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The Swan Ball–      A Nashville Story

Centennial Park

Approximately one week prior to strangling to death Ronald Bassett, Henry

Eugene Hodges told his 15 year old girlfriend that he would murder the next

gay man who propositioned him. Hodges was 24 at the time and it was May

of 1990 in Nashville, just a few weeks after the stunning defeat of long time Sheriff

Fate Thomas led partly by the turnout at the polling booths at Centennial Park.

Hodges and his underage girlfriend, Trina Brown, had hatched a scheme to

rob and kill during that balmy May in Nashville in order to get money to move

to Florida. After Rondald Bassett approached Hodges in Centennial park on

the evening of May 15th they left the park in Bassett’s vehicle. When Bassett

returned to the park in the victim’s vehicle he told Trina to lay down on the

floorboard so as not to be seen as they drove back to Bassett’s house.

Dr. Charles Harlan, the chief medical examiner for Metropolitan Nashville and

Davidson County, would later testify that it took approximately 5 minutes for

Bassett to die as a result of being strangled by Hodges. Trina Brown stated

Ronald Bassett begged for his life before being murdered for the pin number

on the ATM card found in his house. The $400 withdrawn by the two the 

same day was the maximum allowed by the bank for any 24 hour period.

After using Bassett’s automatic teller card the pair returned to the house of the defendant’s brother and went to bed. 

In an interview with the police later, Trina remarked what a beautiful day it had been the next day when she and Hodges, having learned that the victim’s body had been discovered, abandoned the victim’s car in rural Rutherford County and drove to Georgia in their own car. They were eventually arrested in North Carolina. Items of the victim’s personal property were found in their possession at this time.

The local news reported little of the killing the next day. It seemed one of those senseless crimes which many in the city tut-tutted was drug related, especially as more became known about the victim’s “lifestyle”. An out and proud gay man Ronald Bassett had been, according to all whom were interviewed, a kind man and generous to a fault. Nothing was yet known by the media or law enforcement about his killer 

On Broadway

The Lower Broadway area of Nashville was a very different place in 1990

than can be found by visiting tourists and brides riding in party buses in 2021.

Locals liken the “Lower Broad” of the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s to the pre-Disney

Times Square in NYC. With adult bookstores, strip clubs, and sidewalks

haunted by the hungry and glassy eyed searchers of things lost and found, by

all accounts Eugene Hodges found himself welcome there.

“He liked to get drunk and high…… he had to be high to be gay” as reported

by a self described lover at the time. It was understood by most that in the

months and years prior to Barrett’s murder Hodges had been seeking a

relationship with a gay man who would support him.

The Union Mission could be found at that time no more than a few blocks from

Lower Broad and had for many years seen and housed, however temporarily,

thousands of people like Hodges. The broken, the addicted, and the souls

seeking solace in the arms of the soulless, all found each other on the

sidewalks squaring the circle of Nashville’s most crime ridden four blocks.

Locals largely avoided the “Lower Broad” area but Henry Hodges managed to

make quite an impression on its inhabitants. With piercing blue eyes the man

described years later by a psychiatrist hired by his defense counsel as “anti-

social” and with the “reactions of a seven or eight-year-old child” found

admirers and rivals alike struck by both his appearance and erratic behavior.

When he met Trina Brown though, he swore his days as a gay hustler were

over. Hodges would later state that he would “jump off a building” for the petite

underage Brown. And it was while with her in his brother’s home in Smyrna

Tennessee that Hodges planned a new life for the two, leaving behind the

people who haunted the streets of Broadway, along his shame at having

engaged in activity he loathed, and his fear that his family would find him out.

The local media coverage of Ronald Bassett’s murder was brief and to the

point as it had been for another of Hodge’s gay male victims. Because this

was May after all and the entire town was talking about the event of the

season for Nashville’s glamorous elitehttps://www.swanball.com/gallery

Held every year since it’s origination in 1963 to benefit The Cheekwood

Botanical Gardens and Estate, the 1990 ball was sure to witness a grand

display of the finest fashion and the most warm and inviting conversation

every murmured over a champagne glass. After all in previous years the

Swan Ball had received national coverage from no less than the New York

Times for its glittering and sumptuously appointed splendor.

Invitations to the Swan Ball were hard to get. In fact unless the committee

invites you personally, and after all they know everyone in Nashville worth

inviting, you are not welcome. The main ball is for those 39 and up and no

one under 26 is admitted period. The rooms reserved for the event are divided

by age group as they always had been and, beyond that, the secrecy that

surrounds the planning of the event would rival that of The Vatican Library.

There was not talk of murder as powered cheeks brushed each other at the

pre-dinner cocktail party. Lower Broad and it’s denizens might just have well

existed only in the imagination of a few or in the crowded and desperate

corners of another continent. This night would be, as it had been for decades

now, be an event perfectly appointed for the media, such as was allowed by

The Committee, as necks craned and backs strained to be caught in just the

right photo with just the right person in local coverage tomorrow.

The Nashville media covered this year’s Swan Ball breathlessly but with few

quotes of those present. Photographs of the 1990 Swan Ball, the lush

gardens and the perfectly appointed tables are plentiful. But not much would

be spoken by or of the beautiful people present. This was Nashville after all

and there simply are things that are not discussed by the media of its most

influential citizens.

Interviews of the attendees were not granted to the members of the press

attending The Swan Ball. The same would not be true of Hodges.

After all, the public had a right to know.

The Debris and Dust

In 1997 the Tennessee Supreme Court denied Henry Hodges’ motion for

appeal in his conviction in the death of Ronald Bassett in part on the basis of

Tennessee law in capital murder where, the court found “The murder was

especially heinous, atrocious or cruel in that it involved torture or serious

physical abuse beyond that necessary to produce death”. Hodges had

confessed to the murder not long after his arrest, was found guilty and

sentenced to death. His appeal of the verdict and sentence were soundly

rejected by the court.

In the weeks and months following his arrest and conviction in the death of

Barrett, Hodges gave a number of interviews to the press. Describing himself

as a “serial killer..” in one interview to a local T.V. station, he talked at length of

his disgust of homosexual behavior and explained to a local reporter that

strangling someone is not “..like it is in the movies” as it took much longer and

the eyes of the victims tended to “bug out”. In his first interviews he showed no

remorse for the victims, but explained he felt bad for their families as they “…

had not asked for their kids to be gay”.

As of this writing, Hodges remains on death row.

The 2020 and 2021 Swan Balls were cancelled due to concerns over Covid.