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Bradford Kissell

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Paint It Black

Paint It Black
Paint It Black

Paint It Black | Media List


Statement

On a recent trip to Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, I heard an interesting story related to this image. Just down the road from where I was staying was the 800-acre estate of Willam Du Pont, scion of the fabulously wealthy banking and gunpowder manufacturing company that bears his name. The property would eventually become home to the Foxcatcher Farms horse stables. In 1988, it came under the stewardship of son and sports enthusiast, John, who for years was an ardent sponsor of Olympic athletes and even built a multimillion-dollar training compound in the 1980s for the Olympic wrestling team (Team Foxcatcher, of course) and a residence on the property (see the accompanying photo) for the team's coach and his close friend, Dave Schultz. But it was John's mental health that would eventually prove to be his undoing. According to a September 2005 article in Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred magazine, he became "unhinged" after being "untethered" from his mother who died in August 1988: "He heard things in the walls; believed that intruders entered the house through tunnels; and persuaded himself that, somewhere in the mansion, a device existed that sprayed an oil that could make people disappear." His condition steadily worsened: He suspected aliens were spying on him. He believed mechanical trees grew on the property. He claimed at times to be the Dalai Lama, the president of Bulgaria (say what?) or the Holy Child. On one occasion he drove a car with a wrestler passenger into the farm's pond. He amassed an arsenal of guns and ammunition, always packing a piece on his person. Finally, in late January 1996, his dementia turned violent. He drove to the Schultz residence and pumped three bullets into the coach while he stood in his driveway. One year later, a jury, after dismissing at the last minute a not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity defense, convicted him of third-degree murder. He received a sentence of 13 to 30 years in prison. But wait: There is macabre twist to this story. Gripped by a paranoia that burglars would descend upon the farm and loot the place, Du Pont issued a strange decree from prison: "Paint everything (nearly 24 structures on the property) black. That way, they will disappear."
A cadre of workers followed du Pont's eccentric directive. But rather than first scrapping the peeling structures as usual, they merely spray-painted them matte black. As depicted in the photo, remnants of the paint still exist on the Schultz family home, which is the one structure that can be seen from the road. John Du Pont was never released from prison and died there in December 2010. As the late Paul Harvey would say, "And now you know the rest of the story."