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Speaker 7: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 7: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 7: written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 7: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 7: infamous killers in true crime history True Murder with your
Speaker 7: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 8: Good Evening. He was evil personified in the spring of
Speaker 8: nineteen ninety seven, a serial killer held Nashville, Tennessee, in
Speaker 8: an icy grip of terror. In February, he murdered two
Speaker 8: employees at a Captain D's restaurant. In March, he struck
Speaker 8: a McDonald's just miles away, killing three people in maiming one.
Speaker 8: In April, he kidnapped and slaughtered two Baskin Robin's employees.
Speaker 8: They called him the fast Food Killer, but his real
Speaker 8: name is Paul Dennis Reid Junior. When he was caught
Speaker 8: and sentenced to seven death sentences, yet a new chapter
Speaker 8: began in the saga of one of the most heinous
Speaker 8: serial killers in our time and the people whose lives
Speaker 8: he cut short. The victims were reduced to being called
Speaker 8: the victims of Paul. Read until now Here for the
Speaker 8: first time, and with the approval of the family and friends,
Speaker 8: are the stories of those innocent young people whose lives
Speaker 8: were ended far too soon. Is also the story of
Speaker 8: how a crime ripped a city apart. The book they
Speaker 8: were featuring this evening is when Nashville bled The Untold
Speaker 8: Stories of serial killer Paul Dennis Reid with my special
Speaker 8: guest journalists and offer judith A. Yates, welcome back to
Speaker 8: the program, and thank you very much for agreeing this interview.
Speaker 8: Judith A y again, Hey.
Speaker 4: Dan, Hi, thank you so much for inviting me back.
Speaker 8: Thank you. This is last time. It was amazing. This
Speaker 8: is a far more twisted story, if that's even possible.
Speaker 8: When Nashville bled, let's get right into this because this
Speaker 8: is such an evolved case. And I know I always
Speaker 8: say that, but as you do in the book, you
Speaker 8: talk about Paul Dennis Reid Junior and his very very
Speaker 8: eventful life and his mother Josephine Marie and they called
Speaker 8: her Joni, and she had an abusive mother, and she
Speaker 8: moved out at sixteen, and she left him for Fort Worth,
Speaker 8: Texas and met Paul Reid sor and he was working
Speaker 8: security as a security officer. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 8: about some of his life. He was born November nineteen
Speaker 8: fifty seven, so tell us a little bit about some
Speaker 8: of the things in this eventful life that he had.
Speaker 4: Well, his father was a security officer and then he
Speaker 4: worked as a repoman and at that time, and for
Speaker 4: Paul Senior that meant taking a bus to go where
Speaker 4: he needed to pick up the vehicle and then driving
Speaker 4: the vehicle back to wherever he needed to drop it off.
Speaker 4: And Paul Senior had a taste for alcohol, so he
Speaker 4: was also a raging alcoholic. And when they divorced, they
Speaker 4: decided that they needed to children up. Paul Senior took
Speaker 4: Paul Junior and basically dumped him off on Paul Junior's
Speaker 4: paternal grandmother and along with a sister, and Paul Jr.
Speaker 4: Was just a terror from day one. He was just
Speaker 4: a mean little kid. He was stealing mail out of
Speaker 4: mailboxes when he was tall enough to stand on his
Speaker 4: tiptoes and reach into the mail. He was stealing the
Speaker 4: laundry off the line when he was not even old
Speaker 4: enough to go into school. His grandmother was sleeping in
Speaker 4: her bed, woke up to the smell of smoke. He
Speaker 4: had set the bed on fire with her sleeping in it,
Speaker 4: and he would do things like close off her bedroom
Speaker 4: door and push things in front of the door so
Speaker 4: she couldn't escape. She would threaten to beat him, give
Speaker 4: him a spanking, you know, correct him for things that
Speaker 4: he was doing, and he would crawl up in the
Speaker 4: tree or up on top of the garage and just
Speaker 4: yell at her and yell horrible things at her for
Speaker 4: not being able to catch him. She was a very old,
Speaker 4: frail woman, you know. In this last deforation, she would
Speaker 4: tie him to a chair just to keep him from
Speaker 4: hurting himself and hurting others. And finally, in just one
Speaker 4: of her last step to desperation, when he he'd thrown
Speaker 4: a toy at her and cut her forehead open. And
Speaker 4: he was also mean to other kids in the neighborhood,
Speaker 4: same thing, throwing things at them, hurting them, not sharing toys. Finally,
Speaker 4: she is called the priest. She's a very highus woman
Speaker 4: and the priest that get him out of the household
Speaker 4: before he kills you. And this is when he was
Speaker 4: a child, and so that's what she did, is she
Speaker 4: put him in a children's thone.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you talk about this Burnett Baylor's Boy Home, boys
Speaker 8: home in Houston, home for basically incorrigible children who were,
Speaker 8: as they put it, or you put it, a potential
Speaker 8: menace to society. And that was when he was eight.
Speaker 8: So but you also talked about there are incidents and
Speaker 8: again not to make reasons why he became the way
Speaker 8: he was, but at least documented some of the things
Speaker 8: that might have contributed to some kind of organic brain damage.
Speaker 8: You talk about a thrown brick. Tell us a little
Speaker 8: bit about a couple of the events that were reported
Speaker 8: that occurred to young Paul.
Speaker 4: Right now, later on in life and later on in
Speaker 4: his trial when he was of course an adult. They
Speaker 4: would contribute that, I'm sorry, attribute the things that he
Speaker 4: did to incidents when he was a kid. He was
Speaker 4: hit over the head with a brick. He was showing
Speaker 4: off on a motorbike in front of the kids at
Speaker 4: the children's home, fell off, the bike, landed on his head,
Speaker 4: and he was struck and killed. I'm sorry, struck and
Speaker 4: hit by a v hit goll very tongue tied tonight
Speaker 4: for some reason. But he was struck and hit a
Speaker 4: vehicle of all nights, right when he was small. So again,
Speaker 4: you know, they were contributing to organic damage to his brain.
Speaker 4: I believe the attorneys were calling it a broken brain
Speaker 4: when he was being tried for these murders. You know,
Speaker 4: it did affect his hearing in one ear and supposedly
Speaker 4: affected his thought process too. Along the way, so that
Speaker 4: he did have some damages to his head when he
Speaker 4: was small.
Speaker 8: You talk about some of the things that he he
Speaker 8: had this obvious somewhat of a learning disability. So he
Speaker 8: was slow in school, and so you talk about how
Speaker 8: he compensated in school. He was even in special ed classes,
Speaker 8: which he did not enjoy having to go on a
Speaker 8: special bus. So how did he compensate in school for
Speaker 8: this what you say, illiterate and starting school late at
Speaker 8: seven years old?
Speaker 4: Right? And you know, according to whoever you talked to,
Speaker 4: it was the father's fault that he started school late.
Speaker 4: It just you know, forgot to enroll him, or it
Speaker 4: was the grandmother's fault. Well, you know, she's an elderly, frail,
Speaker 4: sickly woman. She relied on the fathers who enrolling, so
Speaker 4: who knows. Nonetheless, he started school late, he had some
Speaker 4: learning issues which put him in what then was called
Speaker 4: special education or did the best for special led. Well,
Speaker 4: he was picked on, he was made fun of. So
Speaker 4: he compensated by sports and found that he was good
Speaker 4: in sports. And that's what he did to make up
Speaker 4: for being a quote unquote slow learner quote unquote special
Speaker 4: ed kid.
Speaker 8: You also talk about that he was inspired by well
Speaker 8: known figure at the time probably to some people today,
Speaker 8: Jack Lelaine, and so he Turkey. They start taking up
Speaker 8: working out, bodybuilding, and also at that time at least
Speaker 8: decided not to smoke or drink. And you say he
Speaker 8: always this is the guy that always always had a
Speaker 8: gym membership.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I mean Paul was pretty much in love
Speaker 4: with himself. So ever since he was a young man,
Speaker 4: he would belong to a gym, gout. He was obsessive about, uh,
Speaker 4: you know, always working out. Later on, when he worked
Speaker 4: in a restaurant, they would always call on Paul to
Speaker 4: lift the heavy things, to pick up the stuff nobody
Speaker 4: else could could handle. And even his restaurant manager told me,
Speaker 4: he said it was amazing what Paul could lift up
Speaker 4: and what he could do without breaking a sweat. And
Speaker 4: one of the things he bought with the money that
Speaker 4: he stole and killed some of the kids for was
Speaker 4: a white set so he could work out at home
Speaker 4: when he wasn't at the gym. But that's what he
Speaker 4: would do. You know, he watched Jack Lelaine and he
Speaker 4: followed the laying rules and right away started, you know,
Speaker 4: his smoking and his drinking and supposedly never smoked or
Speaker 4: drank or did drugs in his life. Wow.
Speaker 8: You also talk were very interesting that he was on
Speaker 8: medication very early, on drugs that were called anti anxiety tranquilizers.
Speaker 8: And you say a psychoactive medicine, so names like equanill
Speaker 8: pardon me in Milltown and mepro bamate. So maybe I'm
Speaker 8: mispronouncing that, but anxiety disorders at that time diagnosed, at
Speaker 8: least at that time you're talking about. Then he went
Speaker 8: to middle school, junior high. He had gone to a
Speaker 8: different couple different schools, and now that stigma of special
Speaker 8: led was gone, at least people didn't know about it.
Speaker 8: And at that time he met somebody that's will play
Speaker 8: a bigger role in his life later, a boy named
Speaker 8: Stuart Cook, and they both lived near school and hung out.
Speaker 8: Tell us a little bit about what happens with his
Speaker 8: mother and the divorce and who was his stepfather at
Speaker 8: that time. Danny Mores tell us what Jonie does and
Speaker 8: what Paul becomes as a result.
Speaker 4: Well, Joni gets a good job in one of the
Speaker 4: high rise apartments in Houston at a restaurant, and she
Speaker 4: lets Paul work there. At the restaurant as a busboy,
Speaker 4: and she lets him work behind the scenes at the
Speaker 4: bar where he's running glasses and cleaning and such. And
Speaker 4: because she's working at this restaurant, she has an at
Speaker 4: this account or according to him, a free apartment at
Speaker 4: this very very nice, posh apartment complex. And so what
Speaker 4: he does is he's giving discounts under the table and
Speaker 4: such two older young adults and according to Paul. Now
Speaker 4: see it's all according to Paul. Because Paul is an
Speaker 4: habitual liar, they are letting him in. And then after
Speaker 4: our party is where people are smoking weed and they're
Speaker 4: hanging outside on the patio smoking pod, and they're drinking
Speaker 4: and they're having this great time, and Paul gets to
Speaker 4: join them, and of course he's a hit with the ladies,
Speaker 4: because no matter what Paul is doing in life, he
Speaker 4: is always a hit with the ladies. And he meets
Speaker 4: Stuart in junior high. They hit it off, and Stuart
Speaker 4: becomes Paul's partner in crime. And they really match up
Speaker 4: in this respect because one kind of pulls the other
Speaker 4: one along, and they get this great idea about, you know,
Speaker 4: petty criminal activity. They both like to race cars, they
Speaker 4: both like to cruise the boulevard and look for girls
Speaker 4: and impress the girls and or try to And they
Speaker 4: basically just like to drive around and have a good
Speaker 4: time and talk to girls, and you know, just the
Speaker 4: typical thing that young men like to do and at
Speaker 4: the same time cook up these petty criminal acts.
Speaker 8: You talk about that he lived with his mother until
Speaker 8: he was sixteen years old, but you talk about you
Speaker 8: have court records that he attempted to sexually assault his
Speaker 8: sisters and his mother and they kicked them out right,
Speaker 8: So right, So did it go any further? Was was
Speaker 8: there any charges out of that? You don't seem to
Speaker 8: elaborate on that, but suffice to say that was enough
Speaker 8: to get him basically disowned from the family at that time,
Speaker 8: wasn't it right?
Speaker 4: You know, Paul's sisters and they really they were very
Speaker 4: afraid of him and they didn't want him around them.
Speaker 4: But yet when he was did of these crimes, they
Speaker 4: stepped in fighting for him to not be executed, and
Speaker 4: they testified for him during the trial. So that was
Speaker 4: very interesting. But I couldn't find anything as far as charges,
Speaker 4: but they did testify that he had tried to assault them,
Speaker 4: sexually assault them and One of the times was when
Speaker 4: the sister and he were using drugs and he tried
Speaker 4: to sexually assault her. She never went into details, and
Speaker 4: she had to kick him out of the house. The
Speaker 4: mother as well and kicked him out of the house.
Speaker 4: But I couldn't, you know, as much research as I did,
Speaker 4: there just wasn't really anything existing except for you know,
Speaker 4: the records that there were. Just there's just no details
Speaker 4: to be found.
Speaker 8: Another aspect of his strange behavior is that he was
Speaker 8: working in Houston as a security guard and he met
Speaker 8: a woman another employee named Jessica Neil. He had just
Speaker 8: met her. He proposed December nineteen seventy nine, and nineteen
Speaker 8: eighty was the he announced that he was getting married
Speaker 8: to Jessica. Tell us what Paul's sister told her about
Speaker 8: the marriage to her brother.
Speaker 4: His sisters pulled her aside and were like woman to woman,
Speaker 4: girlfriend and girlfriend, get out, get the hell away from
Speaker 4: him before he ruined your life. And this is from
Speaker 4: someone who grew up with him. Just get out and
Speaker 4: don't do it. And that was kind of.
Speaker 8: Wow. Yeah, you talked about that he really was in
Speaker 8: love with himself, and you said he in the book
Speaker 8: you write that he cared about his looks, his clothes,
Speaker 8: his style, and really no one else. And he's getting
Speaker 8: his old. As he was getting older, his crimes were
Speaker 8: getting more serious, things like forgery. He had charges for
Speaker 8: robbing a grocery store and those charges were dismissed. But
Speaker 8: there was some assessment at psych hospitals around that time.
Speaker 8: What did they say, was there any kind of serious evaluation?
Speaker 8: Tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 4: There were evaluations, and they found him to be a
Speaker 4: seriously dangerous individual. A state must be something in the air.
Speaker 4: They designated him to be aangerously serious, serious individual. They
Speaker 4: found him to be a danger to himself and others.
Speaker 4: Right when he was he and his friend were, uh,
Speaker 4: you know, they graduated to aggravated robbery and they they
Speaker 4: robbed a Houston steakhouse. And when he was caught and
Speaker 4: arrested and went to prison for that in the Texas
Speaker 4: prison system and was evaluated, they wrote letters stating that
Speaker 4: Paul Reid was a danger to himself, a danger to others,
Speaker 4: and he should never be released from prison. Every evaluation
Speaker 4: that I uncovered stated that.
Speaker 8: It's interesting to you taught that you talk about that
Speaker 8: that he acted like a kid and made a paper
Speaker 8: hat put on his attorney's head, not even taking the
Speaker 8: actual seriousness of the case. And he got a stiff
Speaker 8: sentence twenty years in Texas State and with a prison
Speaker 8: that had a mean, mean reputation, never mind the notorious
Speaker 8: chain gangs. But and you say, he was a real
Speaker 8: serious author of very serious strange letters too. And he
Speaker 8: even wrote to the prosecutor. What did he say to
Speaker 8: the prosecutor after he was given twenty years in Texas State?
Speaker 4: He well, he put the paper hat on his attorney's
Speaker 4: head and he fell over backwards in his chair. Basically
Speaker 4: he was playing the crazy card, right, And you know,
Speaker 4: whenever Paul was caught, he would play this this crazy card. Oh,
Speaker 4: I don't know what I'm doing because I got hit
Speaker 4: in the head with a you know, with a brick
Speaker 4: when I was a kid, I fell off a motor BikeE.
Speaker 4: There's something seriously wrong with me. And having lived there
Speaker 4: a long time, and you know, I've toured the prison system.
Speaker 4: I know about it. Texas doesn't play and Paul knew that.
Speaker 4: And he also knew that this was going to be
Speaker 4: really serious times and he was scared. It's just like
Speaker 4: he went to Brushy Mountain in Tennessee for a very
Speaker 4: short time. And of course that's further on down the
Speaker 4: interview that he was scared, and so that's when he
Speaker 4: really started playing the crazy card. So he's writing letters
Speaker 4: to his attorneys and he's saying, listen, if you get
Speaker 4: me out of here, I'll snitch, I'll snitch on everybody
Speaker 4: in this prison and tell you what they're doing. And
Speaker 4: they're like, nope, sorry, So then he starts writing crazy letters.
Speaker 4: You know, he's writing crazy letters to legal representations, he's
Speaker 4: writing them to the governor, he's writing them to all
Speaker 4: these political figureheads, and he's just writing crazy things about
Speaker 4: mind control in the prison and you know, getting messages
Speaker 4: from outer space. And he's clever, he's no fool, so
Speaker 4: he knows that. How you know, here's what I have
Speaker 4: to write to work the system. But nobody's falling for it.
Speaker 8: You say, despite the Jack Lelaine fascination. He was went
Speaker 8: in prison that three hundred pounds and not one of
Speaker 8: none of it muscle whatsoever. But in there he did
Speaker 8: get a license, you say, to be an electrician, and
Speaker 8: he was paroled. Well, well, he's eventually paroled in nineteen
Speaker 8: ninety due to overcrowding. And well, I say, some professionals opposed,
Speaker 8: and why were they opposed to him getting out? We
Speaker 8: already know that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely, he had served seven years of a twenty
Speaker 4: year sentence and it was a new program to reduce overcrowding,
Speaker 4: and he was paroled. And that's despite again these letters
Speaker 4: from from mental health professionals, from legal professionals, from prison staff,
Speaker 4: and so do not release this individual, do not allow
Speaker 4: him out and to be public. You know, it's bad enough,
Speaker 4: he only got twenty years. He doesn't need to be outside.
Speaker 4: He's going to hurt somebody, and he's you know, possibly
Speaker 4: going to hurt himself. And yet he was still And
Speaker 4: of course, as we know, the system is not always perfect.
Speaker 4: The system you know, makes mistakes, has flaws, and he
Speaker 4: walked out of there a man on parole. And what's
Speaker 4: interesting is he only had to report you know, every
Speaker 4: X number of day of days, and then after so
Speaker 4: many months, he only had to report you know, X
Speaker 4: number of months, and then down to so many times
Speaker 4: a year. Because he knew how to play the good boy.
Speaker 4: See no more mental health quote unquote issues anymore. He
Speaker 4: knew how to play the good boy get a job. Yes,
Speaker 4: certain nos. Their report in do You're supposed to do Now?
Speaker 8: You talk about that. He was working as a truck
Speaker 8: driver from nineteen ninety but he got in a car accident,
Speaker 8: the truck rolled and he was on workers' compensation until
Speaker 8: nineteen ninety two, so he got a twenty five thousand
Speaker 8: dollars settlement. He got braces on his teeth and plastic
Speaker 8: surgery on his nose, so it altered the way he
Speaker 8: looked forever. But they did what they could. They even
Speaker 8: put a chemical peel on his face to get rid
Speaker 8: of the acne and the acne scars, and paid for
Speaker 8: other things at that time. But you said that his face,
Speaker 8: it gave his face an unnatural smeared look. Maybe you
Speaker 8: could describe that right.
Speaker 4: If you look at pictures of Paul Reid, he doesn't
Speaker 4: look natural. He has almost a very strange I don't
Speaker 4: know how to explain it except to say, kind of
Speaker 4: a smeared cartoonist. Look to his face and see. He
Speaker 4: did all of these things because he was convinced that
Speaker 4: he was going to be a famous country and Western star.
Speaker 4: And he would tell people in Texas that he's going
Speaker 4: to go to Nashville, and he's going to be the
Speaker 4: next George Straight. He's going to be the next George Jones.
Speaker 4: He's going to play the Grandell Lotpery and just blow
Speaker 4: him down. Because he was just so fantastic, and he
Speaker 4: had black and white, you know, gloss he's made of himself.
Speaker 4: He bought some very expensive guitars, who knows how he
Speaker 4: did that. He had expensive boots, Western hats, and he decided, Okay,
Speaker 4: it's time to go to Nashville and be famous and
Speaker 4: meet my destiny. And that's exactly what he did. And
Speaker 4: he was just he was ready to be famous, rich
Speaker 4: and famous is he saw it. And when he was
Speaker 4: in Texas, he held jobs like you know, he'd pumped
Speaker 4: to gas at the gas station. He throve a truck,
Speaker 4: but he would introduce himself as doctor Paul Reed, and
Speaker 4: he'd liked to have his picture taken with real expensive cars.
Speaker 4: Now Here he is pumping gas at a gas station.
Speaker 4: And when someone would whirl up in a Mercedes, a
Speaker 4: Rolls Royce, a Jaguar, he'd run out there and he'd
Speaker 4: shake hands with that person. He'd introduce himself as on
Speaker 4: doctor Paul Reid and he'd pumped their gas for them,
Speaker 4: and then he made sure he had his picture made
Speaker 4: with him.
Speaker 8: What do you make of? As you write? In ninety
Speaker 8: four or ninety five, with the help of his friend,
Speaker 8: an older woman named Dorothy Medlin, he'd cook for her
Speaker 8: and he ate together because he learned at that restaurant.
Speaker 8: The chefs taught him basically how to cook, and he
Speaker 8: gave her a sign photo himself with his new Garth
Speaker 8: Brooks type transformation. Justin Parks would be a stage name.
Speaker 8: What do you make of the thirteen page letter that
Speaker 8: apparently she helped him distribute about mind control and monitoring
Speaker 8: his bodily movements. He addressed about four hundred envelopes, placed
Speaker 8: a letter in each, wandering around the streets of forth
Speaker 8: Worth handing them out. He's near the courthouse, he isn't
Speaker 8: in prison, he isn't playing, So why would you do this?
Speaker 4: Maybe?
Speaker 8: What's your take on that?
Speaker 4: You know that that was very strange, and I really
Speaker 4: I have no idea why he did that, because one
Speaker 4: of the things that she had said was he was
Speaker 4: such a quote normal person, and he was such a
Speaker 4: nice guy, and he was such like her son, you know.
Speaker 4: But then all of a sudden, he just switched and
Speaker 4: he's writing this very strange letter and he's handing it
Speaker 4: out on the street corners, and I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 4: I never got an answer for that. I just you know,
Speaker 4: he's weird. He's not crazy, but he's weird, if that
Speaker 4: makes sense.
Speaker 8: Now you talk about his singing career. Now, a lot
Speaker 8: of people believe they have what it takes. I'm a
Speaker 8: former musicians, so I know how you know, there's levels
Speaker 8: of being diluted. How deluded was he? How off the
Speaker 8: mark was he about a potential singing, songwriting, or anything
Speaker 8: career in music?
Speaker 4: Oh, my god, off the chart? Bad? Well he was.
Speaker 4: He was deaf in one ear and he was tone
Speaker 4: deaf in the other, and he couldn't play guitar. I
Speaker 4: spoke to people who actually saw him perform, and they
Speaker 4: explained that, you know, here comes this guy that he
Speaker 4: looked the part, nice starch jeanged, expensive boots, hat, nice
Speaker 4: start shirt, expensive guitar. He gets a fun stage, he
Speaker 4: starts singing, and everybody's just like, there's not enough cotton
Speaker 4: in the world to plug my ears. It was that bad.
Speaker 4: He was very wangy. He sang with an exaggerated, almost
Speaker 4: like a yodling sound, and it was bad, but he
Speaker 4: was convinced. You know, he told people, you know, next
Speaker 4: Hank Williams, next George Straight before he was ready to
Speaker 4: be famous, and then he would be talkable. I just
Speaker 4: don't understand why my music career is not taking off.
Speaker 8: Yeah. Now you write about Caroline mast who lived with
Speaker 8: Paul briefly. They made plans to marry. One day she
Speaker 8: found his parole documents and he said he was wrongly convicted.
Speaker 8: And he told her of government surveillance and of course
Speaker 8: that he was going to be a huge singer. She
Speaker 8: saw his temper. He threw a kitten at the wall.
Speaker 8: She broke off the engagement. And in nineteen ninety five
Speaker 8: he met Cindy Wheeler, who has a role in this
Speaker 8: as well. Very odd, odd story with Cindy Wheeler. And
Speaker 8: and he met Cindy Wheeler, and you say a week
Speaker 8: later he left, telling her he had to go. Where
Speaker 8: was he going, of course, and what was he going
Speaker 8: to do?
Speaker 4: Right? They meet at a gym. They start talking and
Speaker 4: she feels for Paul. Boy, if somebody would just give
Speaker 4: Paul a break, you know, he's such a good guy.
Speaker 4: He's such a nice guy, and you know, he couldn't
Speaker 4: manage his money, so she started helping him with that
Speaker 4: and he just needed help. Well, they hook up and
Speaker 4: they seem like a really nice, good couple, and he says,
Speaker 4: you know, I really like you and this is a
Speaker 4: great relationship. But I've got to meet my desk and
Speaker 4: he is a famous singer. It's out there and it's
Speaker 4: just got to grab it. So I'm going to Nashville,
Speaker 4: home of country music, but we're going to keep in touch.
Speaker 4: Packs his bags and his guitar and his hat and
Speaker 4: his boots, and off to Nashville. He goes, but we're
Speaker 4: going to keep in touch. And they do. Yo, they do,
Speaker 4: And I will send for you to come see me,
Speaker 4: and he does, but he uses some money from ill
Speaker 4: gotten very sad game.
Speaker 8: Yes, you talk about a Nashville restaurant, a Captain d Restaurant,
Speaker 8: and it's related to the Shoney's restaurant chain. I guess
Speaker 8: it's a big corporation, this Captain D's. Tell us what
Speaker 8: kind of restaurant this is? Before and tell us who
Speaker 8: Steve Jones is and Dina Hampton.
Speaker 4: Okay, you mean Stephen Hampton.
Speaker 8: Hampton partes. Stephen Dena Hamptons Okay, that's.
Speaker 4: Okay, Well is a and Captain Dee's is a fast
Speaker 4: food seafood restaurant also owned by Shoneese. And since his
Speaker 4: country and Western singing career just didn't jump off the
Speaker 4: ground right away, Paul got a job at Shoney's as
Speaker 4: a cook and his manager's name was Mitchell. And one
Speaker 4: of the things Paul would talk about is when he
Speaker 4: becomes a famous singer. Now, this is Nashville, and every
Speaker 4: other person you meet is either a famous potential singer
Speaker 4: or famous potential songwriter or famous potential producer. So everybody's
Speaker 4: like yeah, yeah, yeah, Well Paul is one of those
Speaker 4: guys that you just love. Boy, he's so helpful and
Speaker 4: he will do extra work. And boy, if you need
Speaker 4: somebody over time, Paul as your man. And again if
Speaker 4: you need all the heavy stuff lifted, Paul is your man.
Speaker 4: You know. He just can't do enough good around the restaurant.
Speaker 4: Now near Shawnees is a Captain D's and it is
Speaker 4: in a little town called Donaldson, which is a kind
Speaker 4: of a subdivision at the time of Nashville. Steve Hampton
Speaker 4: is the new manager at the Captain D's, and he
Speaker 4: and his wife worked together at Captain D's. Now. Steve
Speaker 4: has worked at the D's since he was young in
Speaker 4: high school and his dream was to eventually be working
Speaker 4: in the corporate sector at Captain Deeds. And his wife
Speaker 4: Deanna and he had several children. Steve was a family man.
Speaker 4: He loves his wife, he loves his kids, and what
Speaker 4: little time off that he had, it was all about
Speaker 4: his kids. And he had something special he did with
Speaker 4: his kids, Like with one child, they would go by riding,
Speaker 4: and he and his wife had just had a baby,
Speaker 4: Steven Junior. Steve loves fille ball. His favorite team was
Speaker 4: the Dallas Cowboys. But right away Stephen had a little
Speaker 4: Dallas Cowboy onesie and socks and a little cap. I mean,
Speaker 4: he was just an all around good guy and he
Speaker 4: had no qualms about working literally five am to close
Speaker 4: and afterwards, you know, one in the morning, to make
Speaker 4: sure that restaurant, Captain Dee's, was ran the right way
Speaker 4: and it was imtakably clean.
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Speaker 8: Right now you talk about a couple other people introduced
Speaker 8: Jenna and Carl Jackson from Donaldson, Tennessee, six miles away, saying,
Speaker 8: their daughter's named Sarah Marie. She has a couple brothers.
Speaker 8: She likes soft. Tell us a little bit about Sarah Marie.
Speaker 4: Sarah was a sweetheart, and she was the kind of
Speaker 4: a girl that she was just she was very involved
Speaker 4: in her church and she was such a good kid.
Speaker 4: But she also had that little devilish twinkle in her.
Speaker 4: And Sarah was just the kind of girl that would
Speaker 4: make a good buddy. She had this excellent sense of humor.
Speaker 4: But if you needed a good shoulder to cry on,
Speaker 4: Sarah was there. And she was good friends with Deanna,
Speaker 4: Steve's wife, and she Anddiana did a lot of giggling
Speaker 4: and talking, and she and she Indiana would you know,
Speaker 4: share secrets, and they just had such a good time together.
Speaker 4: They were Stephen. Deanna was like her second family. Sarah
Speaker 4: was very close to her mother and father, especially her mother,
Speaker 4: and sometimes she would just you know, she's a sixteen
Speaker 4: year old teenage girl, but yet sometimes she would just
Speaker 4: go to her mom and she would just hug her,
Speaker 4: just a big bear hug because she needed a big
Speaker 4: hug from her mom. And she was just a sweetheart
Speaker 4: of a girl.
Speaker 8: Now that was These are the kind of parents too,
Speaker 8: that are protective and they're very caring people. She wanted
Speaker 8: to buy a car. They weren't really so keen on
Speaker 8: her working Sundays, working at nights. Tell us a little
Speaker 8: bit about just sort of some of their apprehensions, and
Speaker 8: then how it came to be that Sarah was going
Speaker 8: to stay over at Deanna's and Steve's one night. What
Speaker 8: was the reason for that? Then, tell us just to demonstrate,
Speaker 8: as you do in the book, their protectiveness of the parents.
Speaker 4: Right, Sarah had worked very hard at Captain p saved
Speaker 4: every little penny that she made, scraped it together, and
Speaker 4: bought herself a car. She named her Emily, and she
Speaker 4: wanted a CD player for Emily. So once again she's
Speaker 4: saving all her money to buy a CD player. Well
Speaker 4: on Sundays her mom and daddy, of course that is,
Speaker 4: and Sarah instead, can I work Sunday morning because we're short?
Speaker 4: Steath and Steve asked me, and her mom's like, now
Speaker 4: you know, we do not work on Sundays. We go
Speaker 4: to church. Please mom, just one time, and her mother
Speaker 4: is like, Sarah, it's Sunday. We have had this talk
Speaker 4: a thousand times, Please mom, just once I promise you
Speaker 4: it'll be the last Sunday. I just want to buy
Speaker 4: a CD player for Emily. Her mother thinks about it,
Speaker 4: much to her chagrin. She says, okay, one time, one
Speaker 4: time only, but do not tell your father. Okay, thanks mom. Well,
Speaker 4: Steve and his wife Deanna are having a birthday party
Speaker 4: for one of their kids that Saturday night, and Sarah
Speaker 4: approaches her mother and she says, can I spend the
Speaker 4: night with the Hampton and then that morning I'll just
Speaker 4: get up and go to work that Sunday morning, And
Speaker 4: her mother's like, oh, are you sure they want you?
Speaker 4: Or yes? Mom? Well, Deanna comes in to pick up
Speaker 4: Sarah and for the first time she talked to Sarah's mom,
Speaker 4: and Sarah's getting her things, putting them in her bag.
Speaker 4: They talk a little longer and Sarah pops out, Okay,
Speaker 4: ready to go, and she gives her mom a big
Speaker 4: squeeze and says, thanks mom, I love you. I love
Speaker 4: you too, and they leave and that is the last
Speaker 4: time that Jenna saw her daughter, And the next time
Speaker 4: she saw her, Sarah was in her coffin.
Speaker 8: Yeah, now you talk about the movie and the Hamptons
Speaker 8: and Sarah's settling in at the movie. But meanwhile at
Speaker 8: Captain D's restaurant, these guys they're going through the shift
Speaker 8: the next day. But meanwhile in the night shift there
Speaker 8: is a Donald Carr, he's cleaning, Michael Butterworth and Jim
Speaker 8: Cassidy and they're all trying to get out of there.
Speaker 8: They're closing up the restaurant. The front exit door open,
Speaker 8: and a large man with dark hair appeared later described
Speaker 8: as white, six foot five, maybe two hundred and thirty pounds,
Speaker 8: looking like a bodybuilder, with a slick back hair and
Speaker 8: a ponytail. And he was smiling and he wore a
Speaker 8: Shone's apron over his clothes like he had just left
Speaker 8: or he was heading to work. And they told him
Speaker 8: we're closed. So what does he do when he is
Speaker 8: told that they're closed? What does he want? And what
Speaker 8: does the boys encounter?
Speaker 4: Right? Well, there, as you said, closing up at shown
Speaker 4: he's that Saturday night. At the same time, the Hamptons
Speaker 4: and Sarah are settling down to watch a movie and
Speaker 4: this guy who's shown up, he says, well, he just
Speaker 4: wants to put in an application. And the guy said, oh, okay,
Speaker 4: you need to talk to our manager. His name is Steve.
Speaker 4: He's not here, he'll be back tomorrow morning and you'll
Speaker 4: need to talk to him. And the guy says, oh, okay,
Speaker 4: and he turns he leaves the store. And the guys
Speaker 4: at the time didn't really think anything of it. I mean,
Speaker 4: people come in, they asked to go out an application
Speaker 4: and they go Now, at the time, Donaldson was really
Speaker 4: you know, it wasn't as metropolitan as it is now.
Speaker 4: It's a lot of stores, it's a lot of fast
Speaker 4: food restaurants, So it really wasn't that big of a
Speaker 4: deal for somebody to come in and ask to put
Speaker 4: in an application.
Speaker 8: Right now, you're we're talking February sixteenth, nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 8: Sarah gets ready for work in the morning at Captain
Speaker 8: D's step and her says goodbye to Deanna. They would
Speaker 8: be finished their shift at two pm. Now, another interesting
Speaker 8: character in this is that there is a Metro Police
Speaker 8: officer named Jeff Wells, and he's always up early and
Speaker 8: goes to his waffle house for breakfast. He's a thirteen
Speaker 8: year veteran and his son, Jeff Junior, works at Captain D's.
Speaker 8: Tell us about what this officer, Jeff Wells does, on
Speaker 8: this same morning. Tell us about this this morning. What
Speaker 8: happens We find out these details later, but what happens
Speaker 8: with the loved ones Deanna and other people Sarah's family
Speaker 8: when they believe that they've gone to work. Tell us
Speaker 8: what transpires that morning.
Speaker 4: Okay, bossir Wells, he's making his rails and he drives
Speaker 4: through the parking lot of Captain D's and he sees
Speaker 4: Steve's car and he's thinking, okay, he's opening up. He
Speaker 4: drives through. He doesn't see anybody yet, and he's got
Speaker 4: his thermos and he's thinking, okay, well I could get
Speaker 4: phil from the kids, you know, as they're opening. Well,
Speaker 4: just as he's thinking about getting his refill, he gets
Speaker 4: a call and he has to leave the parking lot. Meanwhile,
Speaker 4: it is Sunday morning, so people are on their way
Speaker 4: to church or you know, wherever they're going on Sunday morning,
Speaker 4: and these cars are passing the store, and it's on
Speaker 4: a pretty busy thorough way, so cars are passing by
Speaker 4: the Captain D's. The officer is driving through the parking area,
Speaker 4: you know, thinking okay, I need to get my thermis filled.
Speaker 4: Then he gets called away and at the same time,
Speaker 4: Sarah's parents are getting ready for church. At the same time,
Speaker 4: Deanna at her house is getting up, getting the two
Speaker 4: kids ready and the baby ready for the morning. You know,
Speaker 4: life is as usual. Steve arrives, Sarah arrives together, and
Speaker 4: Sarah's getting the prep out, getting ready, mixing the coleslaw
Speaker 4: by hand. Steve is there. They're getting the morning prep ready. Now,
Speaker 4: one thing about Steven is he ran a perfectly clean kitchen.
Speaker 4: One of the officers would later say, I have never
Speaker 4: seen a fast food restaurant with such an immaculate kitchen,
Speaker 4: everything in its place. And so they begin their day.
Speaker 4: So basically you've got an area where everybody's sort of
Speaker 4: beginning their day. But yet all of these things sort
Speaker 4: of fall into place where everybody just sort of misses
Speaker 4: it by so many seconds.
Speaker 8: Now you describe the horror, the true horror that was
Speaker 8: that encountered. Steve encountered, and Sarah encountered that man that
Speaker 8: wanted the application and came back. Steve, of course, was
Speaker 8: trying to speak to him through the locked door. Sarah
Speaker 8: was viewing the situation, but that's not what she was
Speaker 8: concentrating on. Then she sees something that's truly alarming. What
Speaker 8: did she see? What happens? What does the man do?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 4: Witnesses would later say they saw Steve standing at the
Speaker 4: door with a much larger man holding what they would
Speaker 4: later believe to be the application in hand, and we
Speaker 4: believe that he either pushed his way in or talked
Speaker 4: his way in with Steven. And Sarah is meanwhile in
Speaker 4: the back, still mixing past law when she must have
Speaker 4: looked up and saw Steve being held at gunpoint. So
Speaker 4: here's this young sixteen year old girl going about her day,
Speaker 4: turns around and there's this large, muscular man holding a
Speaker 4: gun on her friend and her store manager.
Speaker 8: Now, from all the evidence and you put this together,
Speaker 8: people can decide and deduce, you know, to react differently
Speaker 8: to this kind of threat. Steve, as a manager of
Speaker 8: one of these stores, what did he do? Did he
Speaker 8: follow his training? And what was that training to do?
Speaker 8: What did both of these people do as a reaction.
Speaker 4: Manager of fast food restaurants are taught to don't fight,
Speaker 4: give them what they want, and let them go because
Speaker 4: it is worth your life. So Steve opened the register,
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, Steve opened the safe and gave him the money.
Speaker 4: We believe that reed walked into the back of the freezer.
Speaker 4: At the back of the freezer area had them. He
Speaker 4: had them lay down on the floor of the cooler,
Speaker 4: and then he shot them point blank in the back
Speaker 4: of the head. Now, they did have a surveillance video system,
Speaker 4: but for whatever reason, it wasn't working. And I did
Speaker 4: have someone who worked there that told me in confidence,
Speaker 4: I don't know if that they ever even worked. And again,
Speaker 4: you have these things that could have, should have, would
Speaker 4: have if I would have been there a second sooner.
Speaker 4: A second later, he went back to the video player.
Speaker 4: We believe he might have taken the tape out, and
Speaker 4: he heard a noise in the cooler. He returned to
Speaker 4: the cooler Sarah, who had lived through those shots. What sorry,
Speaker 4: this always siks to me. Sarah was helping herself up
Speaker 4: to try and stand or try to get up, and
Speaker 4: he calmly reloaded the gun and shot her again.
Speaker 8: And then he you talk about that, nobody knows what's
Speaker 8: happened inside that cooler. Nobody's likely even heard well, no
Speaker 8: one's heard these shots. But there are a couple of
Speaker 8: people that drive by, like you say, church or are
Speaker 8: in the area and later come forward. But they do
Speaker 8: spot a little red car parked quite strangely in front
Speaker 8: of the restaurant. Later, you say that Michael Butterworth, the
Speaker 8: employee that worked the night before, he was coming into work,
Speaker 8: I guess for another shift. He thought something was suspicious.
Speaker 8: What does he do, what does he believe may have happened?
Speaker 8: And what is his response?
Speaker 4: Right, Michael comes to work, he's looking, you know, in
Speaker 4: the door, and he's thinking, okay, this it's very strange.
Speaker 4: None of the tables are prepped, nothing's ready from what
Speaker 4: he can see. The chairs are still up on the tables,
Speaker 4: you know, no lights are on. Okay, this is just
Speaker 4: really weird. He's knocking on the doors, banging on the door.
Speaker 4: Stee's little trucks still parked there, but no Steve, nobody's
Speaker 4: coming to the door. Okay, maybe they're in the back
Speaker 4: and they're playing the radio loud. Steve loves classic rock
Speaker 4: music and he's just jamming up the Mike walks around
Speaker 4: to the back back cruler door bangs on nothing. Okay,
Speaker 4: this is really weird. Fast food restaurant that's you know,
Speaker 4: literally right next door. And he calls and nobody's answering
Speaker 4: the phone, and it says Okay, this is real weird,
Speaker 4: and he starts the series of calls and that inevitably
Speaker 4: leads to calling the law enforcement to go to the
Speaker 4: restaurant to see, you know, exactly what is going on,
Speaker 4: and one of the officer responds, they had a all
Speaker 4: a manager to bring a set of keys. And when
Speaker 4: the officer responded and walked back to the cooler, that's
Speaker 4: when he finds Sarah and Steve's body.
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Speaker 8: A better way to cook Now, Judith's this nightmare is
Speaker 8: just starting to begin for the family, and you introduce
Speaker 8: though a character that is going to play through this
Speaker 8: entire case. And his name is Patrick hopefully I don't
Speaker 8: mispronounce his name Postiglione. And he's a Nashville Metro Police
Speaker 8: detective assigned to robbery and murders. And you say, he's
Speaker 8: a rare breed. Wherever did this, he said, has done
Speaker 8: this in the past. So they go on to do
Speaker 8: what they need to do. Of course, the families are devastated.
Speaker 8: There are the memorials, there are the funerals, and I
Speaker 8: hate to rush ahead, but there are as with serial killers,
Speaker 8: of course, and in this one particular there's many more
Speaker 8: victims and many more murders. So suffice to say that
Speaker 8: the police are looking hard following up leads, but Paul
Speaker 8: Reid does not seriously come to their attention, does he no?
Speaker 4: Now? And it got to the point where they had
Speaker 4: officers working undercover in fast food restaurants around the area, amazing,
Speaker 4: hoping to catch this guy. They had officers sitting out
Speaker 4: in parked cars around the area, you know, watching these
Speaker 4: restaurants for hours and hours and hours. No officer was
Speaker 4: you know, they even call officers out from vacation. You know,
Speaker 4: there was no officer not working on this case undercover,
Speaker 4: and you know, making round and doing extra I mean,
Speaker 4: they worked constantly on this case, and they worked diligently,
Speaker 4: and Patrick is a rare breed, and he is. He's
Speaker 4: an amazing man. He's sort of a hero. Well, he
Speaker 4: is a hero, and he's sort of just one of
Speaker 4: these superman kind of guys here in the Nashville area.
Speaker 8: You talk about that one of the managers, though again
Speaker 8: very very eerily and interestingly, that one of the managers
Speaker 8: of these restaurants said that when they did have a
Speaker 8: composite drawing done, that employee Paul Reid, matched the description slightly.
Speaker 8: He said, Reason was tall and dark headed, but didn't
Speaker 8: have long hair, which was reported, and they ran his
Speaker 8: name through the National Crime Information Center or NCIC FBI
Speaker 8: supervised database for suspects, missing persons, weapons and crimes. The
Speaker 8: name didn't show up. Why didn't his name show up?
Speaker 8: What had he done, as you know, not so swift
Speaker 8: as he was. What did he do to confuse these people?
Speaker 4: And was crucial at this time he had changed his birthday,
Speaker 4: He had changed his date of birth. And you know,
Speaker 4: of course in all the restaurants in all the areas,
Speaker 4: they had put a poster up of a composite drawing,
Speaker 4: and at the show Neees where Paul worked, this poster
Speaker 4: was up in the break area and people were saying, Wow,
Speaker 4: that looks like Paul. And one of the girls said, oh,
Speaker 4: I know right that Paul to night. He would never
Speaker 4: do something like that. And that's what happened, you know,
Speaker 4: they brushed it off. And whatever.
Speaker 8: You talk about that you introduce a little while later
Speaker 8: you mentioned him before a manager at Shoney's, Mitch Roberts,
Speaker 8: and he managed the Donaldson shonees. Tell us how he
Speaker 8: found out about Paul Reid as an employee.
Speaker 4: You mean, as far as I'm sorry, I'm gonna innerstand,
Speaker 4: as far as the hiring.
Speaker 8: Or well, how does it come to Mitch Roberts hires
Speaker 8: Paul Reid, and what does he think of him as
Speaker 8: a as a worker and so again, well.
Speaker 4: Paul had applied as a cook, and of course he
Speaker 4: had a history of working in restaurants and such. Mitch
Speaker 4: hired him. And again, Paul is just one of those
Speaker 4: great employees that you know, never says no, never calls
Speaker 4: him sick, you know. And and one of the things
Speaker 4: that Mitch was telling me, he said, we had one
Speaker 4: of these buckets that at the at the end of
Speaker 4: one of the cutting tables you put all the extra
Speaker 4: food in, or a you know, an edible food in
Speaker 4: that weighs so many pounds. Paul would lift it over
Speaker 4: his head and lift it higher to put in the
Speaker 4: dumpster without any sweat, without any problems. He said, the
Speaker 4: guy was huge and he had the muscle. He could lift,
Speaker 4: he could clean, he could could anything you ask him.
Speaker 4: He said, if I had somebody call in, if I had,
Speaker 4: you know, two people call in, he could do the
Speaker 4: work of two people. And he said, you know, the
Speaker 4: guy was one of those dream employees you always wish
Speaker 4: you had, and he was. He was one of Shoney's
Speaker 4: star employees. He would loan him out to other stores.
Speaker 4: One of the times that got one of the other
Speaker 4: stores in trouble, and that was one of the crimes
Speaker 4: that was never solved. But they know in their hearts
Speaker 4: what happened.
Speaker 8: Now, how's it come? Everybody reports here? You have this
Speaker 8: throughout the book that everybody says, how nice this guy is,
Speaker 8: What a sweet guy? That's used so many times. He's sweet,
Speaker 8: he's nice, he's kind, he's generous. But you also have
Speaker 8: that he's talking about his best friend, Danny Tackett, And
Speaker 8: so he starts talking about weapons and robbery, some things
Speaker 8: that people might not suspect him of what does his
Speaker 8: best friend, Danny Tackett think of Paul read? And then
Speaker 8: what does he think of this talk of robbery?
Speaker 4: Right? Danny was his friend. They met at the show
Speaker 4: Ney and Paul was always a big talker with Danny.
Speaker 4: And he's saying, you know, Danny, one way we could
Speaker 4: make money money, because they were always talking about is
Speaker 4: me one way we can make money is start robbing places.
Speaker 4: Then he's like, oh, yeah, right, and he drops the subject.
Speaker 4: Well a little later on he brings it up again. Boy,
Speaker 4: wouldn't we make money if we were bank robbers or
Speaker 4: if we rob stores? Or yeah, right, drops it, brings
Speaker 4: it up again, thinks about how much this place makes
Speaker 4: it of the night, say a Saturday night. Me and
Speaker 4: you with with my strength and with your brain, just
Speaker 4: think of what we could make a haul started robbing
Speaker 4: fast food places. And then he's like, dude, whatever, and
Speaker 4: he's like, oh yeah, sure, we're gonna start just knocking
Speaker 4: places off left and right, you know, make a hall.
Speaker 4: Paul was testing him. He was testing him because their
Speaker 4: best friends. And Paul is friends with their you know,
Speaker 4: his wife and kid. He's like their family. You know,
Speaker 4: he's babysit their kids. You know, he's good friends with
Speaker 4: Danny's wife. He's so smart, and he's such a good
Speaker 4: guy and sweet and kind, all of the good things.
Speaker 8: He eventually, though, asks other people to get him a gun,
Speaker 8: and they say no, And then he finally does find
Speaker 8: that Robert Snyder, a truck driver, to get him a gun.
Speaker 8: He asks him why, but he eventually gets him a gun,
Speaker 8: actually sells him a couple of guns. But it's not
Speaker 8: so unusual, I guess not everybody. Alarm bells don't go off,
Speaker 8: especially with a stranger. This Snyder was a stranger. So
Speaker 8: he has a gun, and so what does he he
Speaker 8: do next? What does Paul do next?
Speaker 4: Right now, you have to understand Tennessee is a little
Speaker 4: bit like Texas about gun Paul also lived in East Nashville,
Speaker 4: which is the time I was pretty rowdy. And it's
Speaker 4: changed with the gentrification and all of this, but at
Speaker 4: the time it was pretty rowdy. When they say what
Speaker 4: do you want with the gun? Well, protection, So everybody's, oh, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: you probably need it where you live. So he takes
Speaker 4: the gun and the next thing, you know, on March
Speaker 4: twenty third, nineteen ninety seven, right down the street from
Speaker 4: the Captain d McDonald's gets robbed and three people lose
Speaker 4: their lives to gunshot wounds, and one man barely is
Speaker 4: alive because of stab wounds because the robber ran out
Speaker 4: of bullets.
Speaker 8: Now you talk about another situation with a manager, and
Speaker 8: so you bring the reader right into the lives of
Speaker 8: these people. And I apologize to the listeners for rushing
Speaker 8: through this, because really you do focus, and it's heartbreaking
Speaker 8: to focus on the admirable lives that these people were
Speaker 8: leading and the loved ones that were around them, and
Speaker 8: yet Paul Reid took their lives. You talk about Ronald Santiago,
Speaker 8: not from America, originally came to this country, hard worker.
Speaker 8: I'll tell us about the staff at this McDonald's that
Speaker 8: included Ronald Santiago.
Speaker 4: Okay, Ronald came from South America and he had a
Speaker 4: wife and a daughter that he called his little princess,
Speaker 4: and he spoiled her and he would tell her one day,
Speaker 4: I'll take you to Disneyland and i'll take you ice skating,
Speaker 4: and I'll do this, and we'll do that. And they
Speaker 4: would say, Ronald, she is only a little baby. I
Speaker 4: don't care we're going to do those things together. And
Speaker 4: then there was Andrea at seven Team. Andrea was the
Speaker 4: drama queen and as goofy as she was, you'd never
Speaker 4: know that. Andrea was one of those students that if
Speaker 4: there could be a five point zero GPA, Andrea would
Speaker 4: have had it. And she went to an art magna
Speaker 4: high school, highly highly intelligent girl. And then there was
Speaker 4: Robert Sewell who was at twenty three. His nickname was Bert.
Speaker 4: Robert loved Star Wars, he loved science fiction. And then
Speaker 4: there was Jose. Jose was from Mexico, and Jose it
Speaker 4: was his first night on the job there, and Robert
Speaker 4: was going to call in six that night because he
Speaker 4: just didn't feel like going into work. But then he
Speaker 4: remembered that he was supposed to be training a new employee, Jose,
Speaker 4: and he thought, you know, uh, they're counting on me
Speaker 4: and I shouldn't call in. And Ronald wasn't even supposed
Speaker 4: to be working that night, but the manager was sick
Speaker 4: and he told her, he said, look, you don't see
Speaker 4: good and I can tell go home, take care of
Speaker 4: yourself and I'll cover your shift. And Ronald was only
Speaker 4: twenty seven. He was the oldest person that was murdered
Speaker 4: by Paul Reeves. So all of these people were very young.
Speaker 8: Now there's similarities from the first murders in that he
Speaker 8: we forgot to say that the reason why he likes
Speaker 8: these kinds of robberies because he knows he's familiar with
Speaker 8: the layout of these restaurants and he's familiar how they
Speaker 8: work because he's worked in them. So you talk about
Speaker 8: what he does with these people in this restaurant, and
Speaker 8: how does it come to be that Jose Gonzales survives.
Speaker 8: Tell us about this horrifying situation as you do in
Speaker 8: the book.
Speaker 4: He took them into the cooler and he had Ronald
Speaker 4: open the safe and give him the money. And Jose
Speaker 4: didn't speak English at the time, Jose wasn't in the
Speaker 4: country legally at the time, and in Spanish, Ronald told Jose,
Speaker 4: don't worry, Jose, He'll take the money and he will leave.
Speaker 4: And then he had them lay face down on the
Speaker 4: floor and he shot them each execution style, and Jose
Speaker 4: was thinking in his head, I'm going to die. This
Speaker 4: is it, and he started praying, well, he hears click, click, click,
Speaker 4: and he thinks this is it, this is it. So
Speaker 4: he jumps up and starts to fight. Now, Jose is
Speaker 4: a little man, he's five six, he's very he's very thin,
Speaker 4: and of course Paul Reid is a huge guy. And
Speaker 4: Reed grabs a kitchen butcher knife off the shelf, and
Speaker 4: he stabs Jose seventeen times, including through through the body
Speaker 4: and several times in the skull, until Jose finally crumples
Speaker 4: to the ground and plays dead. And even then he
Speaker 4: stabbed him again several times. And then Jose drugged himself
Speaker 4: to the phone. He called nine one one, and the
Speaker 4: only word he could manage, he said, please, please, And
Speaker 4: at the time nine one one didn't have bilingual people
Speaker 4: to answer calls, and eventually got law enforcement there in
Speaker 4: Jose somehow, somehow survived and would later identify Read in court.
Speaker 8: Now you talk about again, the police do their work.
Speaker 8: There's no failure in their attempt. This is turning, as
Speaker 8: you say, this is turning into Nashville's biggest man h
Speaker 8: ever in history. Again, the distraught people like Doyle Brown.
Speaker 8: He's worried Andrea should have called. He went to go
Speaker 8: get her in her car. He saw the yellow crime
Speaker 8: scene tape. The horror of the father approaching the cop
Speaker 8: wanting to know answers and the police having to tell
Speaker 8: him you got to get back. And then and then
Speaker 8: when the police again, how can you tell people this
Speaker 8: kind of news. It's incredible and there's no easy way,
Speaker 8: and they're told. But yet Paul Reid still is not captured,
Speaker 8: is he? And what do they do with Jose Gonzales
Speaker 8: in terms of his ability to call anything about the perpetrator?
Speaker 8: Is there a composite drawing done well?
Speaker 4: And here's what's interesting is there was a video. There
Speaker 4: was a cameras, some video system across the streets that
Speaker 4: could have taught read and his vehic books perfectly because
Speaker 4: of the way it was angled. But it was broken,
Speaker 4: and the management kept saying, oh, well, we'll get it fixed.
Speaker 4: We need to get it fixed. Yeah, we'll get it
Speaker 4: fixed some days. But Jose was rushed to the hospital,
Speaker 4: as was Andrea. Because Andrea was still alive. She had
Speaker 4: to be taken off life support that next day, and
Speaker 4: they were checked in under fake names for their security
Speaker 4: and safety. Jose was of course, had to had to
Speaker 4: be okayed by the medical personnel to talk to the officers,
Speaker 4: had to have a translator, and he gave a description
Speaker 4: and they did a composite drawing. Now, later, when he
Speaker 4: was captured, they showed Hose a different pictures in a
Speaker 4: paper lineup, and when Jose held the picture of Reid,
Speaker 4: he was sweating so profusely and shaking so hard. He
Speaker 4: left a thumbprint on the photo of Reed. And they
Speaker 4: knew that's when they had their man. He didn't even
Speaker 4: have to say anything.
Speaker 8: Yeah, amazing. Now you introduced so a woman that was
Speaker 8: born in nineteen eighty nine, Michelle Mace, and her mama's
Speaker 8: Connie Black tell Us and her stepdad is Garrett, and
Speaker 8: it's another very very sad story. Her biological dad is
Speaker 8: named Dewey and she has a sister named Cadgie. I
Speaker 8: maybe I mispronounced that. Tell us a little bit about
Speaker 8: Michelle Mace.
Speaker 4: Still, she is so silly that she's such a good heart.
Speaker 4: Michelle loved to write, and she loved to write poem
Speaker 4: and she just kept her friends laughing. And you know,
Speaker 4: she could be so funny and yet at the same time,
Speaker 4: she was such a good hearted soul. And she loved
Speaker 4: to take pictures. If she saw Michelle, she had a
Speaker 4: camera in her hands, and her friends would always joke
Speaker 4: with her, when you grow up, you're going to be
Speaker 4: a photographer, and she would say, or maybe a writer,
Speaker 4: because she was always pinning something. And when she was
Speaker 4: with her group of friends, all of a sudden, she'd say, hey,
Speaker 4: give me that piece of paper. It's a receipt. What
Speaker 4: do you want it for? And she'd say, a poll.
Speaker 4: I'm in my head and I've got to write it
Speaker 4: down before I forget it. And she lived with her mom,
Speaker 4: and she lived with her stepdad, and you know, I
Speaker 4: really hate the words stepfather's stepparent because her stepdad loved
Speaker 4: her as much as he would love her as if he,
Speaker 4: you know, as if he were her true dad. And
Speaker 4: Michelle had some issues with that, being a hard headed
Speaker 4: sixteen year old girl. But then she also was very
Speaker 4: sad at times because you know, why can't my real
Speaker 4: dad want to be with me? The you know, the
Speaker 4: same issues we all have if we have the divorced
Speaker 4: parents with the quote stepparent and the other father isn't
Speaker 4: in our lives for whatever reason. So she was going
Speaker 4: through that sixteen year old angst you know what about
Speaker 4: my real dad and why didn't he want to be
Speaker 4: with me? And why does you know Garrett try to
Speaker 4: be my dad. So she had a little rebellious streak
Speaker 4: in her, you know. She she told her mother wanted
Speaker 4: that she was staying at her friends and she ends
Speaker 4: up driving to Nashville with a bunch of folks to
Speaker 4: go see an Ozzy Osbourne concert. But she got busted
Speaker 4: because somebody that worked with her mom goes, hey, I
Speaker 4: saw Michelle last night. Where'd you see her at the
Speaker 4: Ozzy Osbourne concert? What the So she gets busted on
Speaker 4: that one. But she had a streak in her. But
Speaker 4: she still was such a sweetheart.
Speaker 6: You know, she.
Speaker 4: Was a good friend. She was a loyal friend.
Speaker 8: You also talk of another character, Angela and people call
Speaker 8: her Angie and she's married to a man named Tiberis
Speaker 8: and they were transferred to Tennessee and Angie transferred to
Speaker 8: Clarksville Baskin Robbins as a night manager. Tell us a
Speaker 8: little bit about this. She is just got news that
Speaker 8: she is accepted into the surgical nurse program and she's
Speaker 8: hard worker. Tell us a little bit about her life.
Speaker 4: Angie Holmes was a spitfire. She was twenty one years old.
Speaker 4: She and her husbands to Baris was the class clown,
Speaker 4: and he fell in love with Angie in high school
Speaker 4: and they start talking. They start talking some more, they
Speaker 4: start dating to Bars went into the military. He and
Speaker 4: Andree are you know, they just can't be kept apart.
Speaker 4: So Tabars gets transferred, Angie goes with him, They have
Speaker 4: a baby, They get married. Angie gets accepted at Austin
Speaker 4: p a very prestigious school there in Clarksville. And yes,
Speaker 4: she gets accepted into that program which only X number
Speaker 4: of students are accepted in. She was, you know, a
Speaker 4: lot like Andrea. If there's a five point zero, Angie
Speaker 4: would have had it. And she kept a four point
Speaker 4: oh gpa literally from grade one up. School came so
Speaker 4: easy to her, it was like breathing. She didn't even
Speaker 4: have to crack a textbook. And so she was working
Speaker 4: a full time job managing Baskin Robbins. She was keeping
Speaker 4: that four point oh out of very prestigious, very difficult
Speaker 4: education program. She was raising a newborn, and she was
Speaker 4: a new a newly wet so and yet doing it
Speaker 4: all with such grace. And she was very close to
Speaker 4: her family.
Speaker 8: Right tell us about the Baskin Robbins that night and
Speaker 8: what came to be in terms of again, people loved ones.
Speaker 8: Everybody's in contact with cell phones now and everybody's ready
Speaker 8: for someone to come and pick them up or if
Speaker 8: there is an hour or anything amiss, people tend to
Speaker 8: notice this. So what happens at the Baskin Robins out
Speaker 8: of the ordinary, and what are people's responses?
Speaker 4: Okay, well it's April twenty third. It was the evening
Speaker 4: the Baskin Robins in Clarksfield. There is located on a
Speaker 4: very busy road called Wilma Rudolph. Now, at the time,
Speaker 4: wil marou Of Boulevard was almost a ghost town. Now
Speaker 4: you would never recognize it. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 4: when I go to when I go there to Clarksville,
Speaker 4: I have to hunt for the basketin Robbins there because
Speaker 4: I would go and I'll put flowers at the at
Speaker 4: the memorial, or I'll stop by just to pay my respects.
Speaker 4: But then it was dark and desolate, and they had
Speaker 4: just closed this door. And we believe what happened is
Speaker 4: Reid talked his way in and they had, of course
Speaker 4: just lock the door. We think he somehow talked his
Speaker 4: way in, and we believe that Michelle had said, well
Speaker 4: you better get out of here because my brother's going
Speaker 4: to pick me up any minute. Now, that was true
Speaker 4: because only so many minutes prior to closing down, Michelle
Speaker 4: and her mom had talked on the phone and she
Speaker 4: had asked her mom, Hey, will you g me some
Speaker 4: potato soup? I'm so hungry, and her mom was like, okay,
Speaker 4: and they both confirmed that Michelle's brother was going to
Speaker 4: pick her up from work that night. Right, So she
Speaker 4: hangs up, she helps Angie with closing duties, and then
Speaker 4: not so many minutes after hanging up with her mom,
Speaker 4: Paul reed so giving Michelle's personality, because Michelle's kind of
Speaker 4: fearless in a lot of ways, we think that what
Speaker 4: happened is she challenged him and he tied them up
Speaker 4: with their apron strings, took the head, Angie, take the
Speaker 4: money out of the safe. The safe in this case
Speaker 4: was one that was down into the ground, and walked
Speaker 4: them to his vehicle, and then he drove them to
Speaker 4: a place called Dunbar Cave State Park and walked them
Speaker 4: down the path along the little lake there. Now, what
Speaker 4: really sorry. One of the things that overstruck me about
Speaker 4: that was we think at either way, one of the
Speaker 4: ways he had to take was he drove past Michelle,
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, passed Angie's apartment complex where Tabarrows was waiting
Speaker 4: for her to come home with their baby. Angie and
Speaker 4: to Baris had married at Dunbar Cave State Park.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, you talk about a man named Devin Finnegan
Speaker 8: took a stroll around Swan Lake at Dunbar Park walking
Speaker 8: his dog, and he saw first body in the water,
Speaker 8: face down, hands tied behind her back. And then the
Speaker 8: police arrived and they found the other body, Michelle and
Speaker 8: Andrew's bodies. And Patrick Pastaglion heard the news always he
Speaker 8: knew immediately what it meant. He heard the news now again,
Speaker 8: this is the biggest man hunting in Nashville's history. They're
Speaker 8: the media you talk about. I mean, there's so much
Speaker 8: we don't cover in this book. How the media hounded
Speaker 8: each of the families after the murders, relentlessly asking inane
Speaker 8: questions and questions nobody could should ever have to answer.
Speaker 8: What is the reaction now when they find these bodies?
Speaker 8: What do the police do? And again you get us back,
Speaker 8: flash us back to Jose Gonzales, So tell us what
Speaker 8: happens next?
Speaker 4: Well, they believed that since there was so much coverage
Speaker 4: in Nashville and the hunt was on in Nashville, that
Speaker 4: the killer had moved to Clarksville. Clarksville is not far
Speaker 4: away from Nashville, and there had to be some kind
Speaker 4: of a tie, which they later found out there was
Speaker 4: for the killer Clarksville and Nashville. So because of the
Speaker 4: heat coming onto Nashville, the killer had moved. Now, there
Speaker 4: had been a similar crime at the Chaco Bell, but
Speaker 4: that person had had been apprehended if I'm not mistaken eventually,
Speaker 4: and there was also some suspects that had been suspected
Speaker 4: they had officially caught them but ruled them out. And
Speaker 4: the media also hounded Michelle's family. Andy's family, her parents
Speaker 4: had divorced and they lived out of state, and Angie's
Speaker 4: mother and sister were watching the news frantically turned to
Speaker 4: find something out when it came out on national news
Speaker 4: and her sister said, oh my god, that's Andy's picture.
Speaker 4: So it's caught on in almost a fireball frenzy in
Speaker 4: the National news. Can go back, they were hounded.
Speaker 8: You go back to Mitchell Roberts, the manager, and Paul
Speaker 8: Reid contacts him. In fact, he goes to tell us
Speaker 8: about this contact. What the does Paul read, how does
Speaker 8: he contact him, what does he do, what does he say?
Speaker 8: What is Mitchell Robert's reaction? This is fascinating, one of
Speaker 8: the most nast of the book.
Speaker 4: Paul had been fired because he threw something at a
Speaker 4: at a coworker and she's a very tiny lady and
Speaker 4: whatever he threw at her, it could have killed her,
Speaker 4: and he was fired. Well, he shows up at Mitch's
Speaker 4: house and there's a videotape of him actually because his
Speaker 4: Mitchell's son was had the video recorder out, and he
Speaker 4: videos Paul knocking at the door, and Paul is all
Speaker 4: goofy and he's rigging his fingers hello, and he tells Mitch.
Speaker 4: He says, I just I want to talk to you
Speaker 4: about hiring me back. And mit She's like, well, you
Speaker 4: know what, we need to talk about that some other time.
Speaker 4: And Paul's like, well, just you know, I really need
Speaker 4: that job. I really need the money. And Mitch's like,
Speaker 4: you know, we'll talk about it later. Well, Paul tricks
Speaker 4: Mitch into going outside to Paul's vehicle and he says,
Speaker 4: I need to tell you about people stealing from you.
Speaker 4: And Mitch's like, PAULA don't have sign for this. Well,
Speaker 4: all of a sudden, Mitchell starts thinking a red car,
Speaker 4: because one of the things they advertised about this killer
Speaker 4: was they believe he was driving a red car. And
Speaker 4: Mitchell starts pulling it all together. The killer was this
Speaker 4: big muscle or guy black hair. He drove a red car,
Speaker 4: and it just kind of fell into place in Mitchell's
Speaker 4: head and he says, Paul, I don't have time for this.
Speaker 4: He starts leaving, and the next thing, you know, and
Speaker 4: now Paul's got a gun in his hand and he says, Mitchell,
Speaker 4: you're coming with me, and Mitch's like, Paul, put that away.
Speaker 4: Now he's got a pair of handcuffs on the other hand.
Speaker 4: He says, put these on. And Mitchell's thinking, oh my god,
Speaker 4: he is going to handcuff me. He's going to take
Speaker 4: me to the show and hees he's going to make
Speaker 4: me open the safe and then he's going to kill
Speaker 4: me and he'll come back here and he'll kill my
Speaker 4: wife and kids. Right, and he starts praying. And now
Speaker 4: Paul has a knife, the handcuffs in one hand and
Speaker 4: a gun in the other and this says a little prayer,
Speaker 4: and he says, Paul, you're not gonna shoot me or
Speaker 4: anybody else, and he shoves him and jumps inside the house,
Speaker 4: slams the door on Paul who's trying to open it,
Speaker 4: and he yells at his wife, hand me the gun,
Speaker 4: hand me the gun. Well it scares Paul and he runs,
Speaker 4: jumps in his car and leaves.
Speaker 8: And incredibly, he tells the cops because he tells them
Speaker 8: what he thinks. He thinks, this is the serial killer
Speaker 8: that you guys are looking for. I don't know if
Speaker 8: it doesn't. He's not clear who's listening, but that's what
Speaker 8: he's saying. And that incredibly.
Speaker 4: So this is where Paul calls Mitchell and and see
Speaker 4: this is where his ego gets him. He calls Mitchell, says, man, Mitchell,
Speaker 4: and I'm so sorry. I should not have done that.
Speaker 4: I you know, I hope you can forgive me because
Speaker 4: I really need my job back. And the cops are
Speaker 4: standing there looking at me. Mitchell like this is insane?
Speaker 4: Is that him? Get him back here? And the next thing,
Speaker 4: you know, you know, he's like, uh, yeah, Paul, why
Speaker 4: don't you come back here. Let's talk about it, which
Speaker 4: he does, he has offending him, drive him back to
Speaker 4: Mitchell's house, and that's when they nab him. Unbelievable. But
Speaker 4: you know, you think that the strangest things and the
Speaker 4: most difficult arrest, the most amazingly difficult cases sometimes are
Speaker 4: soft by the simplest thing, And that's this case.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yes, Soon after everything crumbles, he claims to be innocent
Speaker 8: and then very very interestingly, just like the behavior of
Speaker 8: acting like a buffoon at that first trial where he
Speaker 8: got twenty years, he again has odd behavior and again
Speaker 8: the defense does a vigorous defense for him. He has
Speaker 8: the three trials and then you again, it's incredible. The
Speaker 8: victims families have to come see blown up crime scene
Speaker 8: photos on screens, hear the details that everyone put together.
Speaker 8: More horrifying than reading this book in terms of the
Speaker 8: graphic detail that these people have to hear about their
Speaker 8: loved ones. Jose Gonzales testifies again, still afraid of Paul Read.
Speaker 8: Tell us a little bit about Paul Read's behavior in
Speaker 8: prison and that trial.
Speaker 4: Okay, well, I'm glad, glad you brought that up, because
Speaker 4: the reason I wrote this book was not to write
Speaker 4: about Paul Reid. Because when Paul Reid was captured. He
Speaker 4: was the darling of the media, and the families were forgotten.
Speaker 4: They became the families of the woman who was killed
Speaker 4: at Baskin Robbin's by Paul Reid. They became associated with him.
Speaker 4: And for example, during the trial, they had to sit
Speaker 4: on tarred benches, and as you said, see and hear
Speaker 4: these horrifying things, Paul Reid got this hit in a
Speaker 4: big cushy chair with the swivel that sat back and
Speaker 4: sat forward. They weren't allowed to even look at him
Speaker 4: during the trial. During their testimony, and while Bert's sister
Speaker 4: was giving her her victims testimony, he blew her kisses
Speaker 4: that nobody could see him doing it while she is
Speaker 4: sitting up there trying to hold back her tears because
Speaker 4: you can't cry when you're given that impact statement, and
Speaker 4: nobody could see Paul. He's sitting there blowing kisses to her.
Speaker 4: And after Jenna gave her impact statement about Sarah and
Speaker 4: she leaves the stand, she just glanced over at him.
Speaker 4: It was less than a second, and they tried to
Speaker 4: call a mistrial because she looked at him, and he
Speaker 4: sat there stone cold at everything. He could have been
Speaker 4: watching a very dull movie. But when they showed the
Speaker 4: crime scenes and the bodies, he would lean forward in
Speaker 4: his chair and beaches and alive in them.
Speaker 8: And interesting.
Speaker 4: They're very interesting to watch him.
Speaker 8: What was odd and again so interesting, was yet when
Speaker 8: Jose Gonzalez testified, what was his reaction?
Speaker 4: Oh my god? He said he felt for Jose and
Speaker 4: if he could, he would give him a kiss and
Speaker 4: a hug and tell him it's okay. Poor Jose was
Speaker 4: so confused, and you know, he just wished he could
Speaker 4: give him a big old hug and tell him you're
Speaker 4: gonna be okay. Jose. I know you're confused and you
Speaker 4: don't have the right man, but gosh, you know you're
Speaker 4: a really great guy, and I just love you. And
Speaker 4: he said, oh, I just love Jose.
Speaker 8: Like you say.
Speaker 4: He was.
Speaker 8: The media gave him a lot of attention, and he
Speaker 8: had admirers. Unfortunately, though he had no admirers in prison,
Speaker 8: did he? It was the pretty well the opposite of that,
Speaker 8: wasn't it.
Speaker 4: He didn't have admirers that were, you know, intimate admirers.
Speaker 4: But oh yeah, he had plenty of letters. He had
Speaker 4: people that were writing in letters and then turning them
Speaker 4: around and selling them. You know, he had people that
Speaker 4: were offering him, but he was in jail. He had
Speaker 4: a im media person wanting to know if they could
Speaker 4: send him a flower basket or a fruit basket in
Speaker 4: exchange for an interview. Nobody offered the victims' families of
Speaker 4: flower basket or a fruit basket, just because nobody in
Speaker 4: the media offered that. But no, most of the inmates
Speaker 4: on death Roads weren't big fans. He made one or
Speaker 4: two friends and that was it.
Speaker 8: Now, despite all of this psychiatric analysis and evaluation brought
Speaker 8: by the defense in the three trials, and especially when
Speaker 8: you're talking about death sentence cases death penalty cases, despite that,
Speaker 8: despite their testimony, what did he receive in all three
Speaker 8: trials in terms of sentence?
Speaker 4: Altogether, across three trials he received seven death sentences, which
Speaker 4: was the most given to any person in the state
Speaker 4: of Tennessee.
Speaker 8: And do police like Bleon think that there is a
Speaker 8: good possibility that he's responsible for other murders and if so,
Speaker 8: what are they doing anything in that regard?
Speaker 4: Yes, definitely he was a suspect and another murder at
Speaker 4: Shawnees which was never saft a show that Mitch had
Speaker 4: loaned him out too. There was a manager that was
Speaker 4: found flashed to death, and then there was a case
Speaker 4: in Houston, Texas in nineteen eighty where three young people
Speaker 4: in a bowling alley were found shot execution style while
Speaker 4: they laid on their stomach, and a man named Max
Speaker 4: so Far has been twice convicted for that murder. Mister
Speaker 4: so Far died on death row in Texas. But it
Speaker 4: strongly believed that Reed actually committed that murder. He had
Speaker 4: been kicked out of the bowling alley. I think it
Speaker 4: was the night. And I'm sure there are more. He
Speaker 4: had left prior to leaving for Nashville. He left Texas
Speaker 4: to go to Chicago for some unknown reasons and then
Speaker 4: came back to Texas. And he had also gone to
Speaker 4: Oklahoma and came back when he was still in Texas.
Speaker 4: So it is, honestly, it's no telling. I'm sure there
Speaker 4: are also unsolved robberies besides murders.
Speaker 8: You talk about. In March twenty fourth, two thousand and three,
Speaker 8: Paul sent a handwritten note asking to drop his appeals
Speaker 8: captain in the Captain D's case, and it cleared way
Speaker 8: for his execution. Apparently was preparing to die April twenty eight,
Speaker 8: two thousand and three. However, after families had traveled there
Speaker 8: for this, what did he do.
Speaker 4: The family's packed up and that was it. Okay, he
Speaker 4: finally this is it. We're finally gonna We're finally going
Speaker 4: to have it ended, you know what can be ended.
Speaker 4: And they all go there, they're all prepared, they're ready
Speaker 4: for it, and at the very last minute, he's even
Speaker 4: had his last meal, he said, God has spoken to me,
Speaker 4: don't need to die. I'm not ready to die. I'm
Speaker 4: calling it off. So the families got back on the
Speaker 4: bus and we're sent back home. Now here's an interesting note.
Speaker 4: As they're going in on the butt, there's a candlelight
Speaker 4: vigil for Paul Reid and all of these people are
Speaker 4: yelling and screaming and calling the family's name. Wow, because
Speaker 4: Reid is going to die and they are against the
Speaker 4: death penalty and they are calling these families of these
Speaker 4: slain kids' names.
Speaker 8: Yeah, incredible. You also talk about that he said he
Speaker 8: received a sign from God. This is again, we don't
Speaker 8: have much time. So this is about Sarah Jackson, Steve Hampton,
Speaker 8: Andrea Brown, Ronald Santiago, Robert Sewell, Angela Holmes, Michelle Mace
Speaker 8: And like I say of Jose Gonzales, you say, a
Speaker 8: portion of this book's proceeds go to an organization, Parents
Speaker 8: of Murdered Children po MC. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 8: about this organization, and tell us a little bit about
Speaker 8: this organization.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a po MC in Clarkville that was started
Speaker 4: by two of the parents of two of the people's slang.
Speaker 4: And they support an advocate for parents whose children have
Speaker 4: been murdered, and they help people who are in this situation.
Speaker 4: They do work towards law and rules for people who
Speaker 4: have found themselves in this situation. Because nobody ever says, Gosh,
Speaker 4: one day my kid will be killed. Nobody ever says that,
Speaker 4: and these people are thrown into this situation. You know,
Speaker 4: who knows what's going on in the courtroom? Who knows
Speaker 4: what an appeal is? Or does does a life sentence
Speaker 4: mean life sentence? You know? Well, what is you know,
Speaker 4: evidential area? What does that mean? So they help these
Speaker 4: people and then they do fundraisers and it's an amazing organization.
Speaker 4: And the funds go to this organization and they are
Speaker 4: donated in the names of these victims. And that's what
Speaker 4: this book is about is how crime survivors and crime
Speaker 4: victims are treated in the justice system. And that's really
Speaker 4: what this book is about. And in the back of
Speaker 4: the book is more information on that for people, and
Speaker 4: also on my website.
Speaker 8: And I got to say to the audience too, that
Speaker 8: your book really does truly honors these people's memories. Again,
Speaker 8: I don't want to call them victims, but these people
Speaker 8: and they're fascinating and honorable lives. You've done true justice
Speaker 8: to at least their stories, because it is a balance.
Speaker 8: Everybody's so interested in the serial killer and and how
Speaker 8: he got to where he got, but these people's lives were,
Speaker 8: of course irregably changed and the people around them, and
Speaker 8: you capture every horrifying and heartbringing moment in this book.
Speaker 8: I want to thank you very much, Judith for coming
Speaker 8: on and talking about when Nashville bled. It's been fascinating.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you for caring about these people, because I
Speaker 4: mean I do, and I still do, and I still
Speaker 4: get choked up talking about him, and I just you know,
Speaker 4: Paul Reid wasn't special, he wasn't scary. He was a punk,
Speaker 4: he was a thug, He was nothing compared to these guys.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, Well their memories will, I say, will be honored.
Speaker 8: And I urge people to get this book. It's incredible
Speaker 8: when Nashville bled the Untold Stories a serial killer Paul
Speaker 8: Dennis read. Thank you very much, Judith A. Yates. Is
Speaker 8: there a website that people might go to? A Facebook page?
Speaker 4: Tell us about that, sure, Truecrimebooks dot net. I'm on Twitter,
Speaker 4: I am on gosh, every social media almost that you
Speaker 4: can think of. And I will go ahead and go
Speaker 4: on your Facebook page also and type in my Facebook
Speaker 4: page and your Facebook page can talk on my Facebook page.
Speaker 8: So sounds great. Also for those wanting to look into
Speaker 8: parents of murdered children TRIPLEW dot p o MC dot com.
Speaker 8: Thank you very much, Judith, have a great night.
Speaker 4: Thank you. Dann you too, be careful out there, Yes,
Speaker 4: you too, Thank you.
Speaker 8: Good night,