They're baaaaaaaaaaack! (Cattle Mutilations)

From: wbarwell@starbase.neosoft.com (William Barwell)
Newsgroups: alt.slack
Date: Mon, Sep 17, 2001 9:31 PM

Unsolved Mystery Resurfaces in Montana: Who's Killing Cows
September 17, 2001
Unsolved Mystery Resurfaces in Montana: Who's Killing Cows
By JIM ROBBINS
[spacer.gif][17cow.1.jpg]
Jim Robbins/The New York Times

Mark Taliaferro at his ranch in Montana with his wife and daughter.
One of his cows recently died what he insists was ``not a natural death.''
DUPUYER, Mont. On the rolling prairie that rises up here to become the
wall known as the Rocky Mountains a few miles away, Mark Taliaferro
points toward the field where the carcass of a cow was recently found.
"It is not a natural death," said Mr. Taliaferro, a cattleman who has
been ranching in north- central Montana for more than 25 years. "When
you see it, I tell you, it makes a believer out
of you that something weird is going on."Eight cow killings have
been reported in Montana since June 12, the most recent on Aug. 31. And
they all appear similar to the ones that occurred in the 1970's.
For ranchers and law enforcement officials in this remote part of Montana,
the last few weeks have dredged up those memories. For several years the
prairie country along the east front of mountains was rocked by dozens
of cattle deaths in which the carcasses were mutilated. Some law
enforcement officials and veterinarians who investigated said they
had never seen anything like it.
"We had a bunch of them," said Pete Howard, the Choteau County justice of
the peace, who was sheriff when the first mutilations hit their peak.
"I've lived in this county all my life and worked on ranches and seen
plenty of dead animals, but never did I see an animal with its face mask
removed like that."
Brian Schweitzer, a cattle rancher near Whitefish, Mont., who was
the unsuccessful Democratic candidate for the United States Senate
last year, recently found one of his cows killed in the same
inexplicable way as the others. "The brand inspector said it was
lightning," Mr.Schweitzer said, "but there was no lightning that night.
And it verymuch looked like those incisions were done with instruments.
But Isaid fine, there's a lot of things I can't explain." Mr.
Schweitzervalued the loss of one grown steer at about $850.
Now, as then, law enforcement officials and ranchers are split overhether
the deaths merit investigation as anything more than a lightning strike
or a wolf kill.
In all the cases, part of the animal's face, called the mask, is removed,
along with reproductive organs. There is usually no blood, and predators
will often not touch the carcass.
"This publicity is awful," said Leland P. Cade, who was editor of
TheMontana Farmer Stockman, a trade magazine, in the 70's and wrote
fourarticles about the killings then. "City people don't know what's
goingon, and they envision crazy people doing weird things to animals in
the night."
Law enforcement officials in the 1970's erred in thinking the deathswere
mysterious, Mr. Cade said, although the cause was never determined.
The cattle, he said, were probably killed by predators, who have been
known to remove faces and organs. "Now we have a brand-new crop of
ignorant people who don't know what goes on on the range," he said.
But Dan Campbell, who was raised on an area ranch and is now the Pondera
County sheriff's deputy, says people who dismiss the deaths are not
looking hard enough. No vehicle tracks or footprints have been found
around the animals. Cuts made to remove the tissue are very clean. "There
are smooth edges on those cuts," Mr. Campbell said. "They are not bite
marks." Part of the problem, investigators say, is that if someone accepts
that these deaths are not run-of-the-mill, finding any way to explain them
requires a long stretch of the imagination. The mystery and savagery
of the deaths have led the more fanciful to speculate that cattle, which
can weigh nearly a ton, were killed by a band ofsatanic cultists, by
U.F.O.'s or by secret military testing.
Keith Wolverton, a retired detective with the Cascade County
sheriff's office, investigated 67 mutilation cases as the director of a
five-county task force from 1974 to 1977. The mutilations are a real
phenomenon, Mr. Wolverton said: "I don't think little green men have come
from another planet to kill cows." Neither does he think the killings back
then were the work of a cult, an angle he and other investigators pursued
for a while. "Someone always talks," he says, adding that who did it and
why is a question that still haunts him.
One organization that takes the killing seriously is the National
Institute for Discovery Science, which is financed by Robert Bigelow,
a real estate and aerospace mogul. With a team of six investigators that
includes academic researchers and former law enforcement officials, the
organization has studied cattle killings for six years.It receives six to
eight reports a year, primarily from Western states and investigates the
deaths with forensic techniques.
Colm Kelleher, a biochemist who is deputy administrator of the group,id
the only thing research showed for sure was that "someone is cutting up
the animals with sharp instruments, and chemical substances are sometimes
added." One cow found dead in Utah had a hole in its head with the
preservative BHT and formaldehyde in it.
Who might be doing it? "We don't know, and the last thing I would dois
speculate," Mr. Kelleher said. "This field is full of speculation.
(End)

Pope Charles
SubGenius Pope of Houston
Slack!

Back to document index

Original file name: They're baaaaaaaaaaack! - converted on Thursday, 20 December 2001, 03:30