On May 6, 1981, the Boston police, responding to persistent complaints, warned parents and school officials that men in clown suits were harassing elementary schoolchildren. One of the men was seen wearing a clown suit just from the waist up; from the waist down he was naked. According to reports, the clown had driven a black van near the recreational horseshoe site of Franklin Park in the Roxbury area of Boston. He also appeared in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston near the Mary F. Curley School.
A day earlier, in the adjoining city of Brookline, two clown men reportedly tried to lure children into their van with offers of candy. The Brookline police had a good description of the van: older model, black, with ladders on the side, a broken front headlight, and no hubcaps. After the clown men and van had been seen near the Lawrence Elementary School on Longwood Avenue in Brookline, the police told school administrators to be “extra cautious.”
By May, 8 reports of clown men in vans harassing children had come in from East Boston, Charlestown, Cambridge, Randolph, and other cities near Boston. Police were stopping vehicles with clowns delivering birthday greetings and “clown-a-grams,” but no child molesters were arrested.