Fact #147768
When:
Short story:
Three armed intruders break in to Johnny Cash's holiday home, Cinnamon Hill, in Montego Bay, Jamaica, Caribbean, and rob the assembled Cash family and guests of an estimated $35,000 – $50,000 in cash and jewellery, plus 175 pairs of shoes intended as donations for a local orphanage for Christmas. Two of the men are later caught at Montego Bay airport waiting for a flight to Miami, and will eventually die while in police custody. Full article:
Johnny Cash : We were sitting down to Christmas dinner, and suddenly three robbers came in ‑ one with a gun, one with a knife and one with a hatchet‑ and told us to hit the floor. We were terrorized for three hours. I really wasn't scared. Except, I was uneasy when the one with the gun held it on my son. I guess I was scared, but I couldn't let myself show it.
(Source : interview with Al Weisel, US Weekly, Feb 1997)
Reba Hancock (sister of Johnny Cash) : They pulled the rings right off our fingers. I had a necklace on and I tried to take it off, but the latch was stuck. I was going to break it but they wouldn't let me. They were very careful not to damage the jewellery. They pushed and shoved, asking all the time if we wanted to die. We were thinking we were going to die at any minute. We were told not to look at them.
(Source : Nashville Babylon by Randall Riese, published by Anaya Publishers, 1989)
Chuck Hussey (brother in law of Johnny Cash) : They held the gun to every head. They took each person that was there, one at a time, and went from room to room looking for valuables. They pushed and shoved and had the gun constantly exposed, asking all the time, ‘Do you want to die, mon? Keep your head down, mon.'
Reba Hancock : Had we resisted, I think they would have killed us all.
Johnny Cash : They searched the house and locked us down in the cellar. I took a two‑by-four after they left and broke the door down.
The police caught them. As it turns out, all three of those men are dead now. They were put in prison. I don't know how they died. It's not easy for a convict to stay alive long in Jamaica.
(Source : interview with Al Weisel, US Weekly, Feb 1997)
Johnny Cash : How do I feel about it? What’s my emotional response to the fact (or at least the distinct possibility) that the desperate junkie boys who threatened and traumatized my family and might easily have killed us all (perhaps never intending any such thing) were executed for their act or murdered, or shot down like dogs, have it how you will?
I’m out of answers. My only certainties are that I grieve for desperate young men and the societies that produce and suffer so many of them, and I felt that I knew those boys. We had a kinship, they and I: I knew how they thought, I knew how they needed. They were like me.
(Source : Johnny Cash's Autobiography)
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(Source : interview with Al Weisel, US Weekly, Feb 1997)
Reba Hancock (sister of Johnny Cash) : They pulled the rings right off our fingers. I had a necklace on and I tried to take it off, but the latch was stuck. I was going to break it but they wouldn't let me. They were very careful not to damage the jewellery. They pushed and shoved, asking all the time if we wanted to die. We were thinking we were going to die at any minute. We were told not to look at them.
(Source : Nashville Babylon by Randall Riese, published by Anaya Publishers, 1989)
Chuck Hussey (brother in law of Johnny Cash) : They held the gun to every head. They took each person that was there, one at a time, and went from room to room looking for valuables. They pushed and shoved and had the gun constantly exposed, asking all the time, ‘Do you want to die, mon? Keep your head down, mon.'
Reba Hancock : Had we resisted, I think they would have killed us all.
Johnny Cash : They searched the house and locked us down in the cellar. I took a two‑by-four after they left and broke the door down.
The police caught them. As it turns out, all three of those men are dead now. They were put in prison. I don't know how they died. It's not easy for a convict to stay alive long in Jamaica.
(Source : interview with Al Weisel, US Weekly, Feb 1997)
Johnny Cash : How do I feel about it? What’s my emotional response to the fact (or at least the distinct possibility) that the desperate junkie boys who threatened and traumatized my family and might easily have killed us all (perhaps never intending any such thing) were executed for their act or murdered, or shot down like dogs, have it how you will?
I’m out of answers. My only certainties are that I grieve for desperate young men and the societies that produce and suffer so many of them, and I felt that I knew those boys. We had a kinship, they and I: I knew how they thought, I knew how they needed. They were like me.
(Source : Johnny Cash's Autobiography)