as usual. Steve arrives, Sarah arrives together, and Sarah's getting the prep out, getting ready, mixing the coleslaw by hand. Steve is there. They're getting the morning prep ready. Now, one thing about Steven is he ran a perfectly clean kitchen.
One of the officers would later say, I have never seen a fast food restaurant with such an immaculate kitchen, everything in its place. And so they begin their day. So basically you've got an area where everybody's sort of beginning their day. But yet all of these things sort of fall into place where everybody just sort of misses it by so many seconds.
Now you describe the horror, the true horror that was that encountered. Steve encountered, and Sarah encountered that man that wanted the application and came back. Steve, of course, was trying to speak to him through the locked door. Sarah was viewing the situation, but that's not what she was concentrating on. Then she sees something that's truly alarming. What did she see? What happens? What does the man do?
Right?
Witnesses would later say they saw Steve standing at the door with a much larger man holding what they would later believe to be the application in hand, and we believe that he either pushed his way in or talked his way in with Steven. And Sarah is meanwhile in the back, still mixing past law when she must have
looked up and saw Steve being held at gunpoint. So here's this young sixteen year old girl going about her day, turns around and there's this large, muscular man holding a gun on her friend and her store manager.
Now, from all the evidence and you put this together, people can decide and deduce, you know, to react differently to this kind of threat. Steve, as a manager of one of these stores, what did he do? Did he follow his training? And what was that training to do? What did both of these people do as a reaction.
Manager of fast food restaurants are taught to don't fight, give them what they want, and let them go because it is worth your life. So Steve opened the register, I'm sorry, Steve opened the safe and gave him the money. We believe that reed walked into the back of the freezer. At the back of the freezer area had them. He had them lay down on the floor of the cooler, and then he shot them point blank in the back of the head. Now, they did have a surveillance video system,
but for whatever reason, it wasn't working. And I did have someone who worked there that told me in confidence, I don't know if that they ever even worked. And again, you have these things that could have, should have, would have if I would have been there a second sooner. A second later, he went back to the video player. We believe he might have taken the tape out, and he heard a noise in the cooler. He returned to the cooler Sarah, who had lived through those shots. What sorry,
this always siks to me. Sarah was helping herself up to try and stand or try to get up, and he calmly reloaded the gun and shot her again.
And then he you talk about that, nobody knows what's happened inside that cooler. Nobody's likely even heard well, no one's heard these shots. But there are a couple of people that drive by, like you say, church or are in the area and later come forward. But they do spot a little red car parked quite strangely in front of the restaurant. Later, you say that Michael Butterworth, the employee that worked the night before, he was coming into work,
I guess for another shift. He thought something was suspicious. What does he do, what does he believe may have happened? And what is his response?
Right, Michael comes to work, he's looking, you know, in the door, and he's thinking, okay, this it's very strange. None of the tables are prepped, nothing's ready from what he can see. The chairs are still up on the tables, you know, no lights are on. Okay, this is just really weird. He's knocking on the doors, banging on the door. Stee's little trucks still parked there, but no Steve, nobody's coming to the door. Okay, maybe they're in the back
and they're playing the radio loud. Steve loves classic rock music and he's just jamming up the Mike walks around to the back back cruler door bangs on nothing. Okay, this is really weird. Fast food restaurant that's you know,
literally right next door. And he calls and nobody's answering the phone, and it says Okay, this is real weird, and he starts the series of calls and that inevitably leads to calling the law enforcement to go to the restaurant to see, you know, exactly what is going on, and one of the officer responds, they had a all a manager to bring a set of keys. And when the officer responded and walked back to the cooler, that's when he finds Sarah and Steve's body.
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murder to get your first three meals free. Blue Apron A better way to cook Now, Judith's this nightmare is just starting to begin for the family, and you introduce though a character that is going to play through this entire case. And his name is Patrick hopefully I don't mispronounce his name Postiglione. And he's a Nashville Metro Police detective assigned to robbery and murders. And you say, he's a rare breed. Wherever did this, he said, has done this in the past. So they go on to do
what they need to do. Of course, the families are devastated. There are the memorials, there are the funerals, and I hate to rush ahead, but there are as with serial killers, of course, and in this one particular there's many more victims and many more murders. So suffice to say that the police are looking hard following up leads, but Paul Reid does not seriously come to their attention, does he no?
Now? And it got to the point where they had officers working undercover in fast food restaurants around the area, amazing, hoping to catch this guy. They had officers sitting out in parked cars around the area, you know, watching these restaurants for hours and hours and hours. No officer was
you know, they even call officers out from vacation. You know, there was no officer not working on this case undercover, and you know, making round and doing extra I mean, they worked constantly on this case, and they worked diligently, and Patrick is a rare breed, and he is. He's an amazing man. He's sort of a hero. Well, he is a hero, and he's sort of just one of these superman kind of guys here in the Nashville area.
You talk about that one of the managers, though again very very eerily and interestingly, that one of the managers of these restaurants said that when they did have a composite drawing done, that employee Paul Reid, matched the description slightly. He said, Reason was tall and dark headed, but didn't have long hair, which was reported, and they ran his name through the National Crime Information Center or NCIC FBI supervised database for suspects, missing persons, weapons and crimes. The
name didn't show up. Why didn't his name show up? What had he done, as you know, not so swift as he was. What did he do to confuse these people?
And was crucial at this time he had changed his birthday, He had changed his date of birth. And you know, of course in all the restaurants in all the areas, they had put a poster up of a composite drawing, and at the show Neees where Paul worked, this poster was up in the break area and people were saying, Wow, that looks like Paul. And one of the girls said, oh, I know right that Paul to night. He would never do something like that. And that's what happened, you know,
they brushed it off. And whatever.
You talk about that you introduce a little while later you mentioned him before a manager at Shoney's, Mitch Roberts, and he managed the Donaldson shonees. Tell us how he found out about Paul Reid as an employee.
You mean, as far as I'm sorry, I'm gonna innerstand, as far as the hiring.
Or well, how does it come to Mitch Roberts hires Paul Reid, and what does he think of him as a as a worker and so again, well.
Paul had applied as a cook, and of course he had a history of working in restaurants and such. Mitch hired him. And again, Paul is just one of those great employees that you know, never says no, never calls him sick, you know. And and one of the things that Mitch was telling me, he said, we had one of these buckets that at the at the end of one of the cutting tables you put all the extra food in, or a you know, an edible food in
that weighs so many pounds. Paul would lift it over his head and lift it higher to put in the dumpster without any sweat, without any problems. He said, the guy was huge and he had the muscle. He could lift, he could clean, he could could anything you ask him. He said, if I had somebody call in, if I had, you know, two people call in, he could do the work of two people. And he said, you know, the guy was one of those dream employees you always wish you had, and he was. He was one of Shoney's
star employees. He would loan him out to other stores. One of the times that got one of the other stores in trouble, and that was one of the crimes that was never solved. But they know in their hearts what happened.
Now, how's it come? Everybody reports here? You have this throughout the book that everybody says, how nice this guy is, What a sweet guy? That's used so many times. He's sweet, he's nice, he's kind, he's generous. But you also have that he's talking about his best friend, Danny Tackett, And so he starts talking about weapons and robbery, some things that people might not suspect him of what does his
best friend, Danny Tackett think of Paul read? And then what does he think of this talk of robbery?
Right? Danny was his friend. They met at the show Ney and Paul was always a big talker with Danny. And he's saying, you know, Danny, one way we could make money money, because they were always talking about is me one way we can make money is start robbing places. Then he's like, oh, yeah, right, and he drops the subject. Well a little later on he brings it up again. Boy, wouldn't we make money if we were bank robbers or
if we rob stores? Or yeah, right, drops it, brings it up again, thinks about how much this place makes it of the night, say a Saturday night. Me and you with with my strength and with your brain, just think of what we could make a haul started robbing fast food places. And then he's like, dude, whatever, and he's like, oh yeah, sure, we're gonna start just knocking places off left and right, you know, make a hall. Paul was testing him. He was testing him because their
best friends. And Paul is friends with their you know, his wife and kid. He's like their family. You know, he's babysit their kids. You know, he's good friends with Danny's wife. He's so smart, and he's such a good guy and sweet and kind, all of the good things.
He eventually, though, asks other people to get him a gun, and they say no, And then he finally does find that Robert Snyder, a truck driver, to get him a gun. He asks him why, but he eventually gets him a gun, actually sells him a couple of guns. But it's not so unusual, I guess not everybody. Alarm bells don't go off, especially with a stranger. This Snyder was a stranger. So he has a gun, and so what does he he do next? What does Paul do next?
Right now, you have to understand Tennessee is a little bit like Texas about gun Paul also lived in East Nashville, which is the time I was pretty rowdy. And it's changed with the gentrification and all of this, but at the time it was pretty rowdy. When they say what do you want with the gun? Well, protection, So everybody's, oh, oh, yeah,
you probably need it where you live. So he takes the gun and the next thing, you know, on March twenty third, nineteen ninety seven, right down the street from the Captain d McDonald's gets robbed and three people lose their lives to gunshot wounds, and one man barely is alive because of stab wounds because the robber ran out of bullets.
Now you talk about another situation with a manager, and so you bring the reader right into the lives of these people. And I apologize to the listeners for rushing through this, because really you do focus, and it's heartbreaking to focus on the admirable lives that these people were leading and the loved ones that were around them, and yet Paul Reid took their lives. You talk about Ronald Santiago, not from America, originally came to this country, hard worker.
I'll tell us about the staff at this McDonald's that included Ronald Santiago.
Okay, Ronald came from South America and he had a wife and a daughter that he called his little princess, and he spoiled her and he would tell her one day, I'll take you to Disneyland and i'll take you ice skating, and I'll do this, and we'll do that. And they would say, Ronald, she is only a little baby. I don't care we're going to do those things together. And then there was Andrea at seven Team. Andrea was the drama queen and as goofy as she was, you'd never
know that. Andrea was one of those students that if there could be a five point zero GPA, Andrea would have had it. And she went to an art magna high school, highly highly intelligent girl. And then there was Robert Sewell who was at twenty three. His nickname was Bert. Robert loved Star Wars, he loved science fiction. And then there was Jose. Jose was from Mexico, and Jose it was his first night on the job there, and Robert was going to call in six that night because he
just didn't feel like going into work. But then he remembered that he was supposed to be training a new employee, Jose, and he thought, you know, uh, they're counting on me and I shouldn't call in. And Ronald wasn't even supposed to be working that night, but the manager was sick and he told her, he said, look, you don't see good and I can tell go home, take care of yourself and I'll cover your shift. And Ronald was only twenty seven. He was the oldest person that was murdered
by Paul Reeves. So all of these people were very young.
Now there's similarities from the first murders in that he we forgot to say that the reason why he likes these kinds of robberies because he knows he's familiar with the layout of these restaurants and he's familiar how they work because he's worked in them. So you talk about what he does with these people in this restaurant, and how does it come to be that Jose Gonzales survives. Tell us about this horrifying situation as you do in the book.
He took them into the cooler and he had Ronald open the safe and give him the money. And Jose didn't speak English at the time, Jose wasn't in the country legally at the time, and in Spanish, Ronald told Jose, don't worry, Jose, He'll take the money and he will leave. And then he had them lay face down on the floor and he shot them each execution style, and Jose was thinking in his head, I'm going to die. This is it, and he started praying, well, he hears click, click, click,
and he thinks this is it, this is it. So he jumps up and starts to fight. Now, Jose is a little man, he's five six, he's very he's very thin, and of course Paul Reid is a huge guy. And Reed grabs a kitchen butcher knife off the shelf, and he stabs Jose seventeen times, including through through the body and several times in the skull, until Jose finally crumples to the ground and plays dead. And even then he stabbed him again several times. And then Jose drugged himself
to the phone. He called nine one one, and the only word he could manage, he said, please, please, And at the time nine one one didn't have bilingual people to answer calls, and eventually got law enforcement there in Jose somehow, somehow survived and would later identify Read in court.
Now you talk about again, the police do their work. There's no failure in their attempt. This is turning, as you say, this is turning into Nashville's biggest man h ever in history. Again, the distraught people like Doyle Brown. He's worried Andrea should have called. He went to go get her in her car. He saw the yellow crime scene tape. The horror of the father approaching the cop wanting to know answers and the police having to tell
him you got to get back. And then and then when the police again, how can you tell people this kind of news. It's incredible and there's no easy way, and they're told. But yet Paul Reid still is not captured, is he? And what do they do with Jose Gonzales in terms of his ability to call anything about the perpetrator? Is there a composite drawing done well?
And here's what's interesting is there was a video. There was a cameras, some video system across the streets that could have taught read and his vehic books perfectly because of the way it was angled. But it was broken, and the management kept saying, oh, well, we'll get it fixed. We need to get it fixed. Yeah, we'll get it fixed some days. But Jose was rushed to the hospital,
as was Andrea. Because Andrea was still alive. She had to be taken off life support that next day, and they were checked in under fake names for their security and safety. Jose was of course, had to had to be okayed by the medical personnel to talk to the officers, had to have a translator, and he gave a description and they did a composite drawing. Now, later, when he was captured, they showed Hose a different pictures in a paper lineup, and when Jose held the picture of Reid,
he was sweating so profusely and shaking so hard. He left a thumbprint on the photo of Reed. And they knew that's when they had their man. He didn't even have to say anything.
Yeah, amazing. Now you introduced so a woman that was born in nineteen eighty nine, Michelle Mace, and her mama's Connie Black tell Us and her stepdad is Garrett, and it's another very very sad story. Her biological dad is named Dewey and she has a sister named Cadgie. I maybe I mispronounced that. Tell us a little bit about Michelle Mace.
Still, she is so silly that she's such a good heart. Michelle loved to write, and she loved to write poem and she just kept her friends laughing. And you know, she could be so funny and yet at the same time, she was such a good hearted soul. And she loved to take pictures. If she saw Michelle, she had a camera in her hands, and her friends would always joke with her, when you grow up, you're going to be a photographer, and she would say, or maybe a writer,
because she was always pinning something. And when she was with her group of friends, all of a sudden, she'd say, hey, give me that piece of paper. It's a receipt. What do you want it for? And she'd say, a poll. I'm in my head and I've got to write it down before I forget it. And she lived with her mom, and she lived with her stepdad, and you know, I really hate the words stepfather's stepparent because her stepdad loved her as much as he would love her as if he,
you know, as if he were her true dad. And Michelle had some issues with that, being a hard headed sixteen year old girl. But then she also was very sad at times because you know, why can't my real dad want to be with me? The you know, the same issues we all have if we have the divorced parents with the quote stepparent and the other father isn't in our lives for whatever reason. So she was going through that sixteen year old angst you know what about my real dad and why didn't he want to be
with me? And why does you know Garrett try to be my dad. So she had a little rebellious streak in her, you know. She she told her mother wanted that she was staying at her friends and she ends up driving to Nashville with a bunch of folks to go see an Ozzy Osbourne concert. But she got busted because somebody that worked with her mom goes, hey, I saw Michelle last night. Where'd you see her at the Ozzy Osbourne concert? What the So she gets busted on
that one. But she had a streak in her. But she still was such a sweetheart.
You know, she.
Was a good friend. She was a loyal friend.
You also talk of another character, Angela and people call her Angie and she's married to a man named Tiberis and they were transferred to Tennessee and Angie transferred to Clarksville Baskin Robbins as a night manager. Tell us a little bit about this. She is just got news that she is accepted into the surgical nurse program and she's hard worker. Tell us a little bit about her life.
Angie Holmes was a spitfire. She was twenty one years old. She and her husbands to Baris was the class clown, and he fell in love with Angie in high school and they start talking. They start talking some more, they start dating to Bars went into the military. He and Andree are you know, they just can't be kept apart. So Tabars gets transferred, Angie goes with him, They have a baby, They get married. Angie gets accepted at Austin
p a very prestigious school there in Clarksville. And yes, she gets accepted into that program which only X number of students are accepted in. She was, you know, a lot like Andrea. If there's a five point zero, Angie would have had it. And she kept a four point oh gpa literally from grade one up. School came so easy to her, it was like breathing. She didn't even have to crack a textbook. And so she was working
a full time job managing Baskin Robbins. She was keeping that four point oh out of very prestigious, very difficult education program. She was raising a newborn, and she was a new a newly wet so and yet doing it all with such grace. And she was very close to her family.
Right tell us about the Baskin Robbins that night and what came to be in terms of again, people loved ones. Everybody's in contact with cell phones now and everybody's ready for someone to come and pick them up or if there is an hour or anything amiss, people tend to notice this. So what happens at the Baskin Robins out of the ordinary, and what are people's responses?
Okay, well it's April twenty third. It was the evening the Baskin Robins in Clarksfield. There is located on a very busy road called Wilma Rudolph. Now, at the time, wil marou Of Boulevard was almost a ghost town. Now you would never recognize it. As a matter of fact, when I go to when I go there to Clarksville, I have to hunt for the basketin Robbins there because I would go and I'll put flowers at the at the memorial, or I'll stop by just to pay my respects.
But then it was dark and desolate, and they had just closed this door. And we believe what happened is Reid talked his way in and they had, of course just lock the door. We think he somehow talked his way in, and we believe that Michelle had said, well you better get out of here because my brother's going to pick me up any minute. Now, that was true because only so many minutes prior to closing down, Michelle and her mom had talked on the phone and she had asked her mom, Hey, will you g me some
potato soup? I'm so hungry, and her mom was like, okay, and they both confirmed that Michelle's brother was going to pick her up from work that night. Right, So she hangs up, she helps Angie with closing duties, and then not so many minutes after hanging up with her mom, Paul reed so giving Michelle's personality, because Michelle's kind of fearless in a lot of ways, we think that what happened is she challenged him and he tied them up with their apron strings, took the head, Angie, take the
money out of the safe. The safe in this case was one that was down into the ground, and walked them to his vehicle, and then he drove them to a place called Dunbar Cave State Park and walked them down the path along the little lake there. Now, what really sorry. One of the things that overstruck me about that was we think at either way, one of the ways he had to take was he drove past Michelle, I'm sorry, passed Angie's apartment complex where Tabarrows was waiting
for her to come home with their baby. Angie and to Baris had married at Dunbar Cave State Park.
Yeah, yeah, you talk about a man named Devin Finnegan took a stroll around Swan Lake at Dunbar Park walking his dog, and he saw first body in the water, face down, hands tied behind her back. And then the police arrived and they found the other body, Michelle and Andrew's bodies. And Patrick Pastaglion heard the news always he knew immediately what it meant. He heard the news now again, this is the biggest man hunting in Nashville's history. They're
the media you talk about. I mean, there's so much we don't cover in this book. How the media hounded each of the families after the murders, relentlessly asking inane questions and questions nobody could should ever have to answer. What is the reaction now when they find these bodies? What do the police do? And again you get us back, flash us back to Jose Gonzales, So tell us what happens next?
Well, they believed that since there was so much coverage in Nashville and the hunt was on in Nashville, that the killer had moved to Clarksville. Clarksville is not far away from Nashville, and there had to be some kind of a tie, which they later found out there was for the killer Clarksville and Nashville. So because of the
heat coming onto Nashville, the killer had moved. Now, there had been a similar crime at the Chaco Bell, but that person had had been apprehended if I'm not mistaken eventually, and there was also some suspects that had been suspected they had officially caught them but ruled them out. And
the media also hounded Michelle's family. Andy's family, her parents had divorced and they lived out of state, and Angie's mother and sister were watching the news frantically turned to find something out when it came out on national news and her sister said, oh my god, that's Andy's picture. So it's caught on in almost a fireball frenzy in the National news. Can go back, they were hounded.
You go back to Mitchell Roberts, the manager, and Paul Reid contacts him. In fact, he goes to tell us about this contact. What the does Paul read, how does he contact him, what does he do, what does he say? What is Mitchell Robert's reaction? This is fascinating, one of the most nast of the book.
Paul had been fired because he threw something at a at a coworker and she's a very tiny lady and whatever he threw at her, it could have killed her, and he was fired. Well, he shows up at Mitch's house and there's a videotape of him actually because his Mitchell's son was had the video recorder out, and he videos Paul knocking at the door, and Paul is all goofy and he's rigging his fingers hello, and he tells Mitch. He says, I just I want to talk to you
about hiring me back. And mit She's like, well, you know what, we need to talk about that some other time. And Paul's like, well, just you know, I really need that job. I really need the money. And Mitch's like, you know, we'll talk about it later. Well, Paul tricks Mitch into going outside to Paul's vehicle and he says, I need to tell you about people stealing from you.
And Mitch's like, PAULA don't have sign for this. Well, all of a sudden, Mitchell starts thinking a red car, because one of the things they advertised about this killer was they believe he was driving a red car. And Mitchell starts pulling it all together. The killer was this big muscle or guy black hair. He drove a red car, and it just kind of fell into place in Mitchell's head and he says, Paul, I don't have time for this.
He starts leaving, and the next thing, you know, and now Paul's got a gun in his hand and he says, Mitchell, you're coming with me, and Mitch's like, Paul, put that away. Now he's got a pair of handcuffs on the other hand. He says, put these on. And Mitchell's thinking, oh my god, he is going to handcuff me. He's going to take me to the show and hees he's going to make me open the safe and then he's going to kill me and he'll come back here and he'll kill my
wife and kids. Right, and he starts praying. And now Paul has a knife, the handcuffs in one hand and a gun in the other and this says a little prayer, and he says, Paul, you're not gonna shoot me or anybody else, and he shoves him and jumps inside the house, slams the door on Paul who's trying to open it, and he yells at his wife, hand me the gun, hand me the gun. Well it scares Paul and he runs, jumps in his car and leaves.
And incredibly, he tells the cops because he tells them what he thinks. He thinks, this is the serial killer that you guys are looking for. I don't know if it doesn't. He's not clear who's listening, but that's what he's saying. And that incredibly.
So this is where Paul calls Mitchell and and see this is where his ego gets him. He calls Mitchell, says, man, Mitchell, and I'm so sorry. I should not have done that. I you know, I hope you can forgive me because I really need my job back. And the cops are standing there looking at me. Mitchell like this is insane? Is that him? Get him back here? And the next thing, you know, you know, he's like, uh, yeah, Paul, why
don't you come back here. Let's talk about it, which he does, he has offending him, drive him back to Mitchell's house, and that's when they nab him. Unbelievable. But you know, you think that the strangest things and the most difficult arrest, the most amazingly difficult cases sometimes are soft by the simplest thing, And that's this case.
Yeah.
Yes, Soon after everything crumbles, he claims to be innocent and then very very interestingly, just like the behavior of acting like a buffoon at that first trial where he got twenty years, he again has odd behavior and again the defense does a vigorous defense for him. He has the three trials and then you again, it's incredible. The victims families have to come see blown up crime scene photos on screens, hear the details that everyone put together.
More horrifying than reading this book in terms of the graphic detail that these people have to hear about their loved ones. Jose Gonzales testifies again, still afraid of Paul Read. Tell us a little bit about Paul Read's behavior in prison and that trial.
Okay, well, I'm glad, glad you brought that up, because the reason I wrote this book was not to write about Paul Reid. Because when Paul Reid was captured. He was the darling of the media, and the families were forgotten. They became the families of the woman who was killed at Baskin Robbin's by Paul Reid. They became associated with him.
And for example, during the trial, they had to sit on tarred benches, and as you said, see and hear these horrifying things, Paul Reid got this hit in a big cushy chair with the swivel that sat back and sat forward. They weren't allowed to even look at him
during the trial. During their testimony, and while Bert's sister was giving her her victims testimony, he blew her kisses that nobody could see him doing it while she is sitting up there trying to hold back her tears because you can't cry when you're given that impact statement, and nobody could see Paul. He's sitting there blowing kisses to her. And after Jenna gave her impact statement about Sarah and she leaves the stand, she just glanced over at him.
It was less than a second, and they tried to call a mistrial because she looked at him, and he sat there stone cold at everything. He could have been watching a very dull movie. But when they showed the crime scenes and the bodies, he would lean forward in his chair and beaches and alive in them.
And interesting.
They're very interesting to watch him.
What was odd and again so interesting, was yet when Jose Gonzalez testified, what was his reaction?
Oh my god? He said he felt for Jose and if he could, he would give him a kiss and a hug and tell him it's okay. Poor Jose was so confused, and you know, he just wished he could give him a big old hug and tell him you're gonna be okay. Jose. I know you're confused and you don't have the right man, but gosh, you know you're a really great guy, and I just love you. And he said, oh, I just love Jose.
Like you say.
He was.
The media gave him a lot of attention, and he had admirers. Unfortunately, though he had no admirers in prison, did he? It was the pretty well the opposite of that, wasn't it.
He didn't have admirers that were, you know, intimate admirers. But oh yeah, he had plenty of letters. He had people that were writing in letters and then turning them around and selling them. You know, he had people that were offering him, but he was in jail. He had a im media person wanting to know if they could send him a flower basket or a fruit basket in exchange for an interview. Nobody offered the victims' families of flower basket or a fruit basket, just because nobody in
the media offered that. But no, most of the inmates on death Roads weren't big fans. He made one or two friends and that was it.
Now, despite all of this psychiatric analysis and evaluation brought by the defense in the three trials, and especially when you're talking about death sentence cases death penalty cases, despite that, despite their testimony, what did he receive in all three trials in terms of sentence?
Altogether, across three trials he received seven death sentences, which was the most given to any person in the state of Tennessee.
And do police like Bleon think that there is a good possibility that he's responsible for other murders and if so, what are they doing anything in that regard?
Yes, definitely he was a suspect and another murder at Shawnees which was never saft a show that Mitch had loaned him out too. There was a manager that was found flashed to death, and then there was a case in Houston, Texas in nineteen eighty where three young people in a bowling alley were found shot execution style while they laid on their stomach, and a man named Max so Far has been twice convicted for that murder. Mister so Far died on death row in Texas. But it
strongly believed that Reed actually committed that murder. He had been kicked out of the bowling alley. I think it was the night. And I'm sure there are more. He had left prior to leaving for Nashville. He left Texas to go to Chicago for some unknown reasons and then came back to Texas. And he had also gone to Oklahoma and came back when he was still in Texas. So it is, honestly, it's no telling. I'm sure there are also unsolved robberies besides murders.
You talk about. In March twenty fourth, two thousand and three, Paul sent a handwritten note asking to drop his appeals captain in the Captain D's case, and it cleared way for his execution. Apparently was preparing to die April twenty eight, two thousand and three. However, after families had traveled there for this, what did he do.
The family's packed up and that was it. Okay, he finally this is it. We're finally gonna We're finally going to have it ended, you know what can be ended. And they all go there, they're all prepared, they're ready for it, and at the very last minute, he's even had his last meal, he said, God has spoken to me, don't need to die. I'm not ready to die. I'm calling it off. So the families got back on the bus and we're sent back home. Now here's an interesting note.
As they're going in on the butt, there's a candlelight vigil for Paul Reid and all of these people are yelling and screaming and calling the family's name. Wow, because Reid is going to die and they are against the death penalty and they are calling these families of these slain kids' names.
Yeah, incredible. You also talk about that he said he received a sign from God. This is again, we don't have much time. So this is about Sarah Jackson, Steve Hampton, Andrea Brown, Ronald Santiago, Robert Sewell, Angela Holmes, Michelle Mace And like I say of Jose Gonzales, you say, a portion of this book's proceeds go to an organization, Parents of Murdered Children po MC. Tell us a little bit about this organization, and tell us a little bit about this organization.
Yeah, there's a po MC in Clarkville that was started by two of the parents of two of the people's slang. And they support an advocate for parents whose children have been murdered, and they help people who are in this situation. They do work towards law and rules for people who have found themselves in this situation. Because nobody ever says, Gosh, one day my kid will be killed. Nobody ever says that, and these people are thrown into this situation. You know,
who knows what's going on in the courtroom? Who knows what an appeal is? Or does does a life sentence mean life sentence? You know? Well, what is you know, evidential area? What does that mean? So they help these people and then they do fundraisers and it's an amazing organization. And the funds go to this organization and they are donated in the names of these victims. And that's what this book is about is how crime survivors and crime
victims are treated in the justice system. And that's really what this book is about. And in the back of the book is more information on that for people, and also on my website.
And I got to say to the audience too, that your book really does truly honors these people's memories. Again, I don't want to call them victims, but these people and they're fascinating and honorable lives. You've done true justice to at least their stories, because it is a balance.
Everybody's so interested in the serial killer and and how he got to where he got, but these people's lives were, of course irregably changed and the people around them, and you capture every horrifying and heartbringing moment in this book. I want to thank you very much, Judith for coming on and talking about when Nashville bled. It's been fascinating.
Well, thank you for caring about these people, because I mean I do, and I still do, and I still get choked up talking about him, and I just you know, Paul Reid wasn't special, he wasn't scary. He was a punk, he was a thug, He was nothing compared to these guys.
Yeah, yeah, Well their memories will, I say, will be honored. And I urge people to get this book. It's incredible when Nashville bled the Untold Stories a serial killer Paul Dennis read. Thank you very much, Judith A. Yates. Is there a website that people might go to? A Facebook page?
Tell us about that, sure, Truecrimebooks dot net. I'm on Twitter, I am on gosh, every social media almost that you can think of. And I will go ahead and go on your Facebook page also and type in my Facebook page and your Facebook page can talk on my Facebook page.
So sounds great. Also for those wanting to look into parents of murdered children TRIPLEW dot p o MC dot com. Thank you very much, Judith, have a great night.
Thank you. Dann you too, be careful out there, Yes, you too, Thank you.
Good night,