I remember exactly where I was sitting when my older brother told me the story of Nicholas West. In 1993, when West was 23 years old, he was picked up just blocks from my childhood home, taken to a clearing in some woods outside the city, brutalized, and killed for being gay. His murder was deemed a hate crime, two of the perpetrators received the death penalty and one is still serving a life sentence in prison. Earlier this year, thirty years after a crime he committed at just 17 years old, he was denied parole.
I had always known intuitively that Tyler was a conservative place, but this story captivated me as someone who had recently come out of the closet and was still trying to understand my own childhood. In a sort of backwards way I feel affirmed by the knowledge of his story and my own self-preservation reasons for staying in the closet for so long. His murder likely sent a chilling effect through the community and I imagine kept many people from coming out of the closet and/or from supporting their children from doing the same.
His story also helped to explain a strange vision I had in the summer of last year, months before I learned about Nicholas. One weekend day, struggling to be a good parent, I decided to take my oldest to a flower farm outside of Richmond. They had hay rides, play forts, a huge dirt pile (his favorite), and all-you-can eat grilled corn (with Tajin of course). On the way to the farm, we happened to drive past a large pine forest. As I watched the parallax of tall, narrow trees shift to my right I had a very clear vision: I was running for my life through the forest, chased by counselors from the Christian camp I attended as a child. It was a mix between Sothern Gothic and the music video for the alt J song, “Hunger of the Pine.” If they caught me, they were going to drag me back and force me into the closeted life I felt I’d narrowly escaped.
The vision surprised me for how clear and intense it was. Although I was well aware of the culture of homophobia, I had managed to avoid the worst of it. Homophobia mostly came to me through casual phrases (it was the era of “that’s so gay”) or religions conversations like my high school teacher telling me that it was a worse sin because it was a sin “against the body.” The story of Nicholas, one of visceral hatred, was recent enough to be very much a part of the culture and collective memory of the place that raised me even though I didn’t know about it at the time.
Ever since I had that vision I’ve looked at pine forests differently. I grew up in the Piney Woods of East Texas and I have plenty of childhood memories in the tall, quiet, spaces carpeted with pine needles that choke out any understory so you can see straight through them. I think they are beautiful, but like everything in the South (and anywhere) they hold dark secrets, secrets of terror and violence. Terror has been used to control many communities and its effects last long beyond the actual event. Terror changes the way that affected people experience a place. Even when hatred becomes more benign, the memory of the violence serves as a threat that it could happen again.
I’ve picked up lots of articles on this story during my deep dives:
- “Killing of a Gay Resident Stirs Activism in an East Texas Town,” New York Times, 1993
- “The Killing Trail,” Vanity Fair, 1995
- “Nine Years After Murder, Death Row Inmate Said He Shouldn’t Die,” Tyler Morning Telegraph, 2003
- “Texas Executes Inmate Who Kidnapped, Killed Gay Man,” L.A. Times, 2003
- “Tyler pauses to remember brutal hate crime,” Dallas Voice, 2013
- “Not forgotten: Hate crime victim remembered 20 years later,” Tyler Morning Telegraph, 2013
- “Memorial set for young man slain in 1993,” Tyler Morning Telegraph, 2013
- “25 years after his slaying, gay man remembered at park,” Tyler Morning Telegraph, 2018
- “Board denies parole for Flint man serving life sentence for 1993 hate crime” Tyler Morning Telegraph, 2024
I also recently watched Lone Star Hate, a documentary about the story, embedded below:
I was only five years old, probably asleep under the glow-in-the-dark stars of my room, when Nicholas West was picked up at the park nearby. In some ways I wish I had known about his story at a younger age. I wish I had known about all of these stories, the gay community, the mentors I didn’t have, the history I wasn’t told. Part of moving forward is going back and making those connections when I get the chance.
I’ll be in Tyler in a few weeks and this story is going to be on my mind. I certainly hope to visit the memorial stone in the park where Nicholas was picked up. On a later visit to the area, I’d love to connect with anyone that knew him or was friends with him at the time. I feel really connected to his story and want to know more about his life before it was defined by someone else’s hatred. I’ve also considered scheduling a visit with David McMillan some day. At 47 years old, he still has a barbaric amount of time in prison ahead of him as he pays for his role in the murder. I want to know how he found himself participating in that crime and what he thinks about it today.
While I have a tendency to focus on the sad aspects of this story (and most stories), I have also been incredibly inspired. I have learned about organizations like TAG, Alphabet Army, and PFLAG of East Texas. As someone who chose to escape, I am so proud of folks who have managed to stay and have committed to changing the culture for the better – I would love to support and visit for one of their events some day. There are also seeds of hope in my own story. It was in a journal that I purchased from Pine Cove Christian Camps of all places that I first came out to myself in middle school. It would be many years before I felt safe enough to come out to my friends and family, but that journal entry, among the prayer requests and gossip, was always important to me and a sweet, salient connection to my younger self.
Highways and Hallowed Halls 