True Crime All The Time - Paul Dennis Reid - "The Fast Food Killer"

Episode Date: November 25, 2019

Paul Dennis Reid was dubbed "The Fast Food Killer' after he murdered seven people in 3 different Tennessee robberies in 1997. Reid's childhood was unstable to say the least. He had a very low IQ and suffered from a large number of head injuries both as a child and as an adult. Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss the life and crimes of Paul Reid. Reid had a history of armed robbery and was sent to prison in Texas in his younger days. He moved to Nashville, Tennessee to become a country singing star. But, when that didn't work out, he resorted to the one thing he knew how to do; commit armed robberies. And, in doing so, he killed 7 innocent people and gravely injured another.You can help support the show at patreon.com/truecrimeallthetimeVisit the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.com for contact, merchandise and donation informationSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

everyone and welcome to episode 158 of the True Crime All the Time podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my partner in True Crime. Mike Gibson, Gibby, how are you? I'm good, man. How about you? I'm doing great. Yeah. Happy to be in the studio with you as always. Same here. It's fun. It's a blast, man. We enjoy the recording. We do. The research. That's a different story. I won't say I don't like it. It's just a lot of work. Yeah, I like it, But you're right. The recording is more fun. Yes.

For sure. Yeah. Between the two, no doubt. So we've got some interesting cases. We do. lined up for both T-Cat and T-Cat Unsold on True Crime All the Time Unsolved. We have an episode out right now on Arpana Janaga. Yes.

And that's a good one. You know, we have a single gal that is living in an apartment complex. She's successful. And she goes to a Halloween party and ends up dead. And the mystery starts to, you know, unravel from there. Exactly. Doesn't get fully unraveled, obviously, because this is an unsolved episode. But definitely check that out.

Gives you and I just last night put out a new Patreon full-blown episode. It's on Wolford Barry Jr. Yeah. And this was interesting. There was a lot of death penalty talk in this episode because Barry was the first man to be executed in Ohio after the reinstatement of the death penalty. So I think if I remember it had been what 35, 36 years. A long time. Since Ohio had executed anyone, the first person up was Barry.

He did some very bad things. Well, he did. Obviously, he had to have to get the death penalty. but I think because it was so fresh, nobody had been executed for such a long time, the demonstrators came out in even more force than what they normally do. It was something like 300 to 12. That's pretty powerful numbers at that time. Yeah, 300 anti-death penalty supporters.

12 who were there to support the death penalty is a big chasm. Yes. So if you're a Patreon member, check that out. If you're not, hey, it's a great time to sign up. Speaking of Patreon, we had a merch winner for last month, and that was Colleen Ellen Becker. Ellen Becker got it. Ellen Becker. All right. So let's go ahead and give our shout-outs. Gibbs. We had Brett Eaddy. Hey, Brett. Alana Crehan. What's up, Alana? Haley Bennett jumped out of our highest loving. Thanks, Haley. Kelly Williams. Hey, Kelly. Delette Blighton. I like that. DeLette. Yeah, it's a cool name.

Sabrina Fierro. What's going on, Fiero? Sidney Smith. Mart. Hey, Sydney. Michao. Me, Chao. Heather Snyder. Hey, Heather. It's a mystery. It is a mystery.

It is. Christina Massarella. Marcella. Richard McLaren. What's going on? Dev Weisbart. Wise Bart. Joseph Dawson.

Hey, Joseph. Brigitte Ebdrop. Ooh, Brigitte. Christy Lee. Hey, Christy. Amy Fagan jumped out of our high school. What's going on, Amy? Jacqueline Gebble.

Gable, Gable. Sarah Long jumped out of highest level. Hey, Sarah. And then Justin Hodges. Thanks, Justin. So a lot of names in there, Gibbs, that are kind of familiar. Yeah. I think people, you know, they join Patreon. They jump off for a time. That's normal. Sure. They come back. That's awesome. I love when they come back. We love that. And then if we go back to the vault. Let's do it. This week, we selected Leanne West Bank. Hey, Leanne. Big supporter, been with us a long time. We really appreciate it, both the new and the long-term support. The guy's the best.

We had PayPal as well. Clara Sutherland. Hey, Clara. Shila Green. What's up, Shaila? Alana Bush. Hey, Alana. Made a pretty sizable donation.

Awesome. As did Megan Pacifico. Oh, well, what up? Pacifico. Yeah. So awesome. Love it. We appreciate it.

I used to know a power lover name Pacifico. You did? Yeah. Larry Pacifico. Larry Pacifico. World champion back in the day, man. Things that you didn't know.

I did not know. need to know that you hung out with a bunch of power lifters. I was not aware of that. All right, buddy, are you ready to get into this episode of true crime all the time? I am. I'm pretty darn excited. We're jam-packed. So we're talking about Paul Dennis Reed, who the press dubbed as the fast food killer. Really? Yeah. You know how you get a nickname, a moniker like the fast food killer? You rob fast food restaurants. Yeah. And you kill the workers inside. That will get it. And that's exactly what Paul Dennis Reed did.

Gibbs, this is a guy who had a very long history of robbing fast food restaurants. He also had a history of getting caught, which we'll talk about. But in 1997, he murdered seven people in Tennessee during fast food restaurant robberies and really became one of Tennessee's most notorious serial killers. Some big numbers. Yeah, and I mean, I don't think Tennessee is a state that is known for its prolific serial killers. You know, Ohio's got them, Texas, California. Many states have them. Sure.

But you don't think of Tennessee as having this big, long list of prolific serial killers. No, you think of Tennessee. You think of Elvis and Memphis and Nashville and yeah. And this is definitely. one of those cases where I think people look at the life and crimes of Reed and they wonder if this guy could have killed many more over the years, right? We'll get into all of that. But first, let's jump into some background on Paul Reed. He was born in Texas on November 12th, 1957. Paul had two older sisters. His father was a private investigator. Which is interesting. It is interesting.

he also on the side repossessed cars well you know what you kind of have to be an investigator to find out where those darn cars are hiding they do kind of go somewhat hand in hand yeah he also happened to be an alcoholic so between his drinking his private investigative work and repossessing cars this guy was not home very often not going to be a very stable uh childhood it's not and a lot of people people said that. You know, Paul Reed did not have a stable childhood. I mean, to call it unstable, that's probably being euphemistic in the, in the use of that word. Right. Paul's parents divorced when he was three years old. And his father gained custody of Paul and one of his older sisters. The other sister went to live with the mother. I found that as a somewhat strange scenario.

It is somewhat, you know? It happens. I know it does. I can't leave mom by herself. I'm going to go with mom. You guys go with dad. I think by and large, most often, the mother gains custody of all the children. I think if you looked at it by percentage, that's the biggest that happens most of the time.

But the fact that he gained custody of two of the three, you just don't really hear about that very often. No. But then you look at it from the point of view that he gained custody while being an alcoholic. Yeah. Who worked a lot and very odd hours on top of that. So it makes you wonder what was up with the mom. Yeah. And I actually really couldn't find much out about her.

So I think you're right on the money. Was there something going on there where, okay, we don't want to give her custody of all three were splitting these up and neither one of them's a great choice. I don't know. I don't want to say that, but it could have been. But if you think about it, right, being a private investigator and repossessing cars, that's not exactly what you'd call a nine to five job. Not at all.

So because Paul's father was never home, he and his sister were basically raised by their grandmother. Paul's mother later remarried to a man named Danny Mores, and they had two daughters. But Paul really started causing trouble at an early age. You know, said Gibbs that his grandmother could not control him. He did things like steal the neighbor's mail. He would steal the neighbor's clothes off the clothes line. Oh, hey, grandma got you something special here.

Here's some underwear. Yeah. In case you need some. Look like your size. They come from the woman next door. Now, none of that's good, but you could look at that and say, okay, that's just a little kid doing little kid things. Foolish. Yeah, we all did stupid things, girl.

Yeah, acting, you know, a fool. But then you get into some really bad stuff, things that really hint at Paul Reed being a future killer. Apparently Gibbs, he terrorized his grandma. He put little thumb tacks in her soup. That's bad. That is bad. This is your grandmother. Can't even have a decent cup of soup without worrying about some thumb tacks.

Do you know what happens if you swallow a couple of thumb tacks? It's not going to be good. It is not going to be good for your internal organ slash digestive system. And then you get the anxiety of knowing if it makes it through. Oh, you got to push it out. Well, it's going to make it through. Where else it's got to go somewhere? I don't know.

Eventually, those are coming out. That's where anxiety goes really through the roof. He would barricade her in her bedroom so she couldn't get out. He once set fire to her bed while she was sleeping in it. Just like evil, man. Yeah. I mean,

this is some Damien slash omen. Yeah. Slash, what's that little kid from the shining Danny? Yeah. But this is some stuff that you look. look at and you say, this is not normal. Okay. Kids do foolish things. They do things they're not supposed to. They test the limits, the boundaries. We know that. I think trying to kill your

grandmother at a very young age. I don't know what boundary you're trying to push because that's the end of the road. I just know if I was a grandma, I'll be putting a deadbolt on the inside of my bedroom door. He also showed very early on signs of being cruel to animals. It was reported Gibbs that he beat his grandmother's dog to death with a baseball bat. Right there it tells you where we're headed. Yeah. You know this kid's not going to grow up to lead an unbelievably productive life. He already shows that he has no care for life.

Life. Yeah. Human life, animal life, nothing. I mean, this kid's in serious trouble, right? from a very early age. These are not pranks. Like I said, these are not the foolish acts of a child. This is some very devious and criminal stuff we're talking about here.

It's just scary, you know, because he's messing and torturing with his grandma. He's already hurting animals, you know, and it just makes you wonder what other signs he's going to have that's going to lead us down that path. Yeah. Well, he is going to have some head trauma. That's something that you and I talk about a lot. Right. Some that he suffered during childhood and some that he suffered later. But I think it makes sense just to walk through them here instead of trying to keep them in chronological order.

At the age of five, he was hit in the head with a brick. Well, that could do it. That's not good. When he was 12, he fractured his skull in a mini bike accident. That is probably. Going to push you over the limit a little bit. So those mini bikes are dangerous, man. They are, man.

But fun. They're fun. The problem is you are essentially giving a motorized weapon to a little kid. Because a mini bike is what? Men for a little kid, right? Yeah. So you're saying here, take this mini bike that goes however fast. You just graduated from the hot wheel battery operated.

What do they call it? Not hot wheel, what's it called? The big wheels or power wheels? Yeah, power wheels. Yeah. You just graduated from the Barbie power wheel. Here's a mini bike. Right.

Go see how that works. I always like some of the plats I used to grow up and you come home and there'd be the dad. Sitting on the little tiny mini bike and just going up and down the street, you know. Yeah. And you can barely see the bike because dad's so big. Yeah. It's like, is it coming out of his ass? He's covered up the whole mini.

any bike. Yeah. Like, you know, if you want to be daring, go get your own bike. That's right. They make adult-sized bikes. Exactly. Motorcycles. Just get one of those.

Reed was later hit by a car while he was riding his bike. So the car hit him. He flew into the windshield head first. Yeah. He's definitely have some head trauma. A lot. A lot. As an adult later on, he slipped at work, hit his head.

We'll talk about it later because he gets a worker's comment. thing out of it. And then at 23, he was in a car accident that resulted in a concussion. So in 23 years of life, to me, that's quite a bit of head trauma. Well, I think that's a pretty extreme amount of head trauma for an individual. And the reason why it's so vital to bring it up is because it will become a part of his defense later on. Sure. Both at trial and, you know, during his appeals. Okay, so I know we fast forwarded there a little bit, but like I said, to me, it made sense to talk about all of the head injuries at one time, run through all of them, but now back to his childhood. This kid was a terror. We detailed some of it out,

essentially raised by his grandmother because his father wasn't doing the job. That much is clear. He was never home. He was said to Gibbs basically have negligent. neglected his children. Yeah. Sounds like he was working. He was. And then drinking. Yeah.

I don't know how much of it was work versus drink. Maybe it was work. And then the rest of the night, I'm at the bar. I don't know. But I go back to the question of, why did he even want the kids? Or why was he awarded custody of these kids? Maybe he wanted him so he didn't have to pay out. I'd say that.

As always, you bring up a very valid point. We know child support can be extremely expensive. Yeah. It can be. And maybe that's the only thing that makes sense because obviously the guy didn't want to be a parent, right? He might have wanted custody of the children for financial reasons, but he didn't want to be a parent. That much is clear. Yeah.

I mean, so it's going to be either because of the financial reasons or just out of spite, right? So that she can't have them. Yeah, I'm not going to let you have them because you left me for this guy over here. Just no way I'm going to let you have the kids too. When I think to illustrate the point of how bad a parent this guy really was, he didn't enroll Paul in school until he was seven years old. It's a little late. It was almost like, hey, sorry, I forgot.

I forgot that there's this thing called school. Yeah. And you're supposed to go to kindergarten. Then you're supposed to go to first grade. He's like, he already knows how to cut and paste. I guess now you just got to do a Billy Madison and try to, you know, make up the kindergarten first grade, jump right to second grade. I need a year like that, Billy Madison year. At least one.

At least one. Maybe two. So to me, Gibbs, this guy was not winning any father of the year awards. I think that's pretty safe to say. But when you look at Paul in school, he didn't do well. He was diagnosed by a school psychologist. as suffering from what was termed as a minimal cerebral dysfunction. There are going to be a lot of different diagnoses of Paul Reed.

As it relates to his mental capacity, Paul and his sister eventually went to live with their mother because as one court document stated, their father was going to put them up for adoption. So maybe he had done what he set out to do in getting back at his ex-wife. I don't know. But at some point he made the decision, I'm done.

I'm giving my two children up for adoption. Again, father of the decade. Yeah. So the mom steps in and is like, no, these are my kids. I'm going to take them. Paul continued to struggle in school. He continued to get into trouble. When he was 16 years old, his mother kicked him out of the house.

Yeah, but she needed to. She had to because apparently Paul had sexually assaulted his sisters, but not only that, he sexually assaulted his mother as well. Yeah, he had no limitations. So he got kicked out. He lived with his father at times. But I think most of the time he tried to make it on his own. Maybe stayed with whoever he could. He had arrests while still a minor for assault, for car theft.

again, just heading down a very bad road. Well, like you said, he's a minor pretty much living on the streets half the time. Yeah. So he's going to do what he has to to try to survive, make some dollars. Sure. And to that point, he got caught forging checks. He dropped out of high school in 1977. So as I was doing the research, I found one thing that said, okay, he was a junior.

When he dropped out, a lot of people drop out at different times. sophomore, junior, senior. Sure. He was 19 years old. Yeah. As a junior. What are you say? Well, my assumption is he was held back a couple of times.

Which one with that? I'm not saying anything's wrong with it. I'm just saying I think he was held back a couple of times. Now, it also could have had something to do with the fact that he didn't start until he was seven. Yeah, that's probably a big factor right there. So maybe he wasn't held back at all. He progressed through with everybody else.

The problem is he was two years older than everybody else to begin with. He was in kindergarten as a seven. Seven-year-old. He was that big kid all the way up until junior high. Right. Now, he later did get his GED, something that he was very proud of. He showed everybody. He told everybody.

The same year he dropped out of high school, though, he was charged with robbing a supermarket. But the charges were dropped when a psychiatrist for the state of Texas said that Paul Reed was legally insane. So made that diagnosis. Yeah. They tested his IQ and it came in around 63. All right. Now, I saw some varying reports on that, but there was one report that said 63. That's low.

That is low. We know that's low. He was arrested in 1982 for multiple armed robberies. That's what he's going to do. He has no other way to make money. He has no skills. Right. He's trying to survive.

I think it's pretty clear throughout his life. that when he needs money or when he feels his back is up against the wall, he's going to resort to stealing. Because that's easy money. You don't need a degree. You don't need a bunch of fancy book learning to walk into a store or a restaurant or something, brandish a gun and say, that's it.

Give me all your money. As long as you got the cahonas to do it. So I said he's arrested with that. comes more psychiatric examinations. Out of those, some conclusions were drawn by some of these professionals that examined him that he was putting this on, some of this on, so that he wouldn't have to go to jail. Because remember, it had already worked once. He was able to get somebody to say that he was legally insane. So he's kind of smart, really. I mean, for somebody that has somewhat of a little IQ, he's figured out how to play the system or try to play the system.

Yeah. Well, there's book smarts and there's street smarts. Yeah. And the two are often very different. As we know. He reportedly told the mental health professionals that he was a psychiatrist. He told the psychiatrist he was a psychiatrist. Hey, man, I'm one of you.

Yeah. Let's do this thing together. I belong to that same club, man. You share your insight. hear my inside. Please call me doctor. Doctor. Doctor.

But the other thing that he did was he began wearing a piece of cloth around his head because from what he said, this was what was protecting him from the demons. Oh, okay. He's got demons. Yeah. He's got his own frog demons? Yes. But this thin layer of cloth is what keeps the demons out of his head.

I guess they can't go over the top of it or under the, underneath it. Was that the birth of the headband? Maybe it was. Yeah. Like Forrest Gump getting that mud splashed on the T-shirt. Yeah. Next thing you know, you got the smiley face.

You do. Trendsetters are out there. So the first jury that he ran up against for these multiple armed robberies, they declared him incompetent to stand trial. So he was put in a Texas state hospital. he was diagnosed as suffering from bipolar disorder manic type. But he eventually pleaded guilty to one of the robberies after a second jury found that he was mentally competent. So there's a lot of back and forth here about this guy's mental capacity, his mental competency.

He was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Again, Texas does not mess around. No. How many times do we say that? Now, in between the two trials, he had gotten married, but his wife divorced him after he got the 20 years sentence. She said, I love you, but I don't love you that much. That's a long time. I really don't feel like waiting around that long.

Mama needs some loving. So goodbye. I don't know if it was the loving part, but I think the waiting around for 20 years covers it all. Support for true crime all the time comes from our friends at Rocket Morgan. by quicken loans. Home is so much more than a house. It's your own little slice of heaven. That's why when you find the perfect place for you and your family, getting a mortgage shouldn't get in the way. Rocket Mortgage is doing more to help you understand the home buying process so you can get exactly what you need because it's not just a mortgage, it's your mortgage. And

they found a better way. Their number one goal is to make the home buying process smoother for you. They're changing the game with industry-leading online lending technology developed in the heart of Detroit. mortgage is there with award-winning client service and support every step of the way. Quicken Loans has helped millions of Americans achieve their dream of home ownership, and when you're ready to purchase the home of your dreams, they can help you too. When you work with them, you get more than just a loan, because Rocket Mortgage is more than just a lender. So visit RocketMorgage.com slash TCAT and take the first step toward the home of your dreams. Equal housing lender licensed in all 50 states, an MLS Consumer Access.org number,

3030. Rocket mortgage by quicken loans. Push button, get mortgage. Next up is Hunt a Killer. Gibbs you and I have talked about this before. You know, a lot of us are glued to our phones, a majority of the day. So what if we told you that we have a great idea to connect you with friends, family, as well as your inner detective? This is where Hunt a Killer comes in, the murder mystery box that immerses you in an ongoing detective experience. Hunt a killer's the fastest growing murder mystery subscription game that puts you in the mind of a detective. With every delivery, you'll sift through elaborate case files and evidence, eliminating suspects until you crack the case and catch the killer. And hunt the killer is perfect, whether you're a

detective that wants to work alone or you want to have fun with friends and family. They have thousands of online community members and 2,000 5 star reviews on trust pilot. Plus, part of the proceeds for every box goes to the Cold Case Foundation to help fun. cold case investigations. And right now, just for our listeners, you can go to huntaciller.com slash T-Cat for 20% off your first box. Hurry to take advantage of this offer and embrace your inner detective. That's huntaciller.com slash T-Cat for 20% off your first box. Huntaciller.com slash T-Cat. It's not just about catching the murderer. It's about the friends you make along the way. Gibbs, as you well know, this is the season to elect benefits through your workplace.

A lot of people know open enrollment as decision time for health care coverage, but really it's also the perfect time to reassess your life insurance needs. To properly provide for their families, most people need about 10 times the amount of life insurance coverage, then they can get through their jobs. That's where policy genius can help. Policy genius is the easy way to shop for a life insurance plan that's not tied to your job. In minutes, you can compare quotes from top insurers to find your best price. And once you apply, the policy genius team will handle all the paperwork in red tape. They can also help you find the right home and auto insurance, as well as disability insurance too. So when you're looking at your workplace benefits this time of year, make sure to double check your life

insurance options. Then go to policygenius.com to get quotes and apply in minutes. Policy genius, the easy way to compare and buy life insurance. So he's doing his prison term. He gets paroled in 1990. As part of his parole, he had to see a psychiatrist in Fort Worth. And the psychiatrist reported that, quote, Reed's mental problems appeared to be in remission. So he's good to go.

He's been cured. So here were the conditions of his parole. He was made to mail in a report once a year, basically saying, okay, here's where I'm living and here is where I'm working. Are you kidding me? That's it. mail in a report. We're not even going to come check you to see if you're living there or working there. You just tell us and mail it into us so that we don't have to leave the office.

Slightly disappointed, Texas. Yes. Come on now. But I don't think back then it was just Texas. Yeah. You know, parole was a little loosey-goosey in a lot of places. Probably didn't need to get it notarized either. You're like, no, I don't even notarize it.

No, just mail it in. So he had some jobs here and there. But essentially what I got from the research Gibbs is that he primarily lived off of a worker's compensation claim that he got after an accident on a job that he really had not been on very long. He also received some type of inheritance from his grandmother. Oh, grandma said, you know, I know you tried to kill me. I know you did all this stuff, but at the end of the day, I love you.

Well, yeah, it didn't say whether it was his paternal grandmother or his maternal. So it could have been her or could have been the other one. I don't know. In 1993, Paul Reed began writing letters to the governor of Texas and some other prominent people in the state. Basically, he was complaining in these letters that the government had him under surveillance. deal governor i feel like you are watching me at all times it was you know really getting into the area of some pretty severe paranoia yeah it kind of reminds me of that movie Truman it's a good movie i like that movie with jim carey yeah you know it seemed like paul reed believe that almost everyone he came in contact with was spying on him for the government

Or at least that's what he put in his letters, whether he really believed it or not. Did he not have his bandana on? I don't know if he was still doing the headband at that point or not. But people that knew him in Fort Worth said he didn't just write and mail the letters. He would make copies of these letters and hand them out to people. Really? Yeah, on the street. Almost getting into conspiracy theory stuff.

Yeah. What a lot of people would refer to as like the, what did they call? the tinfoil hat stuff. Yeah. You got to wear the tinfoil hat so the government can't, you know, read your brainwaves. You have one, don't you? Yeah, well, sure. My house.

Just because I think something's a little strange doesn't mean I'm not going to try it. I mean, I get home, my phone goes into a steel trash can and, well, I know you don't believe that. I don't. And anybody that watches the Patreon videos does not believe that either. They're going to be like, one, he's got an addiction with his phone. He does have an addiction. Two, the boy needs some sleep.

Yeah. Yeah. Two. T-O-O. Because you're playing on your phone, drinking monsters to try to stay away. But the other thing that people in Fort Worth said about Paul Reed was that he was a workout fanatic. He worked out like four hours every day. Really?

Yeah. Which you can do if you don't have a job. Yeah. And you spend some time in prison, you get used to that prison workout too. That's true. Yeah. He was a pretty big. buff guy. He stood about 6.3 and I think he was in very good shape. Now, at one point,

there was a report that said he weighed around 300 pounds. That's a, that's a very stout person. Yeah, but I think in all the pictures that I've seen, he was much trimmer than that. So it seemed to me like at one point in his life, he got into this workout. And maybe it was when he went to prison. Probably. He got into this working out. He liked it. You know, he lost the Wade, he got pretty physically fit. So things are a little strange, right? So far in the life of Paul Reed, they're about to get a little more weird because in 1995, Paul made the decision that he was going to move to Nashville.

Oh, here we go. He Gibbs is going to become the next big country star. Well, you thought you would be that too. I did. I actually did. So he took on the stage name Justin Parks. I'm not sure why Paul Reed sounds like a pretty good country name. I mean, as it is.

I got Rex West and that's like a perfect. That is perfect. But yeah, unlike yours. Which is what? Rascal McFarie. Hmm. Yeah. I don't know what I was thinking when I picked that stage name.

I don't know either. Well, no one big, though. So here's the problem, right? With this dream of being the next big country star, People that knew Paul Reed said he couldn't sing. I mean, not even one little bit. Isn't like the minimal requirement to be the next big country music star to be able to carry a tune? Yeah, you don't have to be a great singer, but you got to be able to sing a little bit.

Yeah, got to have something. He couldn't even carry a tune. That's what they said. But I guess he thought, you know what? I can do what those guys do. I can be George Strait. I can be Garthbrook. That's to the best ever.

Yeah. Now, it's a little easier said than done. We know that. And it's also something that many, many people have found out. So as he's working to be this next big country star, he got a job at Shoney's restaurant. Well, there you go. At A Shonies, I should say. Frisch's big boy Shonies.

Yeah. So this was in Donaldson, Tennessee. But this dream didn't pan out, right? it didn't happen for him. I don't think I probably need to say that. You've never heard him on the radio. You've never heard of Justin Parks. It doesn't pan out for a lot of people. You know, I love Nashville, Gibbs. You do too. You've told me that. We had a lot of fun when we were there, but it has a way of chewing and spitting out people who think they can be country stars. Absolutely. It just does. I mean, same with New York, Los Angeles.

You go to be a model. You go to be an actor. There are so many people that have this dream and they just can't make it happen. It's tough on people, man. Yeah. Sometimes it's luck. Sometimes it's who you know. It's running into the right person, getting discovered, whatever it is.

Now, with singing, you do have to be able to sing. Got to have talent, man. You do have to have some talent. Yeah. I'm not sure. modeling is, you know, there's talent to it. I get that. Sure. Acting. You know, you can learn how to act. Technically, you can learn how to sing, but you still have to have some pipes to begin with. Yeah. And everybody's got to have that it factor. That's true. You got to be something about you. Singing's not enough.

No, because you've heard great people sing. And they never made it. Yeah. They're like singing at the local restaurant, but they're not going to get past that because they don't have that it factor. Well, he didn't have any of the factors. Let's just put it that way. Not only did he not have the it factor, he didn't have any of the other ones. He didn't have the X factor. He didn't have none of the factors. None of them.

He didn't have max factor. Well, nothing. I think the percentage of people that make it just is very low, right? No different than a kid that grows up playing high school football. He wants to be in the NFL. Sure. Well, do you know what the percentages of kids that actually make it to the NFL? Probably less than 2%.

It's minuscule. Yeah. Minuscule. The percentage of kids that get a scholarship to college is small. But the NFL, even much smaller. But that's what happened to Paul Reed. His dream got crushed. So he moved back to Texas, found out that, well, there's really not much going on for him there.

And after a few months, he decided to return to Nashville. This time he enrolled at a community college and he began telling people that he was going to be a lawyer. Oh, well, there you go. Now, I applaud anyone for following their dreams. I think it's very important to follow your dreams. It is. The problem is I think Paul Reed had this inflated sense of himself. And he didn't really understand his limitation.

I'll say you have to understand where your limitations are, right? You do. You do. I mean, you can try to push past them. You can try to make something out of them. I just think he was a little grandiose in his ideas, these things that he thought he could do. Because I think the problem was, number one, he didn't have the ability. And he didn't have the wherewithal to make these things happen.

Let's say he didn't have the focus. I mean, he's all over the place. If he wanted to be a bodybuilder, maybe he wanted to be the country singer, he wanted to be the lawyer. You know, you got to focus in what you really want to be, and that's where you need to stay. You can't be bouncing in and out, you know. Well, you also need, again, to be able to sing. That's true. To be a singer.

That's right. You need some type of fairly high level of intelligence to get through law school. Through law school and pass the bar and be an attorney. Paul Reed didn't have any of this. Not to mention the fact that the guy had a prison record, which I'm pretty sure they look at. Yeah. When you go to get your license for the licensing portion to be an attorney. I think that would have caused some problems when it came to that point when he had to go for his

bar exam if he got that far. I think it's pretty safe to say that, you know, this was a guy that just didn't really think everything through all the way. He would latch on to something and just run with it. Okay. It's not going the way I want to after just a little. bit of time, I'm going to move on to something else, like you said. Seems like he was a guy that had problems with commitments, too.

Could be. Yep. But he's back in Nashville. He's not making it as a country star. He's not making much money. They did give him his job back at Chonies, though. There you go. But probably not making a whole lot of money at Chonies.

Police theorized that when Paul Reed realized that he was running out of money and couldn't support himself, he turned to the one thing that he knew, which was armed robbery. Sure, he's done it all his life. But this time, it seemed as though he had made the decision that he was going to kill as well as Rob, most likely, I would think Gibbs, so that he wouldn't be turned in and have to go back to prison. We've talked about that before. We've seen it before with other people that have graduated from just strictly burglary or armed robbery to now I'm killing because you can't have a witness out there somebody ID'd me before and I had to go to prison I'm not going to let that happen again nope I'm going to take the money and take you out so I'll have to worry

about you coming back and uh helping the police send me off to the big house he committed his first murders on the morning of Sunday February 6th. 1997 in Donaldson, Tennessee. This was pretty much down the road, not very far from the Shoney's where he worked. Reed went to the Captain D's restaurant before it opened and he knocked on the door. In his hands, he had a Captain D's application for a job that he had gotten the night before from that same store. And this is how he got them to open the door.

Hey, I've got this application. I'm here to apply for a job. I know you're not open. Will you take it? Once inside the Captain D's restaurant, Reed shot the manager, 25-year-old Steve Hampton. He also shot 16-year-old Sarah Jackson with a 32-caliber pistol. Sarah was still in high school. She's only 16 years old. I mean, no reason to shoot either one of them. No, no, I mean, both tragic. You know, Sarah only worked part time and there were some stories. I didn't go, I didn't really want to go too far into detail about them, but some stories out there from her mother saying, you know, this was a unbelievable kid, which is what mother said, but I'm sure she was. Sure. She got great grades. Her mother was on the fence about letting her work, but she thought, okay, this will be a safe place.

It's a restaurant. What's going to happen? Yeah. It's Captain D's, Yeah. And unfortunately, something did happen. Yeah. He shot both of these people execution style in the back of the head as they were laying face down on the floor. So he had made them get down, you know, lay face down. And then he just walked up and shot them both. He walked out of the store with about $7,000. Okay. Several hundred of that was said to have been in coins. A few bags of coins. Yeah. Okay. He also took Steve's wallet, which apparently had about $600 in it, which is a lot to carry around. But there was a reason for it. He had to pay something. I forget exactly what it was. Maybe he going to pay his rent or something like that. Yeah, it was something like that.

He was going to pay cash for something either, you know, later that day. So close to $8,000. Yeah. For two people's lives. Yeah. Okay. Seems right. And obviously I don't mean that.

I'm saying that in jest. It's ridiculous. Now, you and I have seen people kill for much less. We just talked about it in the Patreon episode. They took a man's life for essentially $140. Yeah, that's it. $140. So an employee of Captain D showed up a little bit later for work because, again,

they hadn't opened yet. They were probably prepping getting ready. He couldn't get in. He went next door to a nearby restaurant, tried calling the place, no answer. So he got worried. he finally called the police and said, hey, something's wrong. Can you come out? They were able to get inside the building and they found the two victims.

Police began their investigation, but they really didn't find anything that led them to their suspect. What they did find was some shoe prints near the safe and the restaurant. And then the next day, the day after the murders, some items belonging to Steve were found on the side of a highway where people were found. Paul Reed had tossed them. Yeah. Where he got?

He said, all right, got what I need it. Took the cash. Yeah. I got the $600. I don't need all this other stuff. Throw it out the window here. Probably threw it out the window as he's driving by. They found Steve's wallet.

Obviously, no money in it. But it did have some cards with it. Everything was fingerprinted and put into evidence. One card in particular, a movie rental card would play a key role in later connecting Reed to these murders because his fingerprint was on the card. Now we'll get into it a little bit later. One eyewitness even said that they saw a man wearing a Shoney's apron walking around near the crime scene.

That's helpful. It is. So police did interview, you know, all the people at the local Shonies, but they ruled Paul Reed out as a suspect. Well, they didn't really have anything to time to it. They didn't. They didn't have anything at the time. Now, they would catch some flack later on because, you know, once they figure out that they have this fingerprint on this movie rental card, people couldn't figure out how they were not able to match that up.

Because let's not forget, Paul Reed had been in prison. Yeah, he did. His prints were on file. But in Texas. In Texas. Yeah, I don't know why they caught so much flack. or how people thought that they were supposed to figure this out. I guess I don't know what databases were available in 1997.

I don't think Aethus was around then. The FBI one. I think that came either early 2000s or something like that. I could be wrong about that. But they did. They caught a lot of flack. People thought they should have been able to figure it out based on having the fingerprint alone. I mean, they're going to match it.

We know that. it's just going to take a little bit of time. On March 23rd, Reed showed up with a gun at a McDonald's in Hermitage, Tennessee, just after closing. So this was a big thing with him, right? He preferred to attack or, you know, enter these stores either just before they opened while they were still closed or just after they had closed at night. So to me, that shows some level of.

thought, planning. I don't know if he's as uneducated as some people thought he was. Well, again, let's go back to book smarts versus street smarts. That's true. That's true. This guy knows how to commit an armed robbery. Now, he's gotten caught for it, but he also spent some time in prison. He might have picked up some pointers there.

He might not be able to pass a trigonometry test or say the word trigonometry. I can barely say it. And I never had to use it ever. No, you never got that far, did you? Even if I did, I would never have to use it. Or, no, I'm sorry. You got waved out of it, didn't you? Yeah.

When you went straight to, what was it, Princeton with Doogie? Me and Doogie were close, man. They just waved you right past that trig class. I answered the three questions. They were like, yep. But I think it's important to talk about. Obviously, this guy had a low IQ. He had some mental deficiency.

We're going to talk about them more. So I think it's important to talk about his thought process, his level of planning as he carried out these crimes. There was some thought that went into it. And he didn't walk in during the lunch rush hour to a McDonald's. He knew what time they closed. And that's when he chose to strike. He shot three of the employees execution style in the back of the head, very similar to what he did at the Captain D's.

So he killed 17-year-old Andrea Brown, 23-year-old Robert Sewell, and 27-year-old Ronald Santiago. But Gibbs, there was a fourth worker in the McDonald's that night. Yeah, there was. It was a guy by the name of Jose Gonzalez. But when Reed went to shoot Gonzalez, he realized he was out of bullets. So he took out his knife, and he stabbed this guy 17 times. Yeah.

And then took off with what was said to have been about $3,000. Gonzalez lived. Amazingly. Amazingly. You get stabbed 17 times and live. And he later said that he played dead. I think that's what you do. It's smart.

Yeah. In an attempt to get his attacker to leave him alone. Well, the tactic worked. It did, though he continued to stab him 17 times. So I don't know at what point he. He decided to play dead. Right. I guess once you know you're not going to get away, start playing it.

So they don't keep stabbing you. Yeah. I mean, eventually, after so many times, you were hurt very badly. Yeah. It's probably not that hard to play dead because you're hurt. Exactly. Severely. He's just, I think he's lucky that he didn't bleed out.

You know, he's very lucky that someone, you know, came to the McDonald's, realized what was going on, called the police, called emergency personnel, they saved his life. But you have to think, you know, here, he thought he killed four people just to take that $3,000. Oh, he definitely thought he killed Jose Gonzalez. He left him there either to die or thinking he was already dead. Yeah. Because there's no doubt in my mind, Gibbs, he would have kept stabbing him if he thought he

needed to. And it's important because Jose plays a big part in putting, this guy away, think about it. He's the only surviving victim. Right. Of this attack at the McDonald's, who better to point a finger at the killer than someone that was there that night. Yeah. And almost lost their life. I know who you are. I remember you stabbing me 17 times and shooting my friends. Yeah, my thought is you go through something like that, that person's face is seared into your memory. I don't think you're going to forget it. probably wake up in the middle of the night with a cold sweat,

just thinking about it, picturing this person and what they did. I mean, I wake up in the middle of night with sweats. Unfortunately, it's you. I'm like, why would I be in, you might want to clarify, because it sounds like I'm in the room with you.

Oh, no, no, no, that goes real bad. It was a bad dream. I wake up because you didn't say it was a dream. You're in my nightmare wearing a furry suit. You didn't say it was a dream.

Trying to convince me to wear a furry suit. I'm not joining the club, man. It sounded very real. But this was brutal. I mean, three people lost their lives. One person barely escaped with theirs. Readneck struck on the night of April 23rd. This time he chose a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop in Clarksville, Tennessee, just after it closed.

So again, I don't want to belabor the point, but this is not a guy that is just doing things off the cuff, right? He's just not walking into these stores blasting away. There's some thought. There's some planning that is going into these. So Reed is waiting for the Baskin Robbins to close. And as he had before, he was able to persuade the workers to let him in. There's two girls that are working here at this Baskin Robbins. once he got inside, he pulled a gun on 21-year-old Angela Holmes and 16-year-old Michelle Mace. But this incident went down very differently than the others. Well, he's going to rob him.

That's going to be the same. But he's not going to shoot him. He's not going to shoot him. What he did was he forced them out into his car and he drove them to Dunbar Cave State Park. This is about 40, 50 miles away. someone called the police when they found the Baskin Robbins store was open, but nobody was inside. Police got there. They found the cash register and the safe was empty. But they had no idea where the workers were. Sadly, the bodies of Angela Holmes and Michelle Mace were found the next morning at the

state park. These were very brutal murders. Yeah. I mean, all these murders are brutal. But there is a difference. to me between shooting someone in the back of the head because I feel like that is over very quickly. Right. Hoping that those individuals didn't feel any pain. Didn't see it coming. Didn't see it coming. I mean, I'm horrified that they lost their lives. Absolutely.

That's a given. Oh, for sure. But when you talk about the murders of Holmes and Mace, the medical examiner said that he essentially redid, took what was said to have been about an eight-inch knife and plunged it into their throats. Yeah. Severed their carotid arteries. Essentially, both stabbed and slashed their throats. Yeah.

They both bled to death at the state park. Yeah. He just left them there to bleed out. So Gibbs, one thing that's interesting, apparently Reed had been calling off at his job at Shoney's. There was some indication that at least in some part, maybe it was so that he could plan and commit these crimes. Maybe in part because he thought, hey, I've got some money now. Yeah. I don't need to work as much as I was before.

It's easy to just go out and hit these doors up. Yeah. But because of it, he got fired. So his manager at Shoney's fired Reed in April. And I guess Paul didn't take it all that well because on, June 1st, he showed up at the manager's house. The manager said that Reed asked him for his job back and he became angry when the manager told him to call him later in the week at work so they could talk about it.

He was probably thinking, damn, man, what are you doing showing up at my door? Yeah. Come into work or call me at work. Right. Don't be coming to my home. No, because that's not right. No. You know that as well as I do.

Yep. having managed a lot of people over the years, if one of them showed up at your house, especially somebody that you fired, that would be, the alarm bells would be going off. Yeah, that's calling 911 and swing on by here. So I mentioned it. Paul didn't take it well. He pulled out his gun and he tried to kidnap this guy. But the manager said that he was able to push the screen door hitting Paul.

And then he took off inside his house. he was yelling at his family to call, you know, the police call 911. Reed panicked. And he got into his car and drove away. But then later, and this is so strange to me, Gibbs, he called back to the manager to apologize for what he had done. Hey, man, I'm sorry. Came out to your house.

I didn't mean to pull that gun. Yeah. You know, that was like, that was my bad. There was really no bullets in it anyway, man. That was, that was just my bad. Well, it just so happened that a. sheriff's deputy was out at the house. I mean, there had been an attempted kidnapping. Sure. So obviously they're going to call the authorities. The authorities were out there. Now,

there were some conflicting reports, but one report that I read said that the deputy got on the phone with Reed and was able to talk him into coming back to the house. I guess he said, you know, hey, man, just come on back. We'll sort this out. Maybe I'll get your job back for you. Yeah. Maybe I'll even help you smooth it over with the manager. Well, they sorted it out by arresting Paul Reed for attempted kidnapping. And really gives from there, things started to snowball really quickly. You know, there had been a couple of composite sketches made by witnesses in two of the robberies. And they somewhat resembled Paul Reed.

Once they got him to the station, that's when they were able to take his fingerprints. Yeah. And what do you know? They ended up matching the fingerprints that police had been able to lift from Steve Hampton's video rental card. Now they think they've got the guy that has been committing these robberies and murders. They got a search warrant for the boarding house where Reed was staying. And I guess Gibbs, they found a number of big jugs of coins. And they were sorted by denomination.

Oh, nickel dime, quarter, all that. You know, I got a jug of quarters. I got a jug of dimes. I got a jug of nickels. It was a lot of money in coins, thousands of dollars. They also found shoes that matched the footprints found near the Captain D. Safe, at least in size. I mean, as far as the measurements they took of the footprints. It helps limit the possibilities.

Yeah. I mean, if they're tens or ten and a halfs, okay, this guy's closet is full of ten or tens or tens or 10 and a halfs, they found enough to charge Paul Reed with seven murders, as well as some robbery and kidnapping charges to go on top of it. At the grand jury hearing, Jose Gonzalez, he was the guy that survived the McDonald's attack. Yeah. He got up on the witness stand and he pointed out Paul Reed as the man that had shot his coworkers and tried to murder him by stabbing him 17 times. So probably not too hard for the grand jury to say, yeah, I think we should take this one to trial. Yeah, I think it was probably pretty compelling.

There's enough evidence here to at least go to trial. What's interesting about the case of Paul Reed is that he actually had three separate trials. They started in 1999. So he went on trial for each separate robbery and the resulting murders. his defense team tried to get it all consolidated into one trial, but their motion was denied. I guess they were just trying to get it one trial to get one verdict, right? One sentence. Right. If it goes your way, then you're golden. Right. So, and you can see why the state would rather have three. Sure. You might get out of this one, but we'll get you on the next one. Yes.

Something might go wrong with the first one. Okay, we'll correct that in the second one. And we're going to get a death sentence one way or the other. The state had some pretty good evidence in the case against Paul Reed. We've talked about some of it. One of the main things was Reed's fingerprint on Steve Hampton's movie rental card. They had eyewitnesses that could put Paul Reed in the restaurant the night before the murders. He came in to get a job application. And it was that job application that he used the next.

day to gain entry before the store opened. They also had this car salesman that testified that prior to the murders, Paul Reed came in to buy a car. Yeah. But they had to turn him down. Yeah, no credit, man. He didn't have any credit. He didn't have any money. Right. Or didn't have enough money. But then all of a sudden, after the murders at Captain Dees, he's cash rich. Yeah. He came back in to lease a car. Suddenly he had a bunch of cash. Some of it they said was in coins. He left with a 1997 red Ford escort, which is important. Yeah. Because we're getting ready to talk about a car that people saw in the Baskin-Robbins case, where Angela Holmes and Michelle Mace were murdered. Police had evidence from Reed's car that matched

to victims. They had a credit card statement, Gibbs that showed Reed bought gas at a Texaco station at 9.52 p.m. And the Texaco station was on the road from the Baskin Robbins to the state park. This is where he wasn't smart. That's true. You always use cash. You've told me that numerous times. I think it's chapter six in your book. It says always use cash. Always. And not coins. Bills, not coins. Yes. They also recovered blood evidence from his shoes that turned out to match the victim. So we talk about book smarts versus street smarts.

You know, again, this guy did a lot of things that you would say, well, that's not smart, right? You're leaving a paper trail by getting gas. It's putting you in the area of the Baskin-Robbins at a time when the killer. the killer probably would have been there. And then you're going to leave blood evidence in your car. You're not going to clean that out. And you're not going to throw away the shoes that have blood on them. Not smart. Not smart at all. But it's a good thing, right? We don't want criminals to be smart. Those are the guys that get away with stuff. We don't want these guys getting away with stuff. Well, we're happy when they screw up. Really happy. Yeah, we're happy because a lot of times with

the screw ups, police are not going to be able to make it happen. No. You know, finding the evidence to put people away, it's not always the easiest thing to do. You need a break. You need for the killer or the perpetrator to mess up to leave something. Investigators will tell you they need a little luck sometimes. Yeah. I've actually seen people say it's what, X percent luck.

I've seen it. Some people say it's high as 90 percent luck in temperate. hard work. Now, I'm sure there are a lot of investigators that would dispute that and they'd flip it around and say, no, no, it's really 60% hard work and 40% luck, but whatever it is. Right. There is some luck involved. You have to have some things break your way. Absolutely. You do. The state also had some witnesses that could put his car at the Baskin Robbins just before closing and then also put it later on at the Dunbar Cave area. So again, like I said, this is where the red 1997 Ford Escort really comes in because they're

saying, okay, saw that car at the Baskin-Robbins, saw that car later at the State Park. Then you talk about the McDonald's case where Andrea Brown, Ronald Santiago, and Robert Sewell were murdered. They had Jose Gonzalez. They probably didn't need much more than Jose Gonzalez. I'm sure they had some other evidence. But when you have a surviving victim, like I said, that can get on the stand and testify that they're 100% positive. Right. That the man sitting in the orange jumpsuit, Paul Reed, was the person who murdered his

coworkers and left him for debt. I think that's going to strike a chord with the jury. I think so. You know, you can pile on whatever other evidence you have, and that's great. but there were some other people that testified in some of these trials that you might not expect. Or you might have given the history of what Paul Reed did to his family. One of his sisters testified that, you know, in the time leading up to the murders, Paul had been acting very strangely.

So their father passed away in May. And apparently Paul showed up to the funeral acting very, very, strangely, wearing a strange outfit. It was like a funky color t-shirt, shorts, gym shoes. Yeah, I mean, not funeral attire at all. But the kicker is that he was wearing a crown. Why was he wearing that crown? Because he was calling himself King Paul.

But this is like one of those Burger King crowns. I don't know if they still give them out. But, you know, back in the day, you could get you a Burger King crown. And a little paper crown, wear it around. That's the way it was described. I'll do that at your funeral one day. Far, far, far away. I'll show up and wear a paper crown and say, I'm the king.

Why would you say you're the king at my funeral? And why am I dead? How do we get to that point? Remember on Seinfeld? Where does your mind go? String straight to me dying? Yeah. Seinfeld, they have the guy wearing the...

I'm the king. I'm the king. I'm the king. Yeah, that's what I'm picturing my head. Oh, that's not, I'm the Whiz, though, is it? You're not thinking of the Wiz, are you? Maybe that's it. Maybe I'm the Whiz.

The guy that had, like, the electronic store. Yeah. I'm the Whiz. He did wear a crown, though. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Yeah. Okay. I don't know how we get from...

I sidetrack you sometimes. Paul reads on trial to, to your dancing at my funeral wearing a crown. It went dark real quick. I'm just, it's a celebration of your life. Yeah. Saying you're the Whiz or you're the king? Yeah. This has taken a whiz on your...

No, I would appreciate it if you didn't. No, I know better. Now we have to talk about Reed's defense team. They had a clinical neuropsychologist who specialized in brain abnormalities. Examine Paul Reed. This woman found evidence of brain damage in Paul Reed's frontal lobe. That doesn't surprise me one bit. We talked about the massive head trauma that this guy experienced.

Her conclusion was that this damage caused. a significant mental disorder. And it impaired Reed's behavior severely in a negative way. All of that sounds legit. It doesn't sound out of the ordinary to me. No. When I read that, I think, yeah, I think there was something going on mentally with this guy, Paul Reed.

For sure. Now, it doesn't excuse in my eyes the fact that he did carry out seven murders. brutal murders. But it was his defense team and their strategy that really, and maybe even more so, their choice of words. One of his defense attorneys came out to the press and said that Reed had a, quote, broken brain. And they were going to use the broken brain defense. I've never heard of that.

No. But it didn't work. Reed was convicted on all seven murder counts in the three trials and received the, to death penalty, multiple death penalties. Yeah. And then later they convicted him of aggravated robbery. Oh, the kidnapping. Aggravated kidnapping. Sure.

Tacked a bunch more years on top of his death sentence, you know, Gibbs just in case. We sentenced you to death and X amount of years. Well, because just like we talked about with the multiple trials, there are things that can go wrong, right? Appeals. Convictions get overturned. Sure. Sentences get overturned. You never know what's going to happen in some of these death penalty appeals. I guess, and I'm assuming here, but they wanted to make damn sure that if something did go wrong, if something got overturned, this guy was never going to get out of prison. Well, they got to stack the deck all the way up, you know?

Sure. Why not? He did the crimes. Might as well, you know, prosecute him to the full extent of the law. But he's never going to get out. But he's also not going to be executed either. You know, he had a number of stays over the years. But Paul Reed ultimately died from complications due to pneumonia in 2013.

So died in the prison infirmary while sitting on death row, but he never made it to his execution. He made it close once or twice, got some stays. Now, I mentioned in the beginning that there are people, and I'm putting myself in this camp as well, who wonder if Paul Reed could have killed earlier on in life. We know he committed robberies in Texas. I didn't mention it, but, you know, these involved a gun. He did shoot someone at one point. True. They didn't die. Right. During one of these robberies. I think in another robbery, he had a shootout with a manager of a store. But there was a triple murder that occurred in Texas that a lot of people think may have been committed by Paul Reed. This happened in 1980. So Paul would have been

about 23 years old, give or take. Right. Three people were shot and killed in a bowling alley in Houston, Texas. Witnesses said that after closing, man walked up to the door with a jug saying that he needed water for his car. When they let him in, he pulled a gun, shot three people. He shot three people, including what I believe was a 17 year old girl, and robbed the place and took off. Well, fits his MO. Very much so. And I think that's why a lot of people think, okay, there's a chance this could have been Paul Reed. The issue is they convicted a man named Max so far of the murders, and he was sent to death row. I don't know if he got convicted of all of them. He definitely

got convicted for the murder of this 17-year-old girl. Max so far spent 35 years on death row and he got cancer and died. So he wasn't executed, just like Paul Reed, but he died after spending 35 years on death row. And some people don't think he had anything to do with it at all. Right. Including some of the investigators in Tennessee who spent a lot of time with Paul Reed. They've looked at this case. And like you said, Gibbs, there are some similarities between the murders at the bowling alley and those committed by Reed. One big one is that police later found personal items, including driver's licenses and other cards belonging to the victims on the side of a highway. Kind of all lining up to me. That's eerily similar, right, to the Captain D's

murder. And then you have the M.O. of going up to the door of an establishment, a business. Yeah. After closing. Using that one thing to get you inside. Yeah. Application or I need water. Right. So again, very similar. But I think the big one. And unfortunately, this didn't come until much later. There was a witness from the bowling alley that night that down the road, much later was shown a picture of Paul Reed. And this person positively identified Paul Reed as the man who got kicked out of the bowling alley early that night. So this was something that happened way before the murders.

There was a guy in there. He was acting a fool. They had to kick him out. But he threatened to come back and kill everyone. And this witness after seeing the picture of Paul Reed said, there's no doubt in my mind, that's the guy. So you have Paul Reed being identified as being in the bowling alley earlier that night, threatening to kill everyone in there after he got kicked out.

That's a lot of stuff stacking up against him. It doesn't prove that he did it, but man. It makes you sure think about it. It seems like it's more than coincidences. Now, Gibbs I've also seen where for a time, Reed was tied to the Browns Chicken Massacre. Really? In Illinois.

Okay. We know that's a big case. A lot of people have requested it. I know we're going to do it because so many people have asked for it. But later on, they figured out that it couldn't have been him. Right. And they did get their killer. So we'll cover it sometime soon.

But that's it, man. That's the case of Paul Dennis Reed Jr. Yeah. Good case, man. Yeah, it's a good case. there's a lot there. I mean, and there's a lot of areas

that I think we could have spent more time on. The problem is we only have so much time in an episode. Right. We have been talking a lot lately in some of these death penalty cases about a person's mental capacity.

Right. This is another case where, you know, a person with what you would have to say is a very low IQ. Yeah. There's an argument to be made. And,

was made. Oh, I'm sure there was. About whether this person was fit to company, yeah. Receive the death penalty. But everybody looked at it, including a jury, and said, no, okay, I've heard all the expert testimony. This is what we're recommending. And then you go through the appeals like you do in every case. Right. Judges looked at it. And there's a ton of opinions out there. You can read through them. They're quite boring. I can only imagine. They should write these opinions in a much more fluid way. Like get Stephen King to write them? Yeah.

Yeah, get a well-known writer. John Grisham or, you know, somebody like that. Yeah. But it's such a big topic. It comes up in, in a lot of these death penalty cases where these people just, you know, obviously they're not some of the brightest people in the world. This one kind of had it all, though. You had the head injuries.

You had what appeared to be, you know, pretty chaotic. traumatic childhood. This kid was kind of a terror from very early on. Yeah. Showed a lot of the warning signs that you and I talk about, the animal cruelty. I mean, the things that he did to his grandmother were just, you know, kind of pre-serial killer 101. Then he rolls into sexually assaulting his sisters and his mom.

Yep. You just knew this kid was going to be bad as an adult. But then you always have the same question. Why? Yeah. how much of it is related to his experiences growing up. Sure. Versus what's going on in his mind.

And you couple that with all of the head trauma. Yeah. And you're just trying to figure out how much of that plays into what these people ultimately do down the road. I don't know. And the mind is such a powerful thing. It is. I read an article. They were talking about how things can sometimes.

change on a dime. Right. As the chemical makeup or whatever you call it. Yeah. Kind of shifts in your, in your brain. Sure. And, you know, happy go lucky for a period of time. And then all of a sudden it's like you're not yourself. You're not acting right.

And so, but again, I did think it was an interesting case because it had a lot of the components to it that you and I have talked about over the years. Gibbs, one thing I want to mention. before we get into voicemails. First off, I want to say happy Thanksgiving to everyone that celebrates, recognizes Thanksgiving because we won't talk to everybody again until after Thanksgiving. So that's first off. And then secondly, I want to say happy anniversary to us.

Yeah. It's this week, the week after this episode airs. That's right. Three years ago, three years ago. That's right, man. and I put out our very first episode. Amazing. It's hard to believe.

It is hard to believe. That it's been three years. It's a lot of talking. It's a lot of episode. That's a lot of research. It's a lot of talking for me. Your voice is still strong. I've been resting it.

I'm been resting it. I'm just waiting for the right moment. It's kind of like a bullpen pitcher. Yeah. You know, you warm it up. It's there. Keep it loose just in case. I save it all for the voicemail.

Yep. That's it. That's what I do. All right, speaking of voicemails, let's hear some voicemails. Hi, Mike and Gibby. This is Kimley calling in from Pensacola, Florida. I just listened to your latest podcast on, or podcast episode on Paul Hill in Pensacola, Florida, and I knew it was my time to call in.

I moved to Pensacola from Louisiana in 2016 after I graduated from high school. And I love, love it here. I'm so excited that you guys finally did. an episode somewhere close to me that I actually am really familiar with that I can just dig into. As far as the center goes, where the protesters that Paul Hill has included with, went to protest against the ladies center where the abortions were performed. I do know that that is no longer there in Pensacola. Love you guys' show.

It gets me through road trips. It gets me through my days at work. Just constantly racking my brain. I'm trying to figure these people out. I love you guys. Keep doing what you're doing. And if by some chance I do get put on the show in this voicemail, I want to say, hey, to all my coworkers and introduce me to you guys,

and they know who they are. But just keep doing what you're doing and keep your own time ticking. They know who they are. Those co-workers. They do know who they are. They also made it on the show. She made it on the show. And they did two with a shout-out.

Now, what I will say is. is that what a lot of people don't know is when they give a shout out to their coworkers, it's common practice for Gibby to buy all of those people lunch. Yeah, let me know. So drop him an email. I'll send. He will try to get his wallet open. Yeah.

If it'll budge and he'll buy you lunch. That's always the tough part. It is. Every time we go out to lunch, you try, it doesn't open, I end up paying. We have a thing called Taco Tuesday here, $1 per taco. per person. So you've got four co-workers and you, I'll send you five bucks. So you're set.

But we do appreciate it very much. Hi, Mike and Gibby. This is Krista and Mary, and we love your podcast. I've started listening almost since the beginning. And Mary got me on, and I'm upset. We just wanted to have a suggestion for an episode of the vendors of Cherryville, Kansas. I'm not sure if you've heard of them, but you probably have. Yeah, it's pretty crazy.

And then we wanted to tell you a story about when we were listening to the Andre Thomas episode at work. And we got right to the part where he was about to rip his second eyeball out and eat it. And then we looked up and there was a church group coming in to eat. And talk about awkward. But they were nice and did leave a good tip. So it was a good experience after all. So again, we love you. And we're team Mike.

We are team Mike. We don't choose aside. And have a safe time. and keep your own time picking. Awesome. That is awesome. I always love it when people coordinate. Because you know Gibbs,

it's harder to double team a voicemail like that. Oh, for sure. There's some pre-planning. I'm going to say this. Then you jump in. It's a voicemail duet. It's like you and I doing a podcast. It's got to be some pre-planning.

It's right. Hey, Mike and Gibby. My name's Joe Zuluski. I'm a college student over in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I started listening to your podcast. I got to be honest. At first, when I found out, Mike, that you were a Kentucky Wildcat fan, I got a little curious about podcasts because I'm a diehard badgers fan,

and you know what happened a couple years ago on the Final Four, but I got over that and I love your guys' podcasts. You guys are great. Guys are hilarious. It's just awesome to listen to you guys. Keep it up, for real. And, you know, keep your own time ticking, all right? Well, I definitely know what happened.

The Badgers beat my Wildcats in the Final Four. This was, I don't know, four or five years ago now. I don't know how many years ago. And the Wildcats had an amazing team. Did they? They had a team that was just stock full of NBA guys. Yeah. Wisconsin had some guys that play in the NBA, but they're not superstars.

So what it really was was a team that was better that night of playing as a team. Yeah. Even though they individually. Individually, they weren't as talented as Kentucky. They just weren't. they were a great team. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm still a little wrong about it.

I was saying it a little bitter, aren't you? Yeah. Yeah. But I appreciate the voicemail. Yeah. Hi, T-Cat. It's Nicole. I'm calling from Akron, Ohio.

And I just want to let you know that I love your podcast. I spend a lot of time, you know, listening to it and also, you know, playing games while I listen to it. Plus, I have children. So beats are my best friends. I was wondering if you guys wouldn't mind coverage. a cult. It's called Colt NXIVM. I'm actually reading a book about it. It's called Captive. And so far, so good. Not good what happens, but so far so good as the book. Also,

just wanted to let you guys know that I am Team T-Cat. Okay, guys? And you guys, keep your own time ticking. I've heard a lot of requests for that. So for that one specifically, I don't know, social media. Yeah, so I have been thinking about doing a cult, and I have a number of them in mind. I just happened to be watching on Netflix the other day, this series called Explained. They do different topics. Well, one of the topics they had was cults. Oh. They talked about Jim Jones.

They talked about, you know, Waco, David Koresh. They talked about a number of things. But they also talked about this. I can't, I don't know if they call it Nexvm. I'm not sure if it has a name, but she spelled it out. But I'm pretty sure this is the one where some actors kind of got caught up in this cult. Now, they weren't like a list actors, but they were on shows that you've heard of. Right.

And they got busted and, you know, it was kind of a big, I think that's the one I'm thinking of. So. But we'll definitely do a cult at some point because I find cults fascinating for a number of reasons. Cult of personality. Yeah, not that. Oh. I find it fascinating how somebody can be so. charismatic. Yeah. That they can get all of these people to go along with them. Sure. Even when it gets

to the point of people are saying, what, what are we doing? Something doesn't seem right, but they're in it. They're, they're, they're so far into it. I always go back to Simon says, man, one of the, one of the biggest cults ever. The game, Simon says. Simon says, man, he really, really got a lot of people, you know, hooked on to him. Yeah. So it was fun. That was a different kind of call. But we appreciate all the voicemails. Gibbs, we had mailbag. Oh, I like mailbags. Yep.

We had quite a bit. So I'm going to run through it quickly. We had Penny Coker who sent us in Harley Chip from Pensacola. Awesome. Thank you. Gibby, you got a very nice card from Matt and Fran Reed, who we met at CrimeCon. I did. It was very sweet.

Thank you so much. Paloma Alcala sent us in a newspaper with a very good article on a case that she would like us to cover. And it sounds interesting. I'm going to look into it. Cool. Christine Peterson sent us some chocolate from the UK. Awesome. It says Nestle, but there's some stuff in there I've never heard of.

Oh. You know, there's some stuff we have here in the States, but there's a lot of bars that I've never heard of. So British. British. Yeah. British. British. But we appreciate it very much.

She's a big supporter of the show. She's a Patreon supporter. All that good stuff. So that's it gives. We've got to get out. We do. That is it for another episode of True Crime All the Team. time. So for Mike and Ghibie, stay safe and keep your own time ticking.