1992 ANIMAL MUTILATIONS
Linda Moulton
Howe
A graduate of Stanford University, Linda Howe has
devoted her film and television career to documentary
productions. She has received local, national and inter-
national awards for her documentaries about science,
medicine and environmental issues, including Fire in the
Water and A Radioactive Water. In 1979, as Director of
Special Projects at the CBS TV station in Denver,
Colorado, she began researching the animal mutilations
mystery. The result was an Emmy award-winning docu-
mentary, A Strange Harvest .
In 1983 Linda began to work as an independent film
producer on a contract for Home Box Office. In April that
year she was invited to Kirtland AFB, New Mexico, where
she was shown an alleged presidential briefing paper
describing contact with 'extraterrestrial biological en-
tities', and was promised official material, including
film, confirming this, for inclusion in a UFO documentary
for HBO that she was working on at the time. The promise
was never fulfilled.
In 1989 Linda Howe published her book, An Alien Harvest:
Further Evidence Linking Animal Mutilations and Human
Abductions to Alien Life Forms', which is a synthesis of
ten years of research into these mysteries. In 1991 she
produced Sightings: The UFO Report for the Fox Television
Network, and her next TV production is about global
survival issues.
In the cold winter nights of December 1991 to January
1992, something was haunting Oklahoma, Kansas and
Missouri, leaving dead and mutilated cattle in its wake.
One couple, driving down a country lane after dark, saw
two bright objects moving low in the sky. 'As one got
over the road above us, it blinked out,' said Mike Markum
of Cement, Oklahoma. 'The other object stopped and
started - that's what caught my attention. We heard no
sound.' Markum and his wife report that they have seen
several sparkler-like balls' going over their house at
low alti- tude. Once, one of these objects shot off at
tremendous speed and left a green trail.
By the end of January, five Oklahoma Counties (Grant,
Blaine, Garfield, Kingfisher and Commanche), Sumner
County in Kansas and Webster County in Missouri, had
about thirty reports of mysteriously killed and mutilated
animals. Even though satanic cults or predators are the
socially accepted explanation for the mutilations in
these counties, Sheriff Archie Yearick in Grant County
told me that he was puzzled 'because there aren't any
tracks around any of these carcasses'.
That same comment has been made by law enforce- ment
officers and ranchers since the animal mutilation mystery
began in September 1967 when a horse named Lady was found
in the San Luis Valley of Colorado, stripped of flesh
from the neck up. Lady's hoof tracks stopped 100 feet
from where her body was found. Residents had seen odd
lights and'small jets'moving low and rapidly over the
desert. Worldwide news articles cited speculations that
UFOs and the mare's strange death were connected.
When I began research for my documentary, A Strange
Harvest, in 1979, 1 did not set out to do a film about an
alien life form connection. But that is what I found in
several eyewitness accounts of orange, silent, glowing
objects the size of football fields hovering above
pastures where mutilated animals were later found, or
beams of light observed shining down from 'silent
helicopters'that illumi- nated pastures 'brighter than
daylight', and where mutila- ted animals were also found
the next day. I also investigated reports by eyewitnesses
who had observed strange craft and/or non-human creatures
involved with animals.
In 1983, a Missouri couple watched through
binoculars as two small beings in tight-fitting
silver suits 'floated a paralyzed black cow into a
craft'. The alien heads were large and
white-coloured. Nearby, a tall, green-skinned 'lizard
man' stood glaring, its eyes slit with vertical
pupils like those of a crocodile.
In 1980, a Waco, Texas rancher watched one morning
as two 4-foot-tall creatures with large, slanted
black eyes carried a calf between them. He was
terrified and ran away. Three days later he had the
courage to go back to the scene with his wife and
son. There they found the mutilated calf's body. The
hide was completely intact and included the hooves
and the skull bone, but the muscles and internal
organs, as well as most of the skeletal structure,
were missing. The hide was turned inside out and
folded neatly on the ground next to the backbone,
from which all the ribs had been removed. 'Who would
do this, and what are they trying to tell us?' the
rancher asked me.
Since I began research into the animal mystery in
1979, no year has passed without mutilation reports. 1992
was no exception.
OKLAHOMA, KANSAS AND ARKANSAS
On 25 January 1992, a cow was found dead near
Okemah, Oklahoma. The udder had been cut bloodlessly
from the animal and was found lying on the ground.
The right chest was slit and an Okfuscee County
Sheriff Deputy assumed that the heart had been
removed. But no veterinarian was asked to do a
necropsy. Without any hard evidence, the deputy's
report simply stated 'Motive: Satanic Ritual'. But
even he was surprised about how precisely the cuts
had been made without any blood residue.
On Saturday, 2 February, MUFON Oklahoma
investigator Chuck Pine travelled to Garfield,
Kingfisher and Grant County Sheriffs' offices to help
get more details about the January mutilations. Grant
County Sheriff Archie Yearick said that that morning
he received a call from the police in Caldwell,
Kansas, about a fresh steer mutilation there. Chuck
proceeded north over the border and travelled with a
police officer to the mutilation site. He retrieved
tissue samples from the mutilator's cuts as well as
unaffected tissue for comparison, preserved them in
formalin solution and sent them via Federal Express
to Dr John Altshuler, a pathologist and haematologist
in Denver, Colorado. Dr Altshuler and I have been
working together since 1989 in an effort to gather as
many mutilation tissue samples as possible for
microscopic examination. So far, the microscope has
shown that tissue from animals (including rabbits,
deer, horses and cattle) have been cut with high heat
in the hundreds of degrees (Fahrenheit), as evidenced
in the cooked haemoglobin and other cell changes. In
one 1990 Oregon case, the tissue was serrated as if
cut with pinking shears. Both Dr Altshuler and the
Oregon State Diagnostic Laboratory confirmed that
high heat had been used at those excision lines. Dr
Altshuler found the same heat-induced cell changes in
the Caldwell, Kansas, steer.
The following Tuesday, 11 February 1992, there
were two more reports of cattle mutilations at
Calumet, Oklahoma, 10 miles west of El Reno. The
first was found by Robert Jacobs and his son Travis
Dean on the morning of 6 February. Half of the Brahma
steer's tongue was removed; a bloodless, oval
excision had removed the genitals, and the rectum was
cored out. No blood or tracks were in evidence.
That evening, Travis took his girlfriend, Julie
Hamilton, back to the field to show her what had
happened. It was about 8.15 p.m. when they saw a
light above their field. 'It was about ten times
brighter than a star,' they reported. 'As we drove
closer, we began to see different coloured lights on
the edge. They were red, yellow, blue and white. They
flashed at random, not sequentially.'
When they got to within about three-quarters of a
mile from the object, Julie became frightened and
they returned to town. The object rose higher in the
sky and followed them. 'We were doing about 80 mph,
and by the time we reached town, it had gone past
us,' they said. After dropping off Julie at her
house, Travis picked up his father and went back to
the field, where they saw the light again over the
pasture. Robert said he could clearly see the
different colours flashing on the object. They tried
to approach it in the pick-up truck, but the light
moved away and disappeared. After a few minutes, the
light reappeared, moving to the southeast before
disappearing again.
The following Monday afternoon, 10 February,
another steer, a Hereford, was found dead and
mutilated in the same pasture. As in the Brahma steer
case of 6 February, the front half of the tongue had
been removed, the left ear was gone, a neat excision
had removed the genitals, and the rectum was cored
out (see photographs). After midnight on 3 March,
back in Okemah, Oklahoma, three men saw a grey,
diamond-shaped object with 'windows', which landed,
then took off. The witnesses estimated the object's
diameter to be over 30 feet.
On 9 March, again in Okemah, a cow was found with
its udder cleanly and bloodlessly excised from the
belly. There was also a large hole on the cow's left
side. 'Like a bullet hole', some said - but there was
no exit hole and no bullet. There was also blood on
the g round near the cow's head, which is not
typical.
On 4 March, Benton County Sheriff Deputy Danny
Varner went to meet Bill Cowger at Tyson's Hog Farm,
near Hiwassc, Arkansas. An eight-year-old cow was
lying on her right side. The left eye was missing,
the tongue had been removed, and a large piece of
hide measuring 20 by 30 inches had been removed
between the back legs, taking the udder with it (see
photographs). The cut was only hide deep. Muscle
tissue underneath was untouched. Sergeant Varner's
investigation report states as follows: I found the
cow's tongue had been removed by someone [using] a
very sharp instrument. The tongue was cut diagonally
from side to side, approximately 6 to 8 inches from
the cow's front teeth. The cow's left eye had been
removed. The cow's udder and hide were removed by a
very sharp instrument, no damage was done to the
stomach wall and the cuts looked to be [those] of a
surgeon. The cow's vaginal area looked to be enlarged
and pulled outwards. The ground surrounding the cow
had no indications [she] had struggled and I was
unable to find any footprints around the cow. A small
amount of blood was found on and around the cow.
On Monday, March 9, 1992, 1 contacted Dr Marion
Harris, a veterinarian from Gravette, Arkansas. I
asked Dr Harris if a cow's internal organs could be
removed by entering the cow's vagina. [He] stated
that organs could be removed through the vaginal
tract if the cow had recently had a calf about 6
weeks prior to her death. I asked Dr Harris if he
would do an autopsy on the cow and he stated he
would. On Thursday, March 12, 1992, at 2 p.m., I,
Det. Sgt Sam Blankenship and Bill Cowger met Dr
Harris at the property where the cow was found. Dr
Harris was unable to determine if any organs were
missing because of waiting 8 days before an autopsy.
MISSOURI
The period of February-March 1992 also included
reports of eleven mutilated cows in Webster County,
Missouri, east of Springfield. At the same time, people
reported seeing strange lights in the sky over Northview.
The Highway Patrol said that so many people were parking
along the Interstate 44 Northview exit to look for UFOs
that it was a safety hazard.
Tissue samples from nine of the mutilations were sent to
Dr Altshuler, who found evidence of high heat at the
excision lines and a hardened'plasticized'edge, which is
not consistent with typical lasers. Even a portable laser
is the size of a large freezer and requires a large
electric generator. 'If you could afford one, why would
you lug it out to a field in the middle of the night
where a farmer might take a shot at you for messing with
his cows?' asked Duane Bedell, co-director of the MUFON
chapter in Webster County. 'And how are the cows killed
without a struggle, no tracks and no blood?'
One farmer, Joe Bouldin, said that his cow's throat had
been slit, the oesophagus removed and the teats sliced
off the udder. 'But there were no marks on the ground
anywhere,' said Bouldin. 'It's real mysterious.' A
necropsy revealed that most of the blood had been drained
from the cow. But the ground was dry. 'How do you drain a
cow of blood without spilling any?' Bouldin asked. 'I've
never carried a gun before in my life, but now we are
carrying a loaded gun in our truck. That's how I feel
about all this.' Another troubled farmer was Edwina
Ragsdale. 'It's just like the cows were embalmed,'she
said.'We went out there last week [February 1992] and
there was a faint smell of decay, but they should have
deteriorated by now.' Asked what she thought was
responsible, she replied, 'UFOs or cults - they both
scare me.' I have also seen an 'embalmed' animal.
In May 1980 when I was producing A Strange Harvest, a
rancher east of Colorado Springs (Colorado) found one of
his horses dead and mutilated. As often happens,
mutilations are not reported for several days. In this
case, the crew and I filmed about twenty days after the
horse was first found dead. The weather had been warm,
but there were still no maggots. Another week later,
after the horse had been dead for a month, maggots
emerged. But when we cut into the horse's flanks to take
tissue samples, the muscle was bright red. I asked a
local veterinarian if that was normal. He said it was
not, and that there should have been decayed tissue.
In April 1992, mutilations were reported in Liberty,
Mississippi, and Leduc, Alberta (Canada). In Liberty, two
cows had been found with half the face hide removed and
tongues cut out. The three-day-old calf was found with
its head and hind feet missing, with no trace of blood or
tracks.
CANADA
On 14 April 1992, ranchers Dorothea and Roman
Verchomin discovered the first of six mutilated cows on
their farm in Leduc, Alberta. This was a twenty-year-old
Holstein milk cow that Mrs Verchomin had raised and kept
to provide extra milk during the calving season. She was
a quiet, docile cow, and Mrs Verchomin said she does not
understand what could have separated her from the herd.
The cow had not been dead more than six hours when she
was found. In the left shoulder was a hole 'like a bullet
hole' that angled down into the chest, similar to the cow
in Okemah, Oklahoma. As in the latter case, no bullet was
recovered and no exit wound could be found. On the cow's
throat was a 12-inch vertical cut just beside the jugular
vein. There was also a cut around the rectum,
approximately two inches deep into the hide, right
through the hair, and the anus and vagina had been cut
out (see photographs). 'Most notable was the absence of
blood in and around the body,' wrote MUFON investigator
Janice Semeniuk, working with Gordon Kijek, Director of
the Alberta UFO Study Group. Mr and Mrs Verchomin called
veterinarian Dr Wayne Sereda, and when he opened the cow
on site, 'the flesh was unusually white', indicating the
thorough removal of blood. Mrs Verchomin said that the
vet and Constable Coulombe, the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police investi- gator, discussed how 'they' could drain
so much blood out of the animal, while maintaining that
predators were responsible for the kill. That conclusion
upset Mrs Verchomin. 'I have never seen cuts like those
on that cow,' she said. 'I followed the cuts with my
finger: they were harder than the hide and every 2 inches
there was a slight rise like a scalloped edge. The rest
of the cows became very upset when they found her; their
eyes rolled around and they bellowed and stampeded.'
After years of farming, Dorothea Verchomin is con- vinced
that no predator could cut a cow that way. 'Coyotes don't
even come on to our property,' she said, and they haven't
bothered the herd in.the past.' Speculation about satanic
cult activity raised the possibility that someone arrived
quietly, perhaps by canoe, from the lake shore of
Saunders Lake, which runs alongside the property. Yet
there were no clues as to how the blood was drained from
the cow without leaving any trace. Mrs Verchomin
remembered that she had let her dogs out the evening
before and was awoken around 1.45 a.m. by their barking.
Realizing she had not shut down the pump house, she took
a flashlight into the yard. 'It was unusually quiet, even
for the country,' she said. 'There was no noise
whatsoever.' But she saw nothing unusual 'untilthe next
morning, when the mutilated cow was found'. Then, between
14 June and 16 July 1992, Dorothea and Roman Verchomin
found five more dead cattle on their farm. All six of the
cows were found lying on their right side. The
chronological list of these events is as follows:
14 April 20-year-old Holstein cow 14 June
250-pound Charolais Hereford calf
21 June 250-pound Hereford heifer calf
24 June 250-pound Hereford heifer calf
28june 800-pound Hereford cow 16 July 800-pound
Hereford cow
Mrs Verchomin estimates that the 14 June calf was
found about two days after death. It was in a twisted
position with the right side of the head and chest lying
on the ground with front legs straight to the left, while
the back half was flat to the ground with the hind legs
spread apart. The left ear and eye were gone. A hole in
the left side of the neck angled down into the chest. The
tail was removed up to the tail bone. The rectum and
vulva were cored out along with a large, oval-shaped
piece of hide that extended from the rectum up between
the back legs, along the belly to three ribs up on to the
chest. All the internal organs had been cleanly removed
and the internal cavity was dry and blackened in colour.
Again, Dr Sereda was called to examine the animal. This
time he brought a veterinarian colleague along and stated
that because the calf was decomposing he could not make a
positive determination as to the cause of death.
An RCMP investigator was also present, but neither
photographs nor tissue samples were taken. The 21 June
calf was still warm when found dead near its mother's
feet. The cow was standing guard over the body, a full
mile from the rest of the herd. Mrs Verchomin took the
carcass to the Provincial Laboratory veterinarian who
commented that'there is no such thing as cattle
mutilations' and promptly determined that the calf had
died 'due to overwhelming bacterial infection'-
specifically clostridium bacteria. No excisions were
made. Three days later, on 24 June, 'we smelled another
dead animal,' said Mrs Verchomin, and another 250-pound
calf was discovered, decaying 60 yards from where yet a
larger Hereford would be found on 28 June. That 800-pound
Hereford cow had an ear and eye missing, the tail was
removed to the tail bone, the rectum and vagina had been
cored out, and the udder had been excised in a 'perfect,
round circle only hide deep, leaving the membrane tissue
covering the muscles completely untouched'. Mrs Verchomin
said that the pristine nature of the cuts on the
perfectly preserved body astonished her. Constable
Coulombe of the RCMP Leduc Detach- ment arrived to check
the cow, but no vet was called because 'the body was
already two or three days dead'. There were no signs of
predators. 'In fact, the animal lay there for a full week
and not even the coyotes touched it - not one bite!
Finally, it decomposed. . . .' said Mrs Verchomin. On 16
July, a two-year-old Hereford cow was found with the
rectum cored out and one teat cleanly removed from the
udder as if 'burned off'. Part of the tongue and several
teeth were gone. On the left side of its neck was a
4-inch slit with a 1-inch wide and 2-inch deep hole in
the 'middle of ' it Tissue samples were taken from the
outer region of the rectum and vulva and forwarded to Dr
Altshuler. He found the excision lines to be darkened and
plasticized, and microscopic analysis revealed that the
cells had been exposed to high heat.
CAT MUTILATIONS
Mutilation reports are not confined to cattle. They
have included most domestic animals, such as cats. Since
the 1970s, there have been waves of cat mutilations in
Canada, California and Texas. From 15 May 1992 onwards,
cats were found dead and mutilated in Vancouver, British
Columbia. Typical was the case of the purebred Russian
Blue cat that was put out in the evening and never came
back. The back half'of the cat was found three blocks
from its owner's home, without a trace of blood. It was
the fourth cat found cut in half in a two- week period.
In the summer of 1991 in Piano, Texas - an upper middle
class community north of Dallas - the police department
received nearly one hundred reports of missing domestic
cats, along with several mutilated ones.
A QUESTION OF SURVIVAL?
After An Alien Harvest was published in 1989, 1
received a letter from a security guard in Denver,
Colorado, who described a night in August when he was
patrolling the grounds of a large corporation west of the
city. From his truck, he could see a large circle of
lights in the dark sky. The lights remained stationary
over a pasture a few hundred feet from his position, he
never mentioned the incident because he was afraid that
If he uttered the word 'UFO', he might lose his job. But
the next morning he felt guilt as he watched a farmer
gather up two dead and mutilated cows. 'What kind of
technology are we talking about?' he asked me. 'I never
took my eyes off those lights. There was no beam, no
sound - nothing. How did they do it?' If alien life forms
have been involved in nearly three decades of worldwide
animal mutilations and dis- appearances, what is it the
aliens need? In 1980, Myrna Hansen and her young son saw
two white-suited beings working on a cow near Cimarron,
New Mexico. The cow was bellowing in pain and Myrna tried
to interfere. The result was that both she and her son
were apparently abducted by large, brightly lit discs
which took them to an underground facility that Myrna
thought was in the Las Cruces region, There she saw a
humanoid figure floating in a vat of reddish liquid which
she perceived to be a 'treatment' or 'sustenance' of some
kind for the immersed being. She also thought the liquid
was related to blood fluids and tissues removed from
animals'.
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