1992 Animal Mutilations 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 illuminated pastures 'brighter than daylight', and where mutilated 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 (see photo section). 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 ground 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 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 bings 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'.
In 1973, abductee Judy Doraty observed a brown and white calf rise in a pale beam of yellow light. Later, during the
abduction, she found herself inside a small, round white room, where she saw tissue being excised from the calf's eye, tongue and testicles by two small, grey-skinned creatures with large eyes. They had four long fingers but no thumb, tapering to dark nails. Their eyes were yellow with black vertical upils like those of a cat or snake . Judy's daughter, Cindy, was also abducted at the same time, and in a 1990 hypnosis session with Psychiatric hypnotherapist John Carpenter she also reported seeing a calf rising in a beam of light. Judy had the clear
impression that the alien operation on the calf had something to do with survival - theirs and ours. In both the Cindy Doraty and Myrna Hansen cases, the women were examined by the beings, and in Myrna's case, eggs were removed in a painful Procedure from her ovaries. In some cases, men and women have been shown 'baby things' which they are told are hybrids - part human and part something else. If genetic material is what the alien intelligence wants, why does it need so much over so many years? And why does it leave animals to be found with strange, bloodless
excisions that provoke fear and anger?
by Linda Moulton Howe
* 14 June 250-pound Charolais Hereford calf
* 21 June 250-pound Hereford heifer calf
* 24 June 250-pound Hereford heifer calf
* 28 June 800-pound Hereford cow
* 16 July 800-pound Hereford cow