Clowns are artificial happiness, supposed to bring people joy with their painted on smiles and their bright colors. Not in Springfield. Realize clowns are people too. They have problems they can’t handle, rent they can’t pay, beef with their terrible neighbors, annoying mother-in-laws etc, one group of clowns certainly do not like not getting paid for services provided. No matter how silly the service may be.
It was a bright sunny day and Tommy McMillan’s 6th birthday. His mother rented a clown to entertain Tommy and eight friends. After cake and ice cream Tommy and seven of his friends went upstairs. The eighth, Jay, the smallest of the group didn’t want to join the other boys for he was being bullied so he hid under the table. While there he witnessed the following between Tommy’s mother Karen McMillan and the clown.
According to eyewitness Jay Brim, “The clown was standing in the kitchen waiting for Karen to pay him for the Tommy’s birthday. Karen was explaining how she didn’t have cash that day and could she pay him with a check. This was not an acceptable reply to the clown who seemed to be loosing his temper because he grabbed Karen by the collar and demanded his money NOW!. Karen put up her hands and cried “I don’t have cash but if you can wait I’ll run to the ATM.” This seemed to make the clown even angrier because he pulled a big black gun out of his clown pants and started pistol whipping her yelling while yelling “You’ll pay me or else!” When Karen stopped talking the clown threw Karen’s body to the floor. With blood running down her face Karen saw me under the table and started mouthing the words, “Run, Run…” before the clown kicked her face in with his big bright red shoes and proceeded to stomp up the stairs where I could hear Tommy the birthday boy and his friends playing.”
Jay then stated that with the clown gone and Karen looking dead on the floor he crawled out from under the table and ran next-door where the neighbors were washing their dog in the front yard. At this point the story is taken up by Richard Kneely, his wife and another unidentified witness. Richard: “We saw the kid who looked scared out of his mind, running into the yard blubbering ‘The clown killed her, the clown killed her.’ Horrified, we were about to run inside when our dog began barking madly and straining in my hands. “This was unusual” said Richard Kneely who as neighbor and family friend stated “Baxter our dog is very friendly with all the neighborhood kids and never barks at them; but that’s when we saw what he was barking at. A merrily colored ice cream truck had came to a screeching halt on the McMillan’s front lawn and five big clowns tumbled out. They seemed to be hollering for somebody to come out of the house. Now I know it was that Birthday Clown. Baxter continued barking and struggled out of my hands and charged the nearest clown, you know the one with the big rainbow wig. Without hesitation one of the other clowns pulled a big silver handgun out of his rainbow vest and started blasting away, stopping Baxter dead and silencing rainbow wigged clown. I couldn’t break my stare from this wild creature, who flashed his yellow teeth in a big grin and turned to yell at the house again. Suddenly my neighbors front door exploded off its hinges knocking down a third clown dressed in a ten-gallon hat, cowboy getup and spurs, must have been a rodeo clown. Then out of the smoking doorway of my neighbor’s house stepped another clown. His facial expression seemed to have a smug look of accomplishment on it as he strode across the lawn caring a bundle of the dirty brown bags that must have come from the children’s potato sack races. To my horror the sacks seemed to be squirming. What could have been in them I couldn’t imagine until my wife screamed, “The children, the children!” I was struck stone cold and watched in shock as the clown with the bags of children grabbed big rainbow wig guy by the back of his shirt and dragged him, dripping gore and sparkles and tossed him and the bagged kids into the back of the ice cream truck yelling “Never leave a man behind! And Let’s blow this pop stand!” before climbing behind the wheel and while racing the engine. As the van burned a donut on the lawn all the other clowns leapt, stumbling and jumped into the back except a big fat clown dressed like Santa who calmly lit a Molotov cocktail and tossed it through the open door where it erupted with a roar in the interior of the house. Santa them leaped to cling the van’s smiling cartoon waffle-cone mascot as the van raced away to the musical jingle of ‘I am ice cream man, running over kids with my ice cream van...’
The police showed up ninety minutes later, long after I’d dragged Karen from the burning house and doused the fire with water balloons left over from the birthday party.”