AUSTIN, Texas — It was one of the most bizarre crimes in local history.
In 1989, someone tried to kill the historic Treaty Oak, a 600-year-old tree near downtown Austin. And while the tree survived - though not as lush as it once was - it took scientists and an outpouring of love from around the world to save it.
The mighty oak tree has carried the weight of history in the are for 600 years on a plot of land on Baylor Street in busy downtown Austin.
The Treaty Oak is so named because historians say treaties between Native American tribes and the Republic of Texas were signed underneath its towering branches so long ago.
But not so long ago, the tree nearly died. Its brush with death began in the spring of 1989. That's when an Austin City Forester discovered that it was ill.
The experts ruled out oak wilt. Instead, it was something more sinister. A chemical analysis showed that a deadly herbicide had been poured around the tree. Arborists and botanists from around the country worked to save the tree, including installing a sprinkler system.
They fed it a constant solution of sugar and water and they removed the ground around it. As news of the poisoning spread, there was an outpouring of concern both from across Austin and beyond, both with the tree that was suffering and the mystery of who would try to kill it.
Television networks showed up to document the very unusual case of attempted murder.
“Who would kill a tree?," ABC news host Barbara Walters asked on a nationwide television broadcast in 1989.
The answer came a few weeks later, when police arrested Paul Stedman Cullen, who told a friend he poisoned the tree. She went to the police, who had her wear a secret recording device to capture Cullen's confession. Police then charged him with criminal mischief.
“It came out in trial that he was in love with his counselor at his methadone clinic, and he drew a magic circle at the base of the tree, and it would put in something of his spurned love or whatever," said John Giedraitis, the city’s forester at the time. “And so, as that tree would die, so it his love or her die. It was like a magic ritual or some sort of spell or something like that.”
It wasn't clear whether the ritual was to win her back or to end Cullen's obsession with his counselor. He also told his friend that he hated trees anyway because he was forced to plant so many of them when he was in prison for a previous crime.
Cullen changed his story at trial and said he didn't do it, but a jury found him guilty and sentenced him to nine years in prison, though he ended up only serving three.
And as for all those efforts and all that money to save the tree? Success, although it still carries the scars from its near-death experience.
During the time the tree was sick, Austinites brought home hundreds of seedlings from the Treaty Oak and planted them around the city. So, who knows? Some of the oak trees we see around Austin today may have had a very famous ancestor.