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The Miles County Massacre was a series of exceptionally violent murders perpetrated by Art the Clown in Miles County on the night of Halloween 2017. Nine people were killed, while a tenth victim survived but was permanently disfigured. The massacre is the central event of low-budget horror film Terrifier (2016) and a major backstory event in its sequel Terrifier 2 (2022).
History[]
Background[]
Very little is known about the history of Art and Miles County prior to the Miles County Massacre. However, Art is strongly implied to have killed and mutilated 10-year-old Emily Crane the Halloween before the massacre. At the time of the Miles County Massacre, this murder remained unsolved.
While all the victims were targets of opportunity, the massacre itself was clearly planned well in advance. Before going out and searching for victims, Art packed a garbage bag with numerous tools and weapons for subduing and killing victims, some of which were apparently homemade. He also carried an M1911 pistol in an ankle holster in case he needed to kill someone quickly.
Events of the Massacre[]
The Miles County Massacre was a series of random, opportunistic attacks with no apparent motive other than Art's own sadism. While out looking for people to torture and kill, Art met and targeted college students Tara Heyes and Dawn Emerson. All of the subsequent events stemmed from this encounter.
Pizzeria Murders[]
Art followed Tara and Dawn to a pizzeria, where he began harassing Tara. Art later wrote his name on the bathroom wall in his own feces, causing the staff to force him out.
After Tara and Dawn left to go back to their car, Art returned to the pizzeria and killed both of the employees, decapitating one and stabbing the other to death. This crime was reported to police before any of the others took place, and a description of the suspect was released.
Apartment Murders[]
Probably before the pizzeria murders, Art had slashed the tires of Dawn's car, trapping the two women near a derelict apartment building. He then separately drugged and kidnapped both Tara and Dawn, taking them to a room in the building where he intended to torture and kill them both. Art vertically sawed Dawn in half in front of a restrained Tara, but Tara was able to escape her bindings. She fought back against Art effectively enough that he was forced to simply shoot her dead.
Up until this point, Art's primary goal had been to subdue Tara for prolonged torture and mutilation, and being forced to quickly kill her visibly upset him. He began searching for other victims, both inside the building and elsewhere. When Tara's sister Victoria texted her, unaware she had died, Art impersonated her to lure her to the building. When Victoria arrived to find Tara, Art attacked her. Between his attacks on Victoria, Art also killed the other three people in the building - a homeless woman and two exterminators. He scalped and partly flayed the homeless woman, stabbed and decapitated one of the exterminators, and beat the other to death, though not before the man managed to call police.
While Victoria managed to injure Art, even gouging out his right eye, Art was ultimately able to knock her unconscious, after which he started eating her face. At that point, two police officers arrived and confronted him, holding him at gunpoint. Rather than be arrested, Art drew his pistol and committed suicide by shooting himself in the mouth. While critically injured, Victoria was still alive, and she was rushed to the hospital.
Resurrection and Escape[]
The corpses of Art and his seven victims were taken to the Miles County Morgue. While the coroner prepared for the autopsies, Art was supernaturally resurrected by a sinister entity. The revived Art promptly attacked the coroner, ripping out his throat and beating him to death with a hammer. Art then looted the morgue for tools and chemicals to use as weapons in future attacks before leaving the scene, hiding in an alley to evade responding police.
The massacre ended at a laundromat where Art went to wash the blood from his clothes. There he was met by the Little Pale Girl, the entity that had resurrected him. While Art was at the laundromat, the only other customer woke up and saw him. Art killed the man by stabbing him through the head with a broken mop handle before making his escape.
Aftermath[]
Because three people had seen Art kill himself, he was believed dead by both the authorities and the general public. His resurrection was rationalized as the disappearance of his body from the morgue. Art's corpse had not been in custody long enough to be identified, so his true identity remained entirely unknown, leaving the case effectively unsolved. Some people correctly suspected that Art remained alive and at large, and that he would return to commit more atrocities, though none guessed that he had indeed died and returned.
The horror and mystery of the massacre attracted national attention, including a substantial true crime following. By the one-year anniversary, the massacre remained a topic of significant attention and discussion in Miles County. The attention led some people to dress as Art the Clown for that Halloween.
The sole survivor of the massacre, Victoria Heyes, remained in a coma for months and suffered severely disfiguring scarring to her face. She was also left mentally unstable from the trauma, which would lead her to attack and similarly disfigure TV host Monica Brown when she mocked Victoria's appearance. Victoria was committed to a mental hospital for the attack.
Exactly one year after the Miles County Massacre, Art returned, setting his sights on siblings Sienna and Jonathan Shaw. Art killed another six people before Sienna killed him, but the Little Pale Girl simply resurrected him again.
Trivia[]
- Newspaper clippings in Terrifier 2 state that the massacre occurred in the late night of October 31st and came to light on November 1st. However, a radio broadcast in Terrifier gives the time as around 2 a.m., indicating that the massacre instead took place in the very early morning of October 31st or November 1st.
- The same newspaper clippings name the Halloween of the massacre as a Friday. October 31, 2017 was in fact a Tuesday.