At the time of the murders, Reid lived with roommate Brian Fozzard at a boarding house, and he was on parole from a 1983 conviction in Texas on charges relating to the aggravated armed robbery of a Houston steakhouse.

[3] Originally from Richland Hills, Texas, a suburb of Fort Worth,[3] Reid went to Nashville to pursue a career as a country music singer.

[4] On the morning of February 16, 1997, Reid entered a Captain D's on Lebanon Road in the Donelson neighborhood of Nashville, Tennessee before opening, under the guise of applying for a job.

[citation needed] On the evening of March 23, 1997 at a McDonald's on Lebanon Road in the Hermitage neighborhood of Nashville (located 3.4 miles (5.5 km) northeast of the Captain D's), Reid approached four employees as they exited the store after closing.

[5] On the evening of April 23, 1997, Reid went to the door of a Baskin-Robbins on Wilma Rudolph Boulevard in Clarksville, Tennessee, after closing and persuaded the employees to let him inside.

[citation needed] In the Captain D's murders, Steve Hampton's driver's license and a video rental card were found in the median of Ellington Parkway in East Nashville with Reid's fingerprints on each.

Members of his family, along with anti-death penalty activists, claimed he was mentally handicapped and unable to make such a decision, and filed multiple motions (both successful and unsuccessful) to stay his execution.

[10][11] His last execution date was scheduled for January 3, 2008, but was stayed on December 26, 2007, by US District Judge Todd J. Campbell, pending investigation into the constitutionality of Tennessee's lethal injection methods.

The state of Tennessee immediately began appealing stays of execution to resume death penalty cases, including Reid's.

Reid displayed erratic decision making, choosing to appeal some verdicts and not others, and professing his will to die as sentenced after having fought to avoid such a fate earlier in his defense.

[14] For a time, Reid was considered a prime suspect in the 1993 Brown's Chicken massacre in Palatine, Illinois due to the similar nature of the crime in relation to the two incidents in Nashville.

[15] Reid was reportedly also considered a suspect in the Houston-area killings of three people in a bowling alley for which Max Soffar was twice convicted before dying while still on death row in Texas.