Ardit Dragjoshi
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Knowing it may be difficult or impossible, this assignment was to find the man dubbed Edward Scissorhands who made national news last fall for trimming trees in a Fort Worth neighborhood in the middle of the night, for months, unauthorized and unwelcomed. The broadcast news outlets did not report a name or specific location, so I wasn’t sure what I would find. After I told my friend about the assignment, she said, “Good luck with that” after she clicked ’round in Google searches.
A text to an old friend who lived in the rumored neighborhood led me to a former colleague of hers, Ben Timson, who informed me the events in question took place in his developing neighborhood in far south Fort Worth. As his and others’ fascination turned into an obsession to find this guy and his motive, Timson would become the leader of the neighborhood hunt. He wanted to put an end to this wild behavior.
After filing police reports, Timson got his wish, and the tree limb assailant would receive a ticket for criminal mischief — a Class C misdemeanor for damaging property under $100.
A paper trail. I can work with this.
The timeline and location gave me just enough information to file an open records request for the police reports, which gave me the identity, age, phone number and address of the midnight trimmer, which revealed he lived 10 minutes away from the neighborhood that fell prey to his prolific trimming.
Why would someone drive from another part of town in the middle of the night to trim, sometimes butcher, sometimes taking a tiny limb or two from young trees in the budding neighborhood of Tavolo Park, hour after hour, night after night, for months?
Tavolo Park’s first phase of development was completed about four years ago. It was at a time when tensions around the Biden-Trump election were high. Neighbors put signs in their yard sharing who they felt should lead the country. Parallel whisperings of a deadly virus sweeping across the world hushed people into their homes. An odd time for a new community to develop. In June 2022, things started to ease into a new normal just as a strange whistling could be heard in their streets. Fresh cut tree limbs collected on the ground each morning.
At first, Timson said he and a few neighbors noticed limbs down close to the road. The trees had just been planted. Maybe this mysterious visitor would cut five branches, and sometimes 40 branches, and leave the piles on the ground. This set off an alarm in residents minds as a professional would clean up after themselves. Plus, they don’t remember anyone coming by that day to trim. Was it the neighborhood association?
“I went and counted them. Some people’s trees … he would take a tiny branch. Some he took out huge branches. My tree, he snipped my tree 37 times. At the end of the day, this is an individual who has problems or concerns. He didn’t damage it — my tree is fine. But I do know some people he did do some damage,” Timson said.
This would go on for nearly five months, and the visitor would grow bolder as time passed. Evidence of his work showed up in one neighbor’s backyard. Ring cameras on all the houses depicted a middle-aged, red-headed man with a curly mullet as the culprit. It was usually between 3 to 5 a.m. with his dog, off leash.
Angry and confused residents, proud of their new homes, eventually filed police reports. “Getting this to stop is going to require someone seeing him do it live and calling the police to request patrol for ‘active vandalism.’ Because if I call 9-1-1 and say, ‘Someone trimmed my trees,’ they aren’t coming,” a resident posted on the neighborhood Facebook page.
So Timson drove around in the middle of the night once or twice a week for weeks, until one day, he found the guy. He followed him for a while, but it surprised Timson that the man didn’t flinch. He didn’t speed up his cadence, he didn’t dive into a bush, he didn’t even turn around to look over his shoulder at who was following him. Once, he said he turned around and started walking in the direction of Timson’s car. “Oh crap, what do I do now?” Timson thought, sitting in the dark with his car running and lights on, while the rest of the world slept. The trimmer had to know he was being followed, he thought. He kept walking, right past Timson’s car. He didn’t stop, wave, nothing. He looked at the ground and sauntered past. It was as if he belonged there.
On Oct. 11, 2022, CBS 11 News reported on the oddity but still didn’t know who this man was. Nobody had caught him just yet, except for the surveillance footage on people’s homes. Broadcasts of an Edward Scissorhands reached national outlets before long.
The next night, Timson saw the dog’s bright-green reflective collar. He heard him whistling to his dog. He called the police.
“I knew that was him,” Timson said.
When the police arrived, they told Timson to stay back. They told the visiting trimmer to stop but didn’t write a citation that first time. Afterall, the crime was unprecedented and seemingly innocuous. Plus, nobody knew then the extent of the damage this man was imposing by improperly trimming such young trees. When the police left, Timson followed him as he took his time walking up and down four more streets. He got in his truck, turned his lights on, driving through the neighborhood at a reasonable pace with Timson behind him the whole time. Then the visiting trimmer turned his lights off and peeled out of the neighborhood fast. “I lost him,” Timson said.
Facebook Post: “LIVE ACTION UPDATE — I GOT HIM! On Prairieside now! Officers on scene. Edit - Update #2: The police talked to him for about 10 minutes and let him go when I said I didn’t witness him cutting any trees tonight. After they cut him loose, I kept following him to see where he would go, and after he walked Plumgrove and Pondview, he eventually went toward the amenity center. Once there, he got in what appeared to be a gray Dodge Ram or Chevy Silverado crew cab truck. I asked the police if he was mentally handicapped, and although they would not confirm or deny, the officer did say that something seemed a bit off,” Ben Timson posted in the Facebook group, Oct. 12, 2022, complete with a video of the police talking to the tree trimmer. The images are blurry and far away. (This has been edited for brevity.)
A few nights later, the tree trimmer was back out, and so was Timson.
“I was concerned, I thought whatever individual would do such a thing, there was concern he would be mentally unstable,” Timson said. “It is 4 in the morning, and this person has tree-trimming shears. The police told me to stay away from him, so I never talked to him.”
The second time the police came out, the man was ticketed. The date of the citation was Oct. 14. That was the last time there was evidence of his visiting Tavolo Park.
Fascination Turned Obsession
A fascination around this guy grew strong roots into the minds of Tavolo Park residents. Who was this man? Did he live in the neighborhood? Why was he doing this?
The tree criminal would park his gray truck in the neighborhood community center lot central to, well, everything. When the midnight visitor would whistle at the dog, neighbors said they could often hear the sound through their windows in the quiet of the night. When the police ran his plates late one night, they informed Timson that an address in a different part of town pulled up. It was getting more perplexing. Why would he drive all the way to this neighborhood to do this, night after night?
And there was no pattern — nothing to show that showed this was a thoughtful and skilled trimming. Some nights, he would trim dozens of trees. Timson took me out for a drive one day to show me just how many trees he would trim over time. He must have trimmed nearly a hundred newly planted trees just on the perimeter of the neighborhood all along Bryant Irvin Road and Harris Parkway.
“So, he is trimming young trees? Oh, God, that is really detrimental to the health of the trees,” Justin Hurst, a plant health care technician and arborist, yelled during my phone interview. “I would be pissed.”
Hurst, a self-proclaimed, long-hair, tree-hugger, said trees need to have been in the ground at least five years before they are pruned. If pruned improperly that young, the structural damage of the tree is forever lost, which will not become a problem now, but later, like 30 years later, Hurst said. If it were Hurst, he would have those trees removed to avoid problems later on.
A young tree with a trunk the size of a human wrist can start at $700, meaning if the neighbors knew the foreboding damage and actual value, they would know this seemingly innocuous crime would cost them thousands of dollars. I am not sure if the police department consulted an expert arborist since they only ticketed the man for damaging property with a value under $100, but after countless attempts to talk to the officers on this case, I never heard back from them.
Hurst said it would seem that not only did the tree trimmer not know what he was doing, it was in fact unkind. Because if you were doing it for the love of the trees, then you would take the time to learn how to prune them. You would start by practicing in your own trees, and as I found out later, the tree trimmer did not appear to give his yard any attention. Tree lovers tend to be sensitive people, and they would avoid harming the tree at all costs. So why would this man drive to another neighborhood to trim dozens of strangers’ trees in the middle of the night, possibly damaging all of them?
“No, it sounds malicious to me,” Hurst said, impassioned. “I would be absolutely upside-down furious if someone came onto my property. I would lose my mind.”
Neighbors posted videos of the culprit obtained from their security systems to the neighborhood Facebook group. In just about every video, he wore the same thing — a black tank top and black shorts with a bright reflective stripe. While his work was often reported to the Facebook page as a hack job, the video surveillance footage showed the tree trimmer would take his time, stand back, and admire his work. Conversations and debates about the motive lit up the page each time he struck. Was he an innocent savant, or was he committing vandalism?
The Facebook page became a forum where everyone worked out the kinks this enigma caused in the folds of their mind. Some shared he was a mentally unstable individual who thinks he is doing a good thing and somehow beautifying the neighborhood. This camp urged others to leave him alone. Then some thought he was an asshole. They were either on his side or not. It was either criminal vandalism or it was a mental health issue.
“This is not right. We are not happy at all with how our tree looks now. Probably an upset neighbor who is tired of dodging branches when they walk,” another neighbor commented on Facebook.
At first it looked like the sapling assailant was exclusively trimming the trees along the street, but neighbors grew concerned when he started to get up into their yards close to their windows and doors. And some were frustrated that he was taking off large healthy branches.
“I checked our tree on Winterbloom,” a member of the group posted. “There were over nine branches cut, and there was no rhyme or reason to the trimming. I pruned the tree in winter, and there were no branches blocking the street or sidewalk. Seems like a bizarre form of vandalism.”
While the group member said it seemed benign and comical due to the absurdity of the tree mischief, she was frustrated at what it could cost them.
“And it seems like he’s not trimming tiny branches anymore, but big healthy limbs. I know my next-door neighbor had a huge section cut out of hers, and I’m righteously mad for her,” she wrote.
“This is vandalism. It’s getting bad,” said another.
One woman said she stayed up all night watching her cameras for him. Nothing.
Whether they agreed or not, this became something that bonded the new community that developed during a very divisive and isolating time in our country’s history, Tavolo resident Jerry Balkenbush said.
His wife, Emily, joked that she felt left out when the intruder didn’t prune her trees. But one night in the wee hours, Jerry heard whistling through his windows. The next morning, the two rejoiced in the drama when they saw a few limbs on the ground. “Yep! We finally got hit last night. This is completely out of hand,” Emily shared in the comment section of another post.
“Looks like the tree trimmer finally hit Plumgrove last night. We were feeling a little ignored,” a Tavolo resident posted Oct. 8, 2022.
Some even dressed up as the tree vandal for Halloween last October.
Sept. 26, “I’m just so invested in the story. Because now that we know he stopped trimming once being seen, he knows that it’s ‘wrong.’ O the drama. I have to know the ending,” another resident posted.
Ardit Dragjoshi
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Odd Crimes
While this tree-trimming vandalism is perplexing, odd crimes are nothing new. They seem to be rooted in the complicated and often untreated hidden depths of a neurodiverse human mind. Or addiction, which also finds its source in the neglected human psyche.
One man named Ronald A. Dotson, also 39 at the time of his last arrest, (that was the age of the tree trimmer last year when ticketed) was arrested nearly 10 times for stealing mannequins, going to jail and doing his time, only to smash the window of a cleaning supply store to snatch up a mannequin dressed as a maid within one week of tasting freedom, landing himself back in jail a week later. He was given up to 30 years in prison. According to an article by NBC with the headline “Man with Mannequin Fetish Arrested Again,” the judge ruled that he wasn’t in fact harming anyone and did a psychiatric evaluation to see what other options were for punishment. The resulting punishment was to be rehabilitated with cognitive behavioral therapy, a rare yet more compassionate approach to justice.
[Odd crimes] seem to be rooted in the complicated and often untreated hidden depths of a neurodiverse human mind.
Probably the most famous odd crime was by a man on the autism spectrum who was arrested 29 times in 30 years for taking the wheel of public trains by impersonating subway workers and stealing buses to soothe his obsession with the New York City transit system. As the story was reported dozens of times, Darius McCollum of New York City was stabbed by a schoolmate when he was 12 years old, so he found comfort in the New York City transit system, making friends with transit employees. The first arrest was at 15 for convincing a worker to let him drive the subway. He would spend 16 years behind bars and return to prison again and again for the same crimes, which he said were rooted in this 12-year-old’s trauma where he found an obsessive comfort in the thing that offered him refuge after being stabbed. People with autism spectrum disorder crave the consistency found in schedules, and trains run on a tight schedule.
“I just feel I need to be there even if it’s for a little while,” McCollum said of the subways in a Wall Street Journal article. “And then the more I’m there, the more I want to get involved.”
In 2013, he admitted while on trial to stealing 12 buses in the six previous months. He had commandeered over 100 buses in his life. His attorneys were at one time working on a parole agreement where he was released with the promise to get cognitive behavioral therapy.
McCollum said he was providing a service and doing good deeds as a volunteer, he said in an award-winning documentary called “Off the Rails” that chronicles McCollum and his journey in and out of jail and on public transit. He shared how the buses were often sitting in a lot, unguarded with their doors open, waiting for the next person to start their shift. It was too easy for him.
“His lawyer, Sally Butler, said Mr. McCollum’s well-chronicled acts were a result of uncontrollable impulses attributed to what is commonly referred to as Asperger’s syndrome, which mental health authorities now call autism spectrum disorder,” the WSJ reported.
The article said that if his attorney were to win the case by pleading not guilty because of the insanity defense, he would need to remain in a mental health facility until he was “cured.” But since you can’t cure autism, he would remain locked in that facility the rest of his life. Once people are in there, they never leave, Butler said in the documentary. In an interview in jail, McCollum told the WSJ that he loved everything about the subway — the atmosphere, the lights, the signals, that it is always moving 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
McCollum has spent most of his life behind bars. This case has always “presented vexing questions for defense lawyers and judges about proper punishments for someone whose crimes have been mostly harmless and motivated by his desire to be a part of what he calls ‘the best’ public transportation system in the world,” the article reports. He never received therapy while in jail and had been experiencing that revolving door for his entire life. “There is a possibility I can definitely die in jail,” he said in the documentary.
“The government has spent $60,000 a year for every year McCollum has spent in prison. If they just took a fraction of that and set it aside for therapy for him, that would have perhaps broken the cycle,” one source reported in the documentary.
For McCollum, his obsession brought him comfort just as a drink brings an alcoholic comfort. For those who are familiar with addiction, those drinks are not a choice. And for those with autism, it’s like scratching the worst itch you could ever imagine. Repetition is key to the medicine of their obsession.
A Quest to Find Him, One Year Later
One morning before I picked up my editor-bodyguard to go to the midnight tree trimmer’s house, I scrolled through the police reports one more time. Midway through several pages of a citation, I saw his age — 39 — about my age. A few months before I found him on social media. We had friends in common. He studied marketing at the University of Texas. He’s much younger and more fit than he looked in the Ring videos.
We were nervous. The drive there was about 20 minutes to far south Fort Worth. We spent the time plotting and planning. What do we say? Surely, he’s not home. We pulled up about 2:35 on a broiling hot Thursday afternoon in August, a year to the month after he was at the height of his tree-trimming heyday. Walking up to the house, the grass was overgrown. I imagine in this heat and drought it would have taken months of no mowing for it to be that overgrown. One middle-aged lone tree stood in his yard. The limbs were unruly and untrimmed. It, too, had been neglected.
She had no idea what we were talking about. Why would she? It’s not something anyone would brag about to parents or guardians.
The shutters were closed, but a gray truck was parked in the driveway. “Shit, he’s here. What do we say?” I was counting on his being at work. In my mind he had had some stint where he lost his marbles or got hooked on something that made him feel like a tree-trimming hero, then stopped, recovered, is possibly embarrassed but put that behind him and went back to a 9-to-5 job. Surely, he wouldn’t be home, I thought. But he was. An off-putting gold metal sign tucked behind a cheerful wreath made of sunflowers read, “No soliciting.”
“Does this count as soliciting?” I asked my editor, as if knocking would give whoever was on the other side of that door license to shoot me. My editor and I rehearsed our bit, swallowed our fear, and walked up to the door. We rang the Ring doorbell.
“May I help you?” an older woman’s voice said through the speaker.
Brian told her we were with Fort Worth Magazine, writing a story and looking for (person who will remain unnamed).
“May I help you?” she repeated herself. Then again, “May I help you?”
We realized she couldn’t hear him. He turned around and looked at me, “What do we do now?” We stood sweating not only because of the insulting heat, but because we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.
A shuffling on the other side of the door revealed life on the other side. A dog barked. A woman in her late 60s/early 70s answered the door. “May I help you?”
We repeated our rehearsed request. One of the dogs peered around the door.
“Yes, he’s here, but he’s asleep,” she said. Her eyes were small and glassy. The smell of cigarette smoke lofted from inside. She was starting to look like a concerned mother. She wanted to know what we wanted with him. We said we wanted to talk to him about his tree trimming in Tavolo Park.
“You’ve got the wrong man,” she said, growing more confused, possibly annoyed.
“His name appeared on a citation for trimming trees without consent in the Tavolo Park neighborhood,” my editor divulged to his mother.
We then realized she had no idea what we were talking about. Why would she? It’s not something anyone would brag about to parents or guardians. Had Brian and I inadvertently tattled on this grown man? I felt bad. It was time to go.
When we left, we decided to travel to the crime scene. It was about 10 minutes. Not a hop, skip, and a jump from where he lived.
His profile picture on Facebook is from 2017. He’s at a bar with friends looking fit and happy with a Modelo in hand. A few posts from 2018 show some University of Texas Longhorn football articles by ESPN. But since then, nothing. Before that, he had been posting consistently.
He graduated from Arlington Heights in 2002. A preppy red-haired man with short hair who classmates describe as a “super nice guy in high school … I don’t think I’ve seen him since college days.” And he didn’t make it to his 20-year reunion last year.
In the videos, his hair is cut into a mullet. He’s balding on top. The police reports read that his hair is red, he’s 5 feet, 10 inches tall and 175 pounds. He looks less fit and heavier in the surveillance camera footage, and not preppy at all. I almost couldn’t reconcile that these two men are one and the same.
A Hack Job
Leaving my sister’s house one day, I noticed big limbs neatly cut by a chainsaw in organized piles across the street of a public park. They had been left there. My sister said she doesn’t remember seeing any crew out there cutting them. My mind went wild. Driving a block away, I saw a city employee eating his lunch in a work truck. “Sir, did you happen to trim those trees in that park?” Yes, he had trimmed them earlier that week. I had grown obsessed with solving this problem. As a tree-obsessed person myself with countless books on my bookshelf like Finding the Mother Tree by Susan Simard and The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, I wanted to understand this. I wanted a motive. To be able to offer insight into the nature of obsession, which is defined as an unbidden, intrusive thought, image, or urge that intrudes into consciousness, attempts to dispel it are difficult and typically lead to anxiety, according to the Johns Hopkins psychiatry guide.
The midnight trimmer never returned my texts and phone calls, and he never came to the door that day. I told him in a text that I would not reveal his identity to protect his privacy, but that I just wanted people to understand him better. That is always my intention as a narrative writer of people. And as journalists, we are asked to consider the privacy of lesser-known citizens. What did this man have against the trees of Tavolo Park? What assistance did he think he was offering to trees that didn’t need trimming? Did he understand the damage he was doing? What happened to this man? What is he going through?
