Documents / FOIA release
This FBI file section compiles New Mexico State Police reports by Officer Gabe Valdez on 1978 cattle mutilations at Manuel Gomez's ranch near Dulce, a Los Alamos laboratory letter calling tissue findings inconclusive, and a December 1978 letter from Senator Harrison Schmitt asking the Justice Department to reopen an investigation. It also includes a Justice Department request that the FBI investigate 15 mutilations on Indian lands, and a report on an April 1979 Albuquerque conference that recommended central coordination of mutilation data.
“cattle mutilation”18 pages
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the type of tranquilizer and blood anti-coagulant that have been utilized. R. E. THOMPSON, United States Attorney, advised that he had received an urgent call from the head of the Criminal Division, Department of Justice, advising him that he would be contacted by Senator HARRISON SCHMITT of New Mexico, who had been in contact with Attorney General GRIFFIN BELL in an effort to obtain Federal assistance in seeking to solve these cattle mutilations. Bureau telephone call of 2/13/79 advised that a letter was forthcoming from the Department to the Bureau requesting our assistance in the investigation based on the fact that 15 of these animals had been mutilated on Indian reservation land. Officer VALDEZ stated that Colorado probably has the most mutilations occurring within their State and that over the past four years approximately 30 have occurred in New Mexico. He stated of these 30, 15 have occurred on Indian Reservations but he did know that many mutilations have gone unreported which have occurred on the Indian reservations because the Indians, particularly in the Pueblos, are extremely superstitious and will not even allow officers in to investigate in some instances. Officer VALDEZ stated since the outset of these mutilations there have been an estimated 8,000 animals mutilated which would place the loss at approximately $1,000,000. On 2/15/79 Senator HARRISON SCHMITT, USA R. E. THOMPSON, SA SAMUEL W. JONES and myself met to discuss this matter. It was greed that a conference should be held in April of this year in Albuquerque involving New Mexico and the surrounding States who have suffered cattle mutilation cases in an effort to fully discuss this matter to determine what has been developed to date and to recommend further steps to be taken to solve this ongoing problem. The role of the FBI was discussed but was not established since it was not resolved whether the FBI would act in a coordinating capacity, an investigating capacity or both. It was decided however, that it would be most beneficial if all this available information could be placed in a computer bank so that appropriate printouts could be made and an analysis made in an effort to determine a trend or pattern of these mutilations. It is obvious if mutilations are to be solved there is a need for a coordinated effort so that all material available can be gathered and analyzed and further efforts synchronized. Whether the FBI should assume this role is a matter to be
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FOIA release, from the fbi-vault collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 27 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.