Ranchers- The "Godfathers" of the West?!?
My story is both long and complex so I will try to break it down into short, easily digestible items. Some things will, of course, be omitted due to space restrictions and my memory. I am currently trying to compare all I remember with what others remember happening to my family. I've only included the things I personally recall right now, without the aid of my journals.
- 1997: My husband & I bought a house in Taylor, Arizona. The day after we moved in, our realtor brought a man by in his pickup. They offered us $10,000 CASH over the price we paid for our house if we would sell it. We declined.
- The week we moved in, someone threw a horse's head wrapped in barbed-wire down our driveway. Probably trying to imply something about "Da Mob" being as we are originally from New York (Upstate).
- Our house was constantly being broken into. Although nothing was stolen, our papers were always rifled through including our garbage and on one "visit" our crossbow was broken.
- We found one of our phone bills on the counter in the Taylor Post Office lobby, with some of our long-distance numbers highlighted and/or circled.
- 1998: Various prank phone calls, at all hours of the day and night- so numerous we had our phone number changed. This was before we got "caller ID".
- 1999:Various pranks- via telephone, and petty vandalism (our car gas tanks were repeatedly sugared, etc.)
- 1999:While out driving around behind our house, we came on a hill with a hollow on top. We went up to have a look and found about 10 pit bull-type dogs- all had been shot in the head at close range. We reported our find to the local law enforcement.
- May 2000: The same day our daughter is born, we close on 20 acres out east of Snowflake, Arizona (the next town over from Taylor) We didn't know at the time the acreage we bought was part of the area grazed by the rancher soon to be accused of terrorizing my family.
The 20 acres was supposed to be the site of our dream house. We had been planning for six years to build this house and now we were on our way to getting it done. We started buying supplies and constructing a natural fence, made from the many downed dead trees littering our land. The effect was an almost impenetrable fence- even our best canine "escape artist" couldn't figure a way through it. On several occasions we came out to the land to find some of the trees had been dragged by a truck to allow cattle on our land. We kept working on our house, figuring the problem of the trespassing cows would be fixed once we moved out there permanently.
- September 2000: Our pet, protector and canine friend Shaka Zulu was poisoned while we slept. He was chained in the middle of our fenced in yard, about 25 feet from our back door.
The major significance of this event is the fact that the dog was both chained and within a fenced yard. One should also note the close proximity to the back door. We did this for safety reasons, obviously: we thought if someone entered our back yard, the dog would bark and alert us. The night in question, someone entered our yard and came within 25 feet of our back door. I draw attention to this because directly on the other side of that door was my then not-quite-two-year-old son's bedroom. When we took our pet to the local vet's office, some of the poison was expelled. The attendant identified it as fire-ant poison, as she was sight familiar with this substance in relation to accidental domestic animal poisonings. The poison was administered in meat- our pets were all always trained not to accept any foodstuffs from anyone but my husband or myself, but we had trouble getting them to refuse meat. My husband found a trail of footprints from the dog to our back fence- the fence was bent down. We had also seen a car parked out behind our house during the night but thought nothing of it. Our house was right near the runway for the Taylor Municipal Airport, so there were often vehicle back there. This crime was reported to the local police.
- February 2001: My son's 7-month old puppy was taken in the night from an enclosed pen inside our fenced yard. The next morning we found him. He had been eviscerated & left at the base of a hill behind our house. It was my husband's 34 th birthday.
This event should be highlighted for a few reasons. One is the inadequacy of the police handling. My husband found easily identifiable footprints (man's size 10-ish cowboy boots) and other evidence that was promptly disregarded. We were unfortunately still under the impression the local PD was there to HELP us. This time the puppy that was taken not only belonged to my little son, but the pen he was stolen from was 10 feet away from the baby's bedroom. This seemed like another threat averted because of the sacrifice of a loyal pet. I contacted national & local animal rights organizations. A fund was established to provide a reward for information regarding the crimes against our furry friends. An employee of a local animal organization told us they had gotten several (more than 10) calls from people regarding our pets. Everyone declined the reward money ($2500 is a pretty good sum in Taylor) but anonymously gave the same 2 names: a father and son, 60's and 40's respectively, both ranchers.
At the time, the father was the First Council to the Bishop at the local LDS (Mormon) church.
- Throughout 2001 we received several prank calls. The number the calls originated from was the accused's ranch. (Caller ID is great!)
- July 2001: Deja vu. Another of our dogs is poisoned. My husband, myself & four other people along with a local police officer watched a van speeding away from the area directly behind our house. The cop didn't even pretend he was going to investigate.
Two of the witnesses to the July 2001 killing were good friends of ours, one with extensive lifelong experience with animals. This friend was intimately acquainted with all manner of animal maladies, including accidental poisonings and dehydration. The officer who came out to our house suggested that our pet Willie was suffering from dehydration, even though he showed all the signs of poisoning that our first pet did. Our friend pointed out that the symptoms were not dehydration, but poisoning and still the officer insisted. Willie, like our first poisoned pet, was chained 25 feet from our back door, within our fenced back yard. In fact he was in the same spot exactly as our first pet. This time it was both our son (2) and daughter (1) were asleep on the other side of the door. More calls pointing the finger at the same two LDS ranchers.
- December 2001: My husband & I stood watch every night, waiting for them to return. On 2 occasions we aimed our rifle out the window at some human-shaped shadows. From the way they ran they must be track stars!
- Early Spring 2002: One night a group of cowboys came in to the bar my husband & I worked at. One of them was the man our realtor had brought over to make the offer on our house when we first came to town. They acted very suspicious and later were identified to us as being the ranchers accused of the crimes against us.
- Early Spring 2002: Things started to disappear from our property Out East (of Snowflake). Several tools were taken, our generator went missing, all our children's outdoor toys, even an entire wall from our kitchen vanished!
- May 2002: Someone placed a strangled black rooster on our front porch in the night. The rooster was a black-boned type.
- May 2002: Vanilla, my daughter's self-appointed canine protector is stolen during the night: lured with meat into our neighbor's dog trap and hauled off by the dog catcher. We saw it from our upstairs window, and videotaped it. Vanilla had to stay in the pokey for the weekend, but came home first thing Monday morning.
- May 2002: People running through our backyard several times a night. We keep watch all night, determined to keep our kids safe until we can get them safely to relatives.
At this point, we were just trying to hold the bad guys off long enough to get our babies out of the danger area so we could come back and make a stand. We were convinced we would eventually win the right to live out our dream in this place we had made our home. Our friends reassured us with supportive statements, and asked us not to run- to stay and fight. We planned to.
- May 2002: On the way home from a friend's house, we were pulled over by the local PD. A man dressed in all black jumped out of the passenger side of the police car, and pointed a gun at our car. The next morning we left Arizona for good.
My husband, myself and our two children, ages 2 & 3 were inside. I was 3 months pregnant at the time. My then-3-year-old son looked out the back window and saw the man with the gun. He asked us why the ninja was pointing at us. The uniformed officer, upon noticing our kids in the car turned his head away from the car (facing the man in black) and shouted "My son has a Clifford blanket just like that!". (My son was wrapped in his Clifford blanket). With that the officer told us to have a good night and sent us on our way, almost running back to his car. He never even ran my husband's ID, but a friend of ours with a police scanner said he had heard my husband get pulled over. They called it in as a "suspicious person, lone occupant" call. We had an easily recognizable license plate, and there were two adults and two children in the car. I will not postulate here what the possible outcomes might have been, I am just glad nothing worse happened.
Since then I've done research on our rancher: he was not only the area president of the Cattlemen's Association, he was also the first council to the Bishop at the local Mormon Church. This makes him one small man with too much power. The evidence presented me to affirm his guilt in the crimes against my family is overwhelming, I've only highlighted the main points here. He is responsible for depriving me, of robbing my family of our right to pursue our happiness. He stole from me my way of life, when I was doing nothing to hurt anyone. That is why I hate the rancher, and why I think it is my duty to make his way of life, which hurts not only other people but also the environment, obsolete.
**And to those kind, confused people who have suggested that my tale is a fictional one I say, please begin litigation to make me remove this page from the internet. As your good LDS brothers who perpetrated the crimes of domestic terrorism against my family haven't made a peep about the validity of my words, perhaps you shouldn't either. They haven't made a move to stop my book or movie (which are soon forthcoming as well). Accept it. Sometimes people do very bad things to other people and they deserve to be, if not punished, then publicly exposed for the evil they do behind their pseudo-religious facade.**
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
Martin Luther King
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