The Murder of Sharon McLane Part Two: The Fast Food Killer

The Murder of Sharon McLane Part Two: The Fast Food Killer

May 25, 2026 · 35 min

About this episode

The episode explores the brutal murder of Sharon McLane and its connection to a series of fast food murders in Tennessee.

In December of 1996, 32-year-old Sharon McLane was found brutally murdered inside her Bedford, Texas apartment, stabbed and slashed more than fifty times in a crime that shocked the Mid-Cities area between Dallas and Fort Worth. Police quickly focused on Sharon’s acquaintance, John Earl Nolley, and within months he was arrested, charged, and eventually convicted of her murder. But while investigators in Texas built their case against Nolley, another terrifying series of murders was unfolding hundreds of miles away in Tennessee. As Nashville-area detectives investigated what became known as the “Fast Food Murders,” authorities began connecting multiple brutal restaurant killings tied to a violent drifter and former fast-food employee named Paul Dennis Reid Jr. The murders stretched from Captain D’s in Donelson to a McDonald’s in Hermitage and eventually to the abduction and murder of two Baskin-Robbins employees in Clarksville. The crimes shared disturbing similarities: restaurant workers targeted during opening or closing shifts, robbery mixed with extreme violence, and victims executed by firearm or repeatedly stabbed. As Reid’s history and alleged crimes came to light, Sharon…

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Places: Bedford, Texas, Tennessee, Nashville, Clarksville, Donelson, Hermitage

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