In the early morning hours of January 8, 1989, a tragedy unfolded at a McDonald's restaurant in the Parkway Shopping Center in West Goshen Township, Pennsylvania, that would claim the lives of two employees. Charles Hegarty, a 46-year-old man from East Goshen, and the restaurant's manager, Jean Reider, 41, of Newark, Delaware, were found murdered inside the establishment, each having suffered a single gunshot wound to the head.
The grim discovery was made after a fellow employee, Brian
Burnette, arrived for his shift at approximately 5:30 a.m. and witnessed a man inside waving a gun at Reider as she was carrying cash drawers from the safe. Another employee, Brian Titus, entered the restaurant around the same time and saw a person on the floor who motioned for him to leave. This person was later identified as Charles Hegarty. A newspaper delivery person, James Jenkins, had also noticed an unfamiliar blue and white car in the parking lot shortly before the bodies were discovered. When police arrived, they found Hegarty's body where Titus had seen him, and Reider's body in the corner of a room. The safe was open and the cash drawers were empty, save for some rolled coins, indicating a robbery had taken place.
The investigation soon led to the arrest of Robert T. Hughes. Evidence presented during his trial revealed a series of actions in the days leading up to the murders. On January 3, 1989, Hughes had purchased a Colt handgun and was provided with human silhouette targets. Just three days before the killings, he was seen in his parked car at 4:00 a.m. outside a different McDonald's in Delaware County. Furthermore, on the evening of January 6, the manager of a McDonald's in Exton received a call from a man who identified himself as a McDonald's employee from California and inquired about their opening procedures.
Following his arrest in Delaware shortly after the murders, Hughes was extradited to Pennsylvania. After a competency hearing and evaluation, he was deemed fit to stand trial. Hughes initially opted for a jury trial but later chose to enter a plea. He was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder, robbery, possession of an instrument of a crime, and a violation of the Uniform Firearms Act. For the murders of Charles Hegarty and Jean Reider, Robert T. Hughes received two sentences of death.
