Paul Dennis Reid Jr. was an American serial killer, who terrorized and carved a bloody path through the middle Tennessee area over the course of two months in 1997.
Originally from Fort Worth, Texas, Reid was living in a boarding house on parole from armed robbery of a Houston area steakhouse. He had served seven years of the twenty year sentence, and had gotten out of prison in 1990. Reid then set his sights on Nashville, determined to become a country music singer.
He first struck on the morning of February 16, 1997, when he went to a Captain D’s fast food restaurant in the Donelson neighborhood of Nashville, pretending to apply for a job. He pulled a gun on employees Sarah Jackson 16, and Steve Hampton 25, and took them to the restaurant cooler. He executed them both there and stole all the cash from the register, and used it to pay for a car a couple days later.
On March 23, 1997, in the Hermitage neighborhood of Nashville, Reid approached four McDonald's employees leaving the restaurant in the parking lot. He pulled a gun on them and took them back into the restaurant, and executed three of them (Andrea Brown, 17; Ronald Santiago, 27; and Robert A. Sewell). He then turned to his fourth intended victim who was Jose Gonzalez, but his gun jammed. He then pulled a knife on Gonzalez and fought him, stabbing him 17 times. Gonzalez then eventually played dead and crawled to a phone and called 911 after Reid left. Gonzalez would be taken to a hospital and would survive his grievous wounds.
Reid’s last crime was on the evening of April 23rd when he went to the door of a Clarksville, Tennessee Baskin Robbins and convinced employees Angela Holmes 21, and Michelle Mace 16, to let him in after closing. He then took them to nearby Dunbar State Park, and cut their throats.
After a thorough investigation by the police, Reid was apprehended based on forensic and fingerprint evidence of the victims’ found in his car and on his person. At the trials, Reid and his family tried to play the insanity defense with Reid himself claiming his defense counsel were paid actors and that he was part of a U.S. government mind control project. The jury didn't buy it, finding him guilty and the judge sentenced him to 7 life sentences, one for each of his victims.
Paul Dennis Reid Jr, died at Nashville general hospital on November 1, 2013 at the age of 55 due to heart failure.