Page 1 of The Chain House

BEFORE

May 28, 2006

Louisville Courier

9 Found Dead at the Hawthorne House

Several more wounded

Investigators say a local cult is to blame

EARLY SUNDAY MORNING, Louisville Metro Police were called to the home of Deron Hawthorne, CEO of Bridgerton Technologies and heir to Hawthorne Brothers Bourbon Distillery, after the Hawthorne’s golden retriever arrived at a neighbor’s house with a torn fabric in his mouth. The fabric, they soon realized, was from a shirt and it was soaked with blood. What began at dusk the night before as a lavish party to celebrate the publication of Deron and Clarice’s youngest son Justin Hawthorne’s first novel, The Craze, had, by dawn, turned into a senseless tragedy of unspeakable horrors, and a scar on a community that, surviving family members say, might not ever heal …

June 3, 2006

Louisville Courier

Louisville Man Arrested as Mastermind

Behind the Hawthorne Massacre

Manson as Possible Inspiration

Louisville native Sal Batise, 35, was arrested on the property of his 200-acre wooded compound known as Freedom, in southeastern Jefferson County, as a suspect in last week’s heinous murders at the Hawthorne house. Leader of the cult known as The Collective, Batise is believed by the FBI and the Louisville Metro Police Department to be the mastermind behind the attack. Batise, known by his 500-plus followers as “The Breaker of Chains,” submitted willingly to authorities. Batise has yet to comment publicly on the crimes, but after securing evidence from the “Freedom” compound, eerie parallels to Charles Manson have already been drawn. Three other cult members, Nancy Tanner, Sylvia Purell, and Annie Blackburn, have been detained for further questioning …

June 4, 2006

Louisville Courier

4 Children Found in Locked Bedroom Closet

on Batise’s Freedom Compound

Four children, ranging from age four to seven, were found by Louisville Metro Police yesterday morning, locked inside a bedroom closet in what is believed to be Sal Batise’s main residence during their continued search of the Freedom Compound in the Hawthorne murder investigation. The four children, two boys and two girls, aside from obvious shock and hunger, all appeared to be in good physical health, which leads the authorities to believe they were hidden not long before the June 2 raid and subsequent arrests. Detectives are in the process of identifying all four children, but it is likely they belong to various cult members, and possibly to Sal Batise himself, as it has been rumored that he had as many as five wives …

June 6, 2006

Louisville Courier

Evidence of Cannibalism Found at

Batise’s Freedom Compound

Only days after the four children were found inside what we now know to be Sal Batise’s main house at the Freedom Compound, cooked remnants of human flesh was found in what at first appeared to be a stew on the stove’s front right burner, showing evidence of possible cannibalism.

PROLOGUE

“DEAD MAN WALKING!”

At the sound of the guard’s booming voice, Warden Adrian Wren shifted in his office seat inside the prison’s central tower for a better view of the window overlooking the yard below, as two armed guards escorted Sal Batise down a sidewalk that bisected a meticulously maintained lawn.

“Dead man walking,” the guard shouted again.

There were currently three dozen inmates in the yard, doing anything from talking in groups to playing basketball or pickleball or cards, and every one of them had stopped what they were doing, as they’d been told, and turned away from the death row inmate, one of forty now currently on the row.

Even the two stray cats that roamed the state prison at Twisted Tree turned their backs on the dead man walking. Everyone knew the routine, and the display of discipline made Warden Wren smile with pride.

“Dead man walking!”