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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## CATTLE MUTILATIONS During the afternoon of April 20, 1979, law enforcement officers met with U.S. Attorney R.E. THOMPSON for a special meeting. At this conference were representatives from the FBI and numerous state law enforcement officers from New Mexico. Also in attendance were investigators from Nebraska, Colorado, Montana, and Arkansas. During the conference emphasis was placed on an attempt to determine the most appropriate way of approaching the solution of the cattle mutilations. The officials decided that direction for the investigation should be the responsibility of one of three agencies -- the FBI, the District Attorney's Office in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which has applied for the LEAA Grant, or the New Mexico State Police. U.S. Attorney THOMPSON concluded that within the next two weeks a determination would be made which of the three agencies would be the primary investigative group and the agency's responsibility for the collection of data regarding the mutilations. U.S. Attorney THOMPSON pointed out that the FBI would have to receive approval from Washington, District Attorney MARTINEZ' group would have to receive the LEAA Grant, and the New Mexico State Police would have to obtain clearance from its headquarters. During this session of the conference, investigators from Arkansas pointed out that they have examined 28 cases of cattle mutilations and it is their conclusion that all cases were the work of intentional mutilators and not of predators. The examination of carcasses submitted by their investigators have been done by the Oklahoma State University Forensic Lab. The investigator present at the conference from Montana expressed his opinion that carcasses found in Montana were also mutilated by deliberate efforts and not by predators. All investigators present during this session recommended that there be a central collection unit which could coordinate information from all areas. Also, all investigators recommended that a standard procedure and form be adopted for the investigation of future mutilations. They recommended that evidence be examined by a qualified veterinary pathologist.
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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.