Why ‘Fast Food Killer’ Paul Dennis Reid Stopped Fighting Death Sentence

Paul Dennis Reid was a thick-necked, smooth-talking Texan who moved to Nashville with dreams of country music superstardom. But instead, Reid became infamous for being “The Fast Food Killer,” a mass killer who, in 1997, went on a three-month armed robbery and murder spree that would later earn him seven death sentences.

Reid—described in court documents as a troubled kid with a penchant for thievery after being raised by an alcoholic father—was approaching 40 when he made the move to Music City in 1995 with settlement cash, which he received following a 1990 car wreck that scarred him and permanently damaged his left frontal lobe.

By early 1997, the money was all gone, spent on cosmetic surgeries, professional headshots, and demos he recorded as “Justin Parks.” As a result, Reid resorted to robbing fast food joints in and around Nashville, and killing their employees in execution-style shootings.

The man who arrested Reid, retired Metro Nashville Police homicide detective Pat Postiglione, described the killer to A&E Crime + Investigation as a “pure evil” person who couldn’t carry a tune to save his life.

“He was the type of guy who would walk your mother across the street during the day, and get her safely across, and at night, he’d go on a binge and kill two or three people,” Postiglione says. “He was never going to make it in music. If you ever heard him sing, you’d understand.”

Yet, “in his own mind, he was already a star,” Postiglione continues. “He told me when he would go into the grocery store, people would say, ‘There goes Paul Reid,’ ‘Look, that’s Paul Reid.’ He called his own murder trial ‘The Trial of the Century.’”

The first killings happened the morning of February 16, 1997, at a Captain D’s Seafood Kitchen in Nashville’s Donelson neighborhood. Reid knocked on the locked door, waving the complete job application he’d picked up the day before.

He was let inside, and immediately forced employee Sarah Jackson, 16, and manager, Steve Hampton, 25, into the restaurant’s cooler, where they were told to lie face down on the floor. He shot them both in the back of the head.

“He shot them with a revolver, and then reloaded, and shot them six more times,” Postiglione recalls.

Just over a month later, Reid hid in the shadows outside a McDonald’s in the city’s Hermitage section and ambushed four employees as they exited the store after closing.

“If those kids had ran in four different directions, he would have had to leave,” Postiglione reflects. “There was nothing he could have done.”

Reid used a gun to coerce them back inside and forced them to the back storage room, where he shot Andrea Brown, 17; Ronald Santiago, 27; and Robert A. Sewell, 23.

When Reid ran out of ammunition, he grabbed the nearest knife and stabbed José Antonio Ramirez Gonzalez approximately 17 times. Gonzalez, 31, survived the brutal attack by playing dead, and Reid made off with $3,000.

Then, on April 23, 1997, Reid drove up to a Baskin-Robbins in Clarksville, Tenn., after closing and persuaded employees to let him inside. Reid kidnapped Angela Holmes, 21, and Michelle Mace, 16, and took the girls to nearby Dunbar Cave State Park. He slashed their throats and dumped their bodies in a nature preserve, where they were found the following day.

Reid committed a string of robberies in Texas in the 1980s, and Postiglione found “there was a pattern to his crimes, insomuch as he did two things to delay investigators.”

Postiglione explains that before leaving each murder scene, Reid made sure to lock up the business’s safe after cleaning it out, and then, he locked up the entire building, so it appeared to just be closed.

“He always would lock the safe, and it would delay discovery,” Postiglione says. “He also locked up the establishments, delaying police from finding his crimes, and giving him more time to flee the area.”

Reid was arrested on June 12, 1997, as he was attempting to abduct a restaurant manager. Records indicate he initially pleaded not guilty to the murders.

In fact, Reid always maintained his innocence, and claimed his trials were “mock” proceedings staged by the government. His lawyers, Reid said, were “actors,” possible from a group called “Scientific Technology,” which he insisted had been recording his every thought and movement. He even once questioned whether the murders even happened.

“He was a nutjob, and his behavior was psychotic,” Postiglione says. “He had zero conscience. When you don’t have a conscience, you can eat breakfast and kill someone five minutes later, or kill someone and then eat breakfast.”

Texas courts found Reid be incompetent to stand trial twice, and he spent significant time in a psychiatric correctional facility receiving antipsychotic medications.

But in two separate trials in 1999, Reid was found guilty in Tennessee of the murders of Jackson, Hampton, Holmes and Mace and sentenced to death. The next year, Reid was sentenced to death for the McDonald’s murders.

Reid tried appealing his convictions and sentence, which were both ultimately upheld. Having accepted his fate, Reid decided he no longer wanted to fight for his life. But the serial killer wasn't mentally competent to make such a decision, his attorneys and his sister, Linda Martiniano, argued in their own appeals. The courts denied these petitions in 2008, and barred others from filing appeals against his wishes.

However, Reid never made it to the lethal injection room. He died from natural causes in 2013, just days before his 56th birthday.