Adrian Mellon and Don Hagarty

Adrian Mellon and Don Hagarty were a gay couple whose relationship, cut short by Mellon's brutal murder during Derry's Canal Days Festival in July 1984, exposed the town's deep-seated homophobia and served as the catalyst for the return of the malevolent entity known as It. Mellon, a freelance writer who had come to Derry on assignment, fell in love with Hagarty, a draftsman, and decided to stay; his murder at the hands of three teenagers, followed by the mysterious appearance of a clown under the bridge, directly triggered Mike Hanlon's investigation into the town's cycle of violence and his decision to call the Losers' Club back to Derry.

Meeting and Relationship

Don Hagarty had been a regular at the Falcon, a gay bar in Derry, for two or three years before he first showed up with Adrian Mellon in March of 1984. By late April, it had become obvious even to the bar's owner, Elmer Curtie, that Hagarty and Mellon had a steady thing going. Hagarty worked as a draftsman for an engineering firm in Bangor, while Mellon was a freelance writer who published anywhere he could—airline magazines, confession magazines, regional magazines, Sunday supplements, and sex-letter magazines. He had been working on a novel since his third year of college, twelve years prior. Mellon had come to Derry to write a piece about the Canal for New England Byways, a glossy bi-monthly. He squeezed the magazine for three weeks' worth of expense money, including a nice room at the Derry Town House, and gathered all the material he needed for the piece in about five days, using the remaining two weeks to gather material for four other regional pieces. During that three-week period, he met Don Hagarty, and instead of going back to Portland when his three weeks on the cuff were over, he found himself a small apartment on Kossuth Lane. He lived there for only six weeks before moving in with Hagarty.

Life in Derry and Hagarty's Fears

That summer, Hagarty told the police, was the happiest summer of his life. The only shadow was Mellon's extravagantly partisan reaction to Derry. Mellon bought a tee-shirt that said "MAINE AIN'T BAD BUT DERRY'S GREAT!" and a Derry Tigers high-school jacket. He also won a paper top-hat with a flower and a band that said "IDERRY!" at the Pitch Til U Win stall on the Bassey Park fairgrounds, a hat he was proud of and which would later get him killed. Mellon claimed to find the atmosphere vital and creatively invigorating, and he took his languishing novel out of the trunk for the first time in nearly a year, expecting to finish it by his birthday in October. Hagarty, however, was planning to leave Derry. He had been there for three years, mostly because of a long-term lease on an apartment with a fantastic river-view, but the lease was almost up. He told Mellon that Derry scared him; it always felt like "thirteen o'clock." Hagarty took Mellon to the Kissing Bridge in Bassey Park to show him the graffiti, which included messages like "SHOW ME YOUR COCK QUEER AND I'LL CUT IT OFF YOU" and "STICK NAILS IN EYES OF ALL FAGOTS (FOR GOD)!" Hagarty argued that too many places and too many people in Derry seemed to have "the deep-down crazies." Mellon, however, asked Hagarty to wait until he finished his novel in October, promising, "The air's better here." Hagarty later bitterly remarked, "He didn't know it was the water he was going to have to watch out for."

The Murder

On the last night of the Canal Days Festival, July 21st, 1984, Mellon and Hagarty left the Falcon after two beers and walked up past the bus station, linking hands. They were confronted by three teenagers: John "Webby" Garton, Steven Dubay, and Christopher Unwin. Garton, whose "civic pride" had been wounded by seeing a "faggot" wearing a hat that said "IDERRY," demanded the hat. Mellon handed it over, but Garton cut it into two pieces with a switchknife and stomped on them. When Mellon asked to be left alone, Garton punched him in the face, driving him back against the pedestrian railing of the Main Street Bridge. The three teenagers beat Mellon savagely, with Garton wearing heavy rings that tore Mellon's upper lip open and shattered three of his upper teeth. They then threw him over the bridge into the Canal. Hagarty, who had been kicked and beaten, saw a clown under the bridge—a figure that looked like a cross between Ronald McDonald and Bozo, with a baggy suit, orange pompom buttons, and weird shiny silver eyes. The clown offered Hagarty a balloon, saying, "They float. Down here we all float; pretty soon your friend will float, too." Hagarty saw thousands of balloons floating against the underside of the bridge, each printed with "IDERRY!" The clown then dragged Mellon away, and Hagarty heard ribs splinter. When asked by the police who the clown was, Hagarty replied, "It was Derry. It was this town."

Aftermath and Significance

John Webber Garton was convicted of first-degree manslaughter and sentenced to ten to twenty years in Thomaston State Prison. Steven Bishoff Dubay was convicted of first-degree manslaughter and sentenced to fifteen years in Shawshank State Prison. Christopher Philip Unwin was tried separately as a juvenile and convicted of second-degree manslaughter, receiving a suspended sentence of six months. At the time of the writing, all three sentences were under appeal, and Garton and Dubay could be seen girl-watching or playing Penny Pitch in Bassey Park. Don Hagarty left town. At the major trial, no one mentioned a clown. The murder of Adrian Mellon, and the testimony of both Hagarty and Unwin about a clown under the bridge, was the event that convinced Mike Hanlon that the entity known as It had returned to Derry. Hanlon, who had been researching the town's history and its cycle of violence, saw the similarities between Mellon's death and the murder of George Denbrough in 1957. This realization prompted him to make the phone calls that brought the Losers' Club back to Derry to fulfill their childhood promise.