FBI file: Animal Mutilation, Animal Mutilation Part 02

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

THE MUTILATION MYSTERY In Idaho, a man was driving his jeep at about 3:30 A.M. when, he claims, 15 masked people stood across the highway with locke ms and tried to stop his car.

were few footprints. No one was caught.

There was a particularly interesting case in Apache County, Arizona, where mutilated animals were found to have mysterious softball-sized burns. I called sheriff Art Lee and asked him about this report. "There were three of them that had the burn, on the inside of the right hindquarter, about halfway up the ham," he said. "The livestock investigator out of Phoenix wrote a letter to the local newspaper here." Lee told me, "and said that these are all predator-travaged carcasses. I answered him and I wasn't very nice about it. The ones I had personally are not predator-travaged carcasses."

In Montana, the mutilations began around June 1975, and by December, the number of carcasses found was close to 100. They were definitely human caused, according to Captain Wolverton, of Cascade County. Wolverton has studied the mutilations nationwide (as mentioned earlier, he went to Marion Federal Penitentiary to give a polygraph examination to A. Kenneth Bpnkston), and he told me about a mutilation case that occurred in early 1975, in which the animal had been mutilated with an instrument that causes a saw-toothed cut like that made by pinking shears. Wolverton also had a case involving burns. We have one lab report that came in on a very fresh cut within 23 hours of its death. We got the analysis back and it said that the edges of the lips had been serrated and burned.

The mutes began in New Mexico in August and lasted until around Thanksgiving; they started up again in early 1976. In October and November, there were mutilations in Nebraska. In Missouri, the mutes began in early October and continued in several counties into December 1975: There were about ten cases reported in Harney County, Oregon, at the end of the summer—to the region that borders Nevada in the southwestern part of the state. There were a number of mutes in Wisconsin in October 1975, one of which involved animals belonging to Richard Boom, of Eastman. "Boom thinks that the cattle...were killed with a gas grenade." The Milwaukee Journal reported on October 12th.

In Wyoming, beginning in September, there was that indious mix of helicopters, UFOs and a lot of mutated cattle; there was one incident in Weston County on October 6th, where an 850-pound Hereford cow was carved up and an area inside its left-rear bank apparently shaved clean. And then, to give the site that

proper UFO appearance, there was a bunch of "mysterious yellow circles," about two feet in diameter, that were located from ten to 300 yards from the mute site.

In Idaho that September, a forest-service employee spotted several persons in hooded black robes walking down Cove Creek in Blaine County; the next day, several dead cattle were found, but the hooded hikers—despite an intensive search—were never found. Then, in northern Idaho on October 9th, a man was driving his jeep along U.S. 95 at phone 3:30 a.m. when, he claims, 15 masked people stood across the highway with locked arms and tried to stop his car; the man got away, but the spirit of terror did not. The Teton Valley News, of Driggs, Idaho, for instance, responded by printing this warning last Halloween: "Parents, please be sure you know where your children are at night and especially Halloween night. On Halloween night, with the happenings in our own area, it would be advisable to have the younger children home before dark and the older ones home immediately after the football game scheduled on that night."

Idaho was hard-hit. The mutes were first discovered in June and the toll probably went over 100 by the time bad weather arrived in the fall. Police used the usual roadblock, radio and aircraft methods of investigation so no arrest.

As far as I have been able to determine, the only U.S. Government official to state publicly that a mutilated animal had been injected with a toxin or bacteria was Dr. Robert Hedelius, a veterinary medical officer for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who works in Utah. Dr. Hedelius is one of a group of about 150 highly trained individuals who serve as USDA foreign-animal-disease-diagnosticians-doctors who play a major part in keeping foreign-animal diseases out of the United States. Hedelius' mutilation case involved a pregnant heifer that was discovered just before dawn on September 30, 1975, two miles outside of Emery, Utah, in the middle of the state. Law enforcement officials suspected that the mutilators had been disturbed in their work and had had to split precipitously before they were through. According to a report prepared by the Emery County sheriff's office, two "professional trackers" analyzed the dry pasture grass at the site and determined that two persons had left the scene and that they had

walked along a fence for about a half mile to the road, where presumably they were picked up. Jeep pose members searched the entire area, but found no further clues.

It was strictly by chance that HeJelius happened to be in the vicinity the following afternoon. "A highway patrolman drove by and recognized my car." Hedelius told me. He went to the site where the helper lay and performed a field autopsy; he then prepared a report of his findings for the Emery County sheriff. Reading the Hedelius report, one finds that the usual things had been done to aid him were missing; the uterus had been cut two and was lying on the ground near the three-month-old fetus, which had been removed; the tip of the heller's tail also removed. Just an average mute.

What caused the actual death of the heifer? "It was a disease of the Clostridia family," Hedelius told me. "When I c. the autopsy, it was apparent that the case was extremely localized in the nests, an area about the size of a baseball."

That night, after the autopsy, Hedelius bpithion that someone had injected a trace or a disease into the heifer was broadcast on Salt Lake City 1V. Bill Hendria Channel 4. Interviewed Hedelius asked the following question: And if do you suppose this animal contains the bacteria? Hedelius answered: We Clouridia bacteria are very common we are usually localized in one part of the infected animal. However, in this case it was extremely localized. You may say it was pin-pointed, and I believe the bacteria were injected into the heifer.

In one of several subsequent conversations with Hedelius, I asked him the warnings he reportedly had received from higher officials after his TV view. "Initially," he said, "I talked reporters; but afterward, you bet!

muzzled, both by state and Fei people. I was told that I was not to any of the news media. I then him about a campaign suppla launched to discredit him. Well, a week after this [interview] happened the state veterinarian of Utah appeared on television-I saw him myself there was a real effort made to discl everything. He said it was the predators and that the mouse-insect test was negative. The mice that were related [with bacteria taken from hailer] still were well and happy. I has explained this by noting that the tridia are anaerobic bacteria and