Why did the FBI spend two years investigating the murder of Trent Reznor?
This story begins like many great stories do, with lights spiralling in the sky over a rural farm in the middle of America. However, the notion of extra-terrestrials is quickly dismissed, and somehow, it only gets stranger from then on. This is the tale of how the FBI ended up investigating the tragic murder of Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor—and a man who is still very much alive. They didn’t just initiate his death, which was never brief, either. They spent two whole years trying to crack the case while he was busy making records.
It all began when the flicker in the sky over Robert Reed’s rural farm in Burr Oak, Michigan, suddenly came crashing earthwards. When Reed raced over to the wreckage, he discovered several weather balloons tied to a Super 8 camera. The fast-thinking farmer thought he had cracked the case in an instant—recently a few fellow folks of the field had run into trouble with the law for allowing wild marijuana plants to encroach onto their farmland (apparently, entirely unbeknownst to them). Thus, Reed presumed that this floating Super 8 must have been some sort of grounded surveillance strategy, and he informed the police right away.
When the police arrived on the scene, they informed Reed that he was sorely mistaken. They told him that there was no way that any authority would use something so rudimentary to monitor marijuana in the current day and age. Nevertheless, the question remained: what the hell was a Super 8 doing tied to giant weather balloons? They whisked the footage away and set about seeing what secrets the camera contained.
What they discovered proved so horrifying that they promptly called for FBI involvement. This was a case only experts could handle. They pressed play on the footage and were greeted by the sight of two leather-clad criminals standing over a grossly disfigured cadaver sprawled out on the concrete floor. Strewn across the face of the victim was some unknown substance, and the two men leering over the body appeared to have a distinctive badge on their leather biker jackets. The conclusion Michigan State Police detective Paul Wood came to was a simple one: “If it was a homicide, I was thinking it was possibly a gang-type homicide.”
The year was 1989, and the FBI soon poured over the footage with their best experts. They concluded that the unknown substance on the body was evidence that it had begun decaying. However, as the footage ran on, the weather balloons propelled above the body and appeared to show a large urban concrete structure. So, how, exactly, did a decaying body come to be lying on the pavement in some unknown city? Why was such a grisly daylight crime in the heart of civility never reported?
For years, this mystery was pulled apart by the FBI. What was the insignia on the biker jackets? Was this the work of a cult they had never come across? What was the purpose of filming it? And why send the footage skywards with several weather balloons? None of these questions even came close to being answered over the course of the two-year investigation.
Meanwhile, Trent Reznor, alive and well, had started a new industrial rock revolution as Nine Inch Nails made their seismic mark on the American music scene, influencing the likes of David Bowie and changing the landscape of music. Not bad for a man who died two years ago. This reality soon came to the fore as the FBI case made its first and final breakthrough.
Truly defeated by the mysterious footage, the stricken authorities were forced to play the last card they wanted to. They had to risk perturbing the local public by releasing stills of the scarring footage and ask whether anyone recognised anything at all. The first flyer drop was at a local art college and almost instantly the case was solved.
A young art student contacted the police and informed them that the victim was, in fact, Trent Reznor, who, to his knowledge, was not dead at all. However, he wasn’t bemused by this quandary; he knew that the footage closely resembled the final sequence of the music video for their debut single ‘Down In It’. Remarkably, this MTV smash hit evaded the attention of the FBI throughout the entire investigation. They had been looking in all the wrong places, like VH1. But a simple flyer with the right audience finally closed the folder on the death of living legend Trent Reznor.
The story of Nine Inch Nails shooting ‘Down In It’
As it happens, Nine Inch Nails were a little cash-strapped when it came to their start in the music industry. Thus, they had to cut a few corners when making their first video with the production company H-Gun. The mystery substance on Trent Reznor’s face was a corn-starch imitation of blood, a crude mixture in the absence of a makeup department. As for the weather balloons, well, they couldn’t afford a crane, so the only way to get an elevated shot was to float the camera above the body. Sadly, the tether snapped, and the balloons floated off into the night sky. Resulting in a mystery some 200 miles away.
The final passage to their video was supposed to show leather-clad band members chasing Reznor down until he tumbled to his death off of the top of a concrete carpark. The grand closing shot would be the camera rising above his battered body. However, that shot floated off towards an investigation room and the band simply had to move on—one Super 8 down. Had the right windblown, the camera may very well have panned back earthwards to show what was once thought to be a crooked cadaver rising to its feet and sleeping to try and save the footage now sadly sailing away, unforgivingly into the night sky.
When Reznor became aware of the debacle, he remarked: “My initial reaction was that it was really funny that something could be that blown out of proportion, and with this, many people worked up about it. There was talk that I would have to appear and talk to prove that I was alive.” Presumably, footage of him headlining festivals wasn’t deemed strong enough for a stubborn period. He’s even implied that the shoddy footage wasn’t even all that convincing in the first place.
In the end, Reznor humorously concluded: “Somebody at the FBI had been watching too much Hitchcock or David Lynch or something,” and boy, would we dearly have loved to have seen what Lynch could’ve done with this twisted tale of rock ‘n’ roll once more proving how wildly out of touch black suits can be. If you want the case closed on a quirky music shot gone awry, just turn on MTV.
