FBI file: Animal Mutilation, Animal Mutilation Part 02

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

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation officially began its investigation of the mutilations in the summer of 1971 at the urging of Governor Richard D. Lamm; however, its report—which was released in November—showed that some investigation had been done as early as April 1975. The report was based on some 203 incidents of apparent mutilation; the conclusion was that 95 percent of the mutilations had been caused by predators.

This prompted a cross-state chorus of meers and jeers from local law-enforcement officials, who must have begun to feel that the C.B.I. was treating them like a bunch of dumduns. Moreover, of the small number of animals that the C.B.I. admitted to have been shopped up by human hand, all had first died, the report named, from "natural causes." The implication, of course, was that ranchers had shopped the animals up in order to collect insurance money for malicious-mischief damages. Indigenous ranchers noted, however, that the report was vague as to the meaning of "natural causes."

But it was nature that ultimately shot down the C.B.I.'s predator story, as reporter Dorothy Aldridge, of the Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph, has amply observed. A blizzard in November 1975 left thousands of cattle dead on the range and the coyotes of the West west on instant cattle-gorge maneuvers. But when Aldridge checked with the rendering plant at Tribune, Kansas, which processed 30,000 of the ravaged carcasses, she learned that the predators had turn into eyeballs, ears, doops, or other favorite treats of the multilators. So much for the C.B.I. report.

In the fall of 1975, investigator Girodo arranged for Dr. Susan Colter, director of the Trinidad, Colorado, Animal Clinic, to conduct a field autopsy on a mutilated beifet whose carcass had been discovered less than 12 hours after death.

"Was it a healthy hei(er?" I later asked Giredo. "Definitely," he replied. "As a matter of fact, the rancher had her fattened up and ready to butcher."

Dr. Colter removed various parts of the animal, including the heart, lungs, kidneys and liver, and sent samples to a laboratory for analysis. I called up Dr. Colter to ask her if a Clostridia had been found, and she told me that, in fact, a culture of Clostridium sordelii had been removed from the dead animal. The inner organs of the freely dead animal had already turned to smash—a characteristic of clostridial infection.

Girodo had also asked Dr. Colter to try to clear up one of the mutilations mysteries: that of seemingly impossible surgery whereby the animals' hearts had been removed through thoracic incisions too small for the bovine heart. There had been two such heart extractions on mutes found near Walsenburg, Colorado. "When Susan Coller did the autopsy in that one heifer," Girodo said, "I told her, 'Let's try and get that heart out of there.' I showed her the way it appeared to have been done on two other animals. And she said, 'There's no way you can do it.' She tried it, and she couldn't do it.'

Was it possible, I began to wpnder, that the mutilators were using razor-sharp extracting devices—similar, say, to core samplers used in geologic drilling—in order to scaff out glands or hearts or whatever else. they needed for their research? That way, assuming that it's some form of toxic research, they would have been able to stand at some distance from the animal so as also to avoid self-tap from germs and poisons.

Colorado is a key state in the nuclear defense apparatus of the United States. The state contains several military bases and missile installations, as well as the Air Force Academy, in Colorado Springs. One would think, then, that the military intelligence agencies would have gotten

on the stick and tried to solve a multi state case in which helicopter-borne aircraft were creating domestic terror

Indecol, there were alarming reports that mysterious helicopters were seen hovering above, nuclear-missile installations. Sterling Journal-Advocating reporter Bill Jackson told me of spending long nights chasing helicopters up northern Colorado, where there are many Mintleman missile allor operated by the Air Force. The area has also experienced hot and heavy waves of mutilation. We don't know if there's any connection with the mutilations," he told me in February 1976, "but there have been incidents here in the past month of an individual or individuals trying to break into two of the installations. And missiles at both sites, according to information that I've got, have nuclear warheads."

Jackson detailed one incident in northern Colorado late in the summer of 1975 similar to that which happened at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana that following November. One night, at about ten o'clock, Jackson and law enforcement personnel, including someone from the Air Force, began chasing what appeared to be three different flying objects. We chased those things until about four-thirty in the morning before they disappeared over a mistile site in