Located on a hill in northern California is a tree known by the locals as “The Hanging Tree”. Its story is a gruesome one…
Several years ago, a local football team went up to the old tree to unwind after losing the big homecoming game. Being good sports, they invited the winning team to join them. A few members of the other team took them up on that offer and made the long trek to the top of the hill. Once there, they got drunk and began taunting the losing team over their loss. Seeing their rivals so drunk, the losing team came up with the perfect plan for revenge. They stripped the members of the rival team naked and tied them to the old, gnarled tree. They then left, leaving their rivals to fend for themselves overnight. The next morning they contacted the remaining rivals, telling them where they could find their friends. When the remaining players arrived at the hill they were met with a gruesome sight. Their friends were hanging from the old tree, their bodies completely skinned. It is not known what happened to them during the night but the tree is now said to curse anyone who touches it.
Do you dare touch “The Hanging Tree”?
“The Hanging Tree” is said to sit upon a large hill known as “The Top of the World”. Its exact location is unknown but it’s said to be somewhere in northern California. If you happen to find it, please don’t touch it!
Today I visited the Maamtrasna murder house in Connemara.
I decided to use these images for “A Warm Place”.
This is the section of the album where our protagonist gives pause to his violent crusade and delirium to reflect on what he has become.
Visiting this place was an incredibly sobering experience for me. My excitement over visiting my first “murder house” was dampened to a somber sinking feeling in my stomach when I realised this pile of rocks was once a home to a family, who I’m sure loved each other and shared many happy memories here. Despite the conditions in which they lived, this was their ‘warm place’.
And then one day that was all erased, in an act of senseless violence.
The Downward Spiral was released on Interscope Records in 1994. Anyone who has seen Netflix’s ‘The Defiant Ones’ will know the story of Interscope Records, and how they were the target of many political and religious groups blaming them for obscenity for acts on their roster that included not only Nine Inch Nails, but also Trent Reznor’s protégé Marilyn Manson.
However, Interscope’s biggest sellers at the time were none other than Death Row Records, who were instigators of what would become the infamous west coast / east cost rivalry that would eventually take the lives of each sides mouth-pieces, Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G.
Visiting this place gave me a sense of “what exactly am I doing?” I wanted great content, but I didn’t really consider what it was I actually wanted to say by being here. Does this have actual relevance to my project or do I just think it’s “kinda cool”.
Trent Reznor claimed for years that it was pure coincidence that he took up residence in 10050 Cielo Drive., a claim he ended up eventually retracting as he admitted that he did know this information and it did influence his decision to purchase the property. Reznor eventually met Sharon Tate’s sister, Debra, during his time in the house, who pulled no punches with him:
The topic of censorship is something that, as an artist, I feel strongly against, under any circumstances. It is a slippery slope that I feel undermines our intelligence as a people and is a step in the direction of Nazi book burning ceremonies and “pray the gay away” camps.
That being said, as artists I feel like we are responsible for what we put out in the world and the effect it has on other people. If that effect is negative or misunderstood, it is up to us to either stand by it or deal with the fall out, just as any parent would with their own children, for whom they are responsible.
On the night of August 9th 1969, Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Linda Kasabian, forced their way into the home of Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski on the orders of Charles Manson, who instructed them to “totally destroy” everyone in it, and to do it “as gruesome as you can”.
Manson’s motivation was revenge against famous record producer Terry Melcher, with whom Manson had a previous relationship with before being snubbed concerning the possibility of recording his music together. Melcher was the previous resident of the house before Tate and Polanski, and had invited Manson over as a guest on a couple of occasions.
At the time, Polanski was away in Europe working on a film project, and Tate was entertaining guests, among them Abigail Folger (heiress to the Folgers Coffee fortune) her boyfriend, aspiring screen-writer Wojciech Frykowski, and Jay Sebring, Tate’s friend and former lover.
Steven Parent, a friend of the caretaker who lived in the guest house in the back, was the first of the Manson Family’s victims that night, as he was stabbed and shot leaving the residence. Among those invited that night but did not attend were record producer Quincy Jones, and actor Steve McQueen.
After an evening of socialising, Tate and her guests had fallen asleep, only to be awoken by Manson’s followers and brutally murdered in the ensuing struggle. Included in the list of victims was Tates unborn child, Paul Richard Polanski. Tate was 8 ½ months pregnant.
Manson had told his followers to “leave a sign—something witchy” before they left the scene. Susan Atkins took Sharon Tates blood and wrote the word “PIG” on the front door.
Jennifer Pan was born to Vietnamese refugee parents, Bich HaandHuei Hann Pan, in Markham, Ontario. As immigrant parents, they set very high expectations for Jennifer. They enrolled her in piano lessons and figure skating from an early age. When that wasn’t occupying her time, she was studying. Her parents were very strict, never letting her date or attend social events. The intense pressure Jennifer was put under drove her to self-harm. The aspiring Olympic figure skating champion ended up tearing a ligament when she was 14 and had to give up her dream.
Throughout high school, Jennifer received average grades, which she knew would not satisfy her parents’ expectations. She began forging her report cards to pass off as being a straight-A student to her parents. She ended up failing high school, but forged her high school diploma and faked a letter of acceptance into university for pharmacology. Jennifer went the whole nine yards to maintain her charade, such as purchasing second-hand textbooks and doing research in her fake-major. In reality, she worked part-time as a piano instructor and waitress and lived with her weed dealer boyfriend, Daniel Chi-Kwong Wong.
Her parents became suspicious and eventually discovered the truth. They gave her an ultimatum: either she will move back home and complete her education, and would also be forbidden from contacting her boyfriend, or they would kick her out and cut off their financial support. Jennifer chose the former option and moved back home with her parents. She became severely depressed from not being able to see Wong.
Jennifer and Wong plotted to hire some hitmen to kill her parents so that she could inherit $500,000 and they could be together at last. On November 8th, 2010, the men entered the home fully armed. After ransacking the home for cash, they then shot both Bich and Hann to death. During the police interview, Jennifer claimed she did not know the assailants and she had been tied up the whole time, managing to free her hands to call 911. After changing her story multiple times, the investigator told her that her father survived his injuries and informed the officer that during the break-in, Jennifer was roaming freely and even conversing with the intruders.
Jennifer was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years. She is forbidden from contacting her surviving father ever again.
Kenneth Williams was executed on Thursday, April 27th 2017 at Cummins Unit, Arkansas for the murder of Cecil Boren. In 1998, Williams abducted Dominique Hurd and her friend at gunpoint, then drove them to several ATMs to make cash withdrawals before shooting them both and leaving them to die. The friend survived, but Dominique died of her injuries, and Williams was sentenced to life in prison for her abduction and murder. In 1999, Williams escaped from Cummins unit and came upon the home of 57 year old Cecil Boren, who lived two miles away from the prison with his wife Genie, who was at church. Williams broke into the home and fatally shot Boren, stole his truck and several of his guns, then drove to Missouri, where he engaged in a high-speed chase with police. During the pursuit, Williams crashed the stolen truck into a water delivery truck driven by a 24 year old man who died of his injuries. Williams was sentenced to death for the murder of Cecil Boren in 2000, and has been sitting on death row at Cummins unit ever since.
Williams was one of eight men who were scheduled to be executed in Arkansas in the month of April. Governor Asa Hutchinson made the nearly unprecedented move to schedule the eight executions because the state’s supply of Midazolam, a controversial drug linked to several botched executions, was due to expire. Four of the eight men received stays of execution. Ledell Lee, Jack Jones and Marcel Williams were executed after delays while their requests were considered and ultimately denied by the Supreme Court.
Williams received Holy Communion for his last meal. When asked for his last words, he stated:
“You won’t even understand them because they will be spoken in my spiritual language, in “Tongues”. Tongues are made mention of in the Bible: 1 Corinthians Chapter 14. If it be my fate to die on an execution table shaped like a crucifixion cross, my last words here on earth will be spoken to God above while the ADC and the State of Arkansas work to put my body to death beneath.”
Williams’ time of death was recorded as 11:05pm (CST). He was the fourth man to be executed in Arkansas in 2017, and the tenth in the U.S.
You can read Williams’ submission to The Marshall Project {here.}
The incredible part of his execution’s story is that Michael Greenwood’s (the truck driver who was killed in the accident) family pleaded for his life to be spared. Greenwood’s wife was pregnant with twins the time of his death and they already had a daughter the same age of… William’s daughter, Jasmine. When Williams received his execution’s date the Greenwoods reached out to Jasmine and realized she had not seen her dad in 18 years, and Williams even had a granddaughter he never met. The Greenwoods bought Jasmine and her daughter plane tickets so they could have a final visit with Williams. As if it wasn’t amazing enough, they also drove from Missouri to Little Rock to pick them up at the airport and drove them all the way to the prison because "If I was Jasmine, I would want somebody there for me. We are all humans, we are all here together, we have to be here for each other,“ said Kayla Greenwood (Michael Greenwood’s daughter). They wanted to make sure Williams would be able to see his family one last time because they know how it feels to lose a father and "It’s just not right. It’s just not right. She didn’t do anything ever and now she is going to be a victim”.
Reblogging again because I forgot that my dear friend @voicefromdeathrow had such a great addition to it!
On October 12, 1960, a televised political debate for the parliamentary elections in Japan was cut dramatically short when Otoya Yamaguchi (17, top right) stabbed Inejiro Asanuma of the Socialist Party with a samurai sword.
Asanuma was discussing his support for Chinese Communism at the podium of Hibiya Hall when Yamaguchi (a member of an ultra-nationalist group) flew onstage with a yoroidoshi and stabbed the politician in his left side, killing him. The assassination was broadcast live before guards could subdue the teenager. Yamaguchi committed suicide in prison three weeks later.
In the summer of 1990, Marlene Warren opened the front door of her Florida home to a brown-eyed clown wearing an assortment of flowers and carrying two balloons, one reading “You’re the greatest!”. Upon handing them to Marlene, the mystery clown then shot her in the face. The murder remained unsolved until 2017.
Her murderer was a woman named Sheila (Keen) Warren, who later married Marlene Warren’s widower, Michael Warren, in 2002. Detectives say it is “undetermined” whether or not he had any involvement in Marlene’s murder.
