FBI file: Animal Mutilation, Animal Mutilation Part 02

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

Makeig at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram had also been receiving letters from two of the informants—convicted armed robbers in the Marion federal prison—and was able to conclude that the federal investigators had become convinced that the informants were putting out a lot of bogus information in an attempt to get moved to prisons from which it would be easier for them to escape. This view was strengthened by the fact that all three informants had indeed made escape attempts.

What are we left with? In the hundreds of cases of cattle mutilations, no one has ever been seen at or near the scene of the crime. No trace of the perpetrators—footprints, car tracks or even evidence of the use of helicopters—has ever been detected. Many ranchers believe that helicopters have been used, partly because a large number of sightings of unidentified helicopters have been reported, partly because it seems this is the only form of transport allowing easy access to remote rangeland. Some investigators believe that such furtive use of helicopters would explain the large number of U.F.O. sightings in the affected states.

Thus ended federal involvement in the investigation of cattle mutilations and thus also ended the last convincing series of leads anyone has yet come up with.

Cynics say that small predators are responsible for many of the alleged mutilations. This may sometimes be the case, but Carl White side, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation officer, told me that out of all the dead animals sent to the veterinary school at Colorado State University six were fresh enough to be amenable to autopsy. One had been the victim of a predator, five had definitely been mutilated by humans. In all cases, he added, the animals had died of natural causes and the mutilations had occurred post-mortem, which he said produced curious questions: "Are the cattle being killed and mutilated by the same people, or do the mutilators come upon them and do the cutting?"

Out of all the investigations only one clue has emerged. In the late summer a Colorado rancher found a blue plastic valise on his land. In it were a cow's tongue, an ear and a scalpel.

The day I spoke with Whiteside he had just returned from a meeting of three hundred ranchers in Kiowa. Elbert County. Elbert County suffered sixty-three cases of mutilation over the summer. Whiteside said the ranchers "were literally up in

arms. . . The thing that' and frightening to them is body can get onto their re actually cut up an animal no trace. What we're afraid we are going to have a ho our hands. A person runs o wanders onto a ranch and thing you know these people spooked become involved i der."

So be careful about road st time you drive around the states. Ed Sanders, who is a an, told me that one of the i driving around mutilation was seeing trucks trundling to orthodox slaughter. You steak for a lifetime and still tated over the fate of one whose organs have been slice unknown cow molesters. It's ironic tension between homi tistics versus humdrum deat roads. As I said at the star question of viewpoint. Crime what you care to see.

And how to solve the case jolly A.T.F. official told me answer is "to get two guys dr as a bull with specially large stand them on the range and It could work, I suppose, but see that the investigators are desperate.