image

When your entire life centers around the maple syrup industry, things are bound to get sticky. What drove Clifford Blossom to kill his only son and heir to the family business? The best explanation is pride. You see, as a Blossom, you are meant to take pride in your family name. From an early age all Blossoms are taught that business comes first and everything else is second. For Jason to have spit in the face of the family name by attempting to run away was completely unforgivable. Generations of the Blossom family had worked their entire lives to build the empire that they now had. Not only did Jason not want to accept the responsibility of taking over the family business, but he wanted to escape town with a girl who was a member of a rival family. The Blossoms had worked for years to separate themselves from the Coopers. Now here was Jason, joining family blood!

More than that, Jason had discovered the truth behind Blossom Maple Farms. The Blossom empire was not built on a sugary breakfast condiment. Oh no, the sticky truth is that the Blossoms’ maple syrup business was simply a front for transporting heroin from Canada. Although Clifford and Penelope attempted to keep this a secret from their children, regaling them with sensational stories of the Sugarman to scare them away from the truth, Jason eventually learned about his father’s drug ring and threatened to expose the family secret to the public. For Clifford Blossom, with so much at stake, Jason was better off dead.

After Jason’s death, Clifford worked hard to cover his tracks. He had FP Jones and the Serpents put Jason’s body into a freezer and keep him at the Whyte Wyrm until the police had done a thorough search of Sweetwater River. He even went so far as to kill Mustang, the Serpent who abducted Jason, and stage it to look like an accidental overdose. Needles were not the only thing that Clifford staged. He also put a bag full of cash from Hiram Lodge in Mustang’s hotel room so that suspicion would be cast on Hiram.

Eventually, Clifford could no longer carry the guilt of having killed Jason. Either that or he knew that people in town were onto him and he was unable to face the embarrassment. When Sheriff Keller led his officers up to the Thornhill mansion for Clifford’s arrest, they found him hanging by the neck over barrels of his precious maple syrup.

For Clifford, death felt more comfortable than living to see his family name go up in flames. In this case, quite literally. Just a few days after Clifford’s suicide, Cheryl Blossom burned Thornhill to a crisp. It was the only way she knew how to begin to cleanse the sins of her family’s past.

Fire can destroy, but memories are forever. While the clouds of smoke from Thornhill billowed over the tall trees of Fox Forest, darker powers were at play throughout town. Jason’s murderer may have been found, but Clifford Blossom was nothing compared to the upcoming wrath that the town was about to face.