Curtis Reed

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Curtis Reed (real name Curtis Brown) was a fictional character in the soap opera Days of our Lives, the deadbeat father of Austin and Billie Reed.

Curtis Brown and Kate Roberts married in the early 1970s. They had two children -- a boy and a girl. Curtis was a jazz player and made several records but became involved with the mafia and had part of his ring finger cut off (this minor detail would be ignored when Curtis actually came on the show in 1993 as he had all of his full fingers). After this he became addicted to drugs and he became abusive toward his family. Kate began having an affair with Bill Horton in late 1974 and got pregnant by him and when Curtis found out he beat her up and left her on the side of a road and took off with the kids.

Curtis immediately changed his last name and the names of the children -- their birth names have never been revealed, but Curtis renamed them Austin and Billie Holliday Reed. Curtis and the kids went from city to city, often changing names due to his criminal activities; meanwhile, poor Kate was searching for her babies when Curtis contacted her and told her that their children had died in a car wreck. Years later he would appear in Salem with one job: shoot John Black. Unfortunately, the bullet missed and he survived. It turns out that Curtis did this under orders from Stefano DiMera; however, since he didn't kill John, Stefano refused to pay Curtis so he kidnapped Stefano and held him on Smith Island until Kristen Blake paid him ransom for Stefano (Stefano was paralyzed from the waist down due to an incident in 1991 and so he could not fight Curtis).

He was shot to death by Stefano DiMera on November 10, 1993 in a back alley behind Billie's apartment where Curtis had been staying as punishment for the kidnapping. He was sniffing cocaine in the alley when a mysterious gunman (only later revealed to be Stefano) came up to him, Curtis looked up and said: "what do you want?, Stefano pointed his gun at Curtis and Curtis's eyes went big and he yelled NO! and bang! He was discovered in the morning by Bo Brady and Wendy Reardon when they went to the alley to get some crates. It was not until the March 31st, 1994 episode that Stefano was revealed as the shooter. After this; he appeared as a ghost multiple times during 1994. Then he appeared in 1995, 1997, 1999 and 2000. His most recent appearance was on June 5, 2001. He was played by actor Nick Benedict.