The horror of mutilated cattle, cheeks cut off, tongues cut out, genitals removed, bloodless carcasses and no visible signs of predation made big, bold headlines in Wyoming and the West in the mid-1970s.

Wyoming had reports of cattle being mutilated in Newcastle and Sublette County in the Bridger Valley in Uinta County. There were injured horses in Meeteetse and Carbon County. Two years later there was a report that a heifer outside Casper was found dead under similar circumstances.

In the years immediately following the Vietnam War and Watergate, suspects included the US military; Some of these soldiers were speculated to be conducting experiments or harvesting tissue, satanic cults, or UFO visitations.

Efforts by a Nebraska senator to involve the FBI were met with hesitation and reluctance from the agency, which only fueled speculation. The mystery has persisted for decades and still scares farmers and former law enforcement officers as Halloween approaches, reminding them of the true horrors they experienced.

“It took three years in our county,” former Uinta County Sheriff Leonard Hysell said in an interview with Cowboy State Daily. “There were a lot of them our first year, a lot.”

As the headlines ended in the 1980s, reports of periodic cattle mutilations continued. In 2023, six cows suffered similar injuries in Texas. The mutilations that have occurred in Eastern Oregon communities in recent years were chronicled in Netflix’s latest season of “Unsolved Mysteries.”

Current Wyoming Livestock Growers Association Executive Vice President Jim Magagna and Wyoming State Veterinarian Dr. Hollie Hasel said they were not aware of any reports of mutilation in the state since they took on their respective roles.

The Injuries Begin

But in the 1970s the losses were real ranchers and law enforcement were having a hard time finding the culprit or cause of the strange mutilations in the Cowboy State and the rest of the country.

The Casper Star-Tribune reported on October 26, 1975, that suspected cattle mutilations had exceeded 45 cows, 10 in Sublette County and 16 in Uinta County. On Sept. 30, the newspaper reported on a calf north of Gillette that had its genitals cut off and its stomach cut open with a sharp instrument.

The Campbell County Sheriff’s Office described the death as a “confirmed mutilation” because the veterinarian was unable to determine the cause of death and there were no signs or traces of predators or humans.

For Hysell, then the Uinta County sheriff, the incidents represented the strangest cases he had investigated in his 47-year law enforcement career, including 20 years in Uinta County.

“We only took the newly killed ones, we did not try to speculate on those older than 24 hours,” he said. “We really tried to investigate the fresh murders. We have collected most of them. Only one rancher had 16 head; six of them in one pasture in one night. “Predators don’t do that anymore.”

Evidence of Helicopters

While many news reports talk about the lack of evidence and no trace of the murders, Hysell said he found specific evidence at some sites that raises suspicions about the cause, and that includes helicopters.

At the time the mutilated cattle were discovered, there were credible reports of military-style helicopters in the area, and in one case three helicopters in different locations. Hysell said the plane had no numbers on its sides, did not use lights and was only seen at dusk.

“We found a lot of rotor washes around the carcasses, we found traces of landing skids,” he said. “This led me to believe it was something a little more complex. And predators will have nothing to do with these carcasses. Birds wouldn’t peck them. We have never experienced such an event before and we have not experienced it since. If they were predators, why didn’t it continue? But it didn’t happen.”

On September 3, 1975, the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph reported that El Paso County Sheriff’s Deputy Gary Gibbs had pointed to a satanic cult.

“They are nomadic people. Over the past two years, we found evidence of similar events in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and Wyoming. This is not a small group. “There are several thousand members across the country,” he said. “Some people laugh at the idea, but we are working hard on this problem and we have conclusive evidence. We want to catch these people because we don’t know what they will do when they get tired of maiming cows.”

Hysell said the cult theory was not something he accepted because of the money required to operate the helicopters he knew were flying in and around his county at the time. But he knows the federal government and state agencies are extremely reluctant to help sheriff’s departments out West. And that includes Wyoming.

“State crime labs have nothing to do with anything in Wyoming or Utah,” he said. “I’ve heard from other sheriff’s offices that they’re facing this situation all across their counties.”

FBI File

An FBI file on cattle mutilation reveals letters that Nebraska Senator Carl Curtis sent to FBI Director Clarence M. Kelly in 1974, asking for the federal agency’s help in solving crimes.

“This will refer to my previous letter to you on August 21 regarding a series of incidents of cattle dismemberment extending from Oklahoma to Nebraska as part of some strange witchcraft cult,” Curtis wrote. “I wonder if your good faith has prompted an investigation into this situation in Nebraska or any of the other states where similar acts of mutilation of livestock have occurred?”

The FBI director stated on September 10, 1974, that he had an agent check the matter and that “no federal law within the jurisdiction of the FBI had been violated.”

By 1979, Senator Harrison Schmitt of New Mexico managed to get the Senate Appropriations Committee to include in its report language directing the FBI to “continue its investigation of cattle mutilations occurring in New Mexico and elsewhere.”

Retired FBI agent Kenneth Rommel launched an investigation into mutilated cattle on a local New Mexico preserve and concluded that predators were the culprit.

“Most reliable sources attributed this damage to normal predator and scavenger activity. However, certain segments of the population attributed the damage to other causes ranging from UFOs to a giant government conspiracy,” Rommel wrote in a March 5, 1980, letter to the FBI. “No actual data has been provided to support these theories.”

Rommel sent particles of material appearing over Taos, NM. In July 1978, a UFO was allegedly hovering over a pickup truck. The FBI laboratory concluded that it was white enamel paint, typical exterior paint, and that the particles “appeared to originate from a wood substrate.”

Predator Result ‘Not Valid’

Hysell said he did not accept the FBI’s conclusion about the predators.

“I’ve never met very many FBI agents who know much about predators, at least the four-legged species,” he said. “I thought this conclusion was absolutely not valid.”

Hysell said the government suspected involvement in the mutilations, possibly caused by a chemical or biological mishap, and needed to test to see how widely the material had spread.

“There were mutilations wherever air, water or food could enter and exit the bodies,” he said.

An article published in the Casper Star-Tribune on October 23, 1977, quoted a spokesman for the National Cattlemen’s Association as estimating that 3,000 mutilations were reported in 22 states, beginning in late 1974 and reaching a peak in the summer months of 1975 and 1976.

One facility in Utah known to be involved in chemical and biological weapons is the Dugway Proving Ground, located 85 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah.

A December 8, 1994 congressional report by the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs and Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV noted that the test site was where various chemical and biological agents were tested.

In 1968, the report stated that 6,400 sheep near the facility died following the “intentional release of a lethal nerve agent from an aircraft.”

“Initially, the Ministry of Defense denied any responsibility for the accident… However, when necropsies were performed on the poisoned sheep, the nerve agent VX was detected, making it clear that the deaths were not caused by pesticides,” the report said. “Finally, the Department of Defense reimbursed the farmers for their animals.”

‘Simulator Test’

The report stated that following the deaths in 1968, the Department of Defense developed a “simulator” test. However, during “45 years” of outdoor testing, “the Army discontinued use of various simulants when it realized they were not as safe as believed,” the report said.

Although the mass mutilations of the mid-70s have stopped, reports of similar mutilations are still heard. One of the most recent reports involved the mutilation of six cattle in Texas.

In April 2023, a 6-year-old longhorn cross cow in Madison County had her tongue removed with a “straight, clean cut with apparent precision,” the Animal Legal Defense Fund reported in a May 23, 2023 press release. jaw line. Scavenger animals did not touch the body.

Five more cows were discovered in neighboring Brazos and Robertson counties with their anuses and genitals removed, as well as their tongues.

The investigator investigating the Madison County case told the Cowboy State Daily he could not speak to the media without the sheriff’s approval. A message left for the sheriff’s office was not responded to by deadline.

Looking back to the mid-’70s and collaboration with sheriff’s departments across the West, Hysell recalls that many people who tried to find answers were “mocked.”

“I felt like we were being controlled by this news,” he said. “I’ll tell you this in at least one case, I won’t say which state, where a person working in the crime lab was told to give it up, they were told they wouldn’t be accepting any more samples, and they had to shut up about it.

Dale Killingbeck can be reached at [email protected].