Coyotes, Cows, & Ufos

McHenry / Coyotes, Cows, & UFOs 1 EXCERPT COYOTES, COWS, & UFOS CHAPTER NINE THE NEW MEXICO CATTLE MUTILATION DELUSION J. Henry McHenry The first cattle mutilations in New Mexico were recorded during August, 1975, at around the time the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) was beginning its investigation. Three years later, by the end of 1978, around ninety cattle mutilations had been reported and investigated in New Mexico. Of that total, around thirty, one-third of the total, were investigated and confirmed in Rio Arriba County by New Mexico State Policeman Gabe Valdez. Because of the extreme number of cattle mutilations confirmed in the county by Valdez, First Judicial District Attorney Eloy Martinez, whose jurisdiction included Rio Arriba County, applied for a federal Law Enforcement Assistance Agency (LEAA) grant to fund an investigation by a “full time, top level, highly credible” investigator. [Rio Grande Sun, Espanola, New Mexico, 15 FEB 1979, pA3, “DA To Probe Mutilations,” by Gail Olson of the New Mexico First Judicial District Sun’s Sante Fe Bureau] McHenry / Coyotes, Cows, & UFOs 2 EXCERPT As part of his effort, District Attorney Martinez was also in touch with U.S. Senator and former astronaut Harrison Schmitt, asking him to request the assistance of the FBI. Concurrently, several other of the state’s politicians, ranchers, and influential citizens were asking the Senator to provide federal assistance. Senator Schmitt agreed, and threw his support behind Martinez’ LEAA grant request, and requested FBI help in the New Mexico investigation. The Senator also scheduled a public hearing on cattle mutilations. Senator Schmitt’s Cattle Mutilation Public Hearing On the morning of April 20, 1979, United States Senator Harrison Schmitt dropped the opening gavel on a cattle mutilation conference he had convened at the Albuquerque Public Library. Since the day he “entered politics” in 1975, he told the audience, “One of the first issues my constituents confronted me with was this loss of cattle and other animals by theft and mutilation.” And because so many of his constituents had requested it, he continued, he was doing three things. First, he was holding this public hearing to look for new ideas, and to help coordinate local and multi-state investigations. Second, he had endorsed an application by District Attorney Martinez for a federal grant to hire a top-level professional to investigate cattle mutilations in the three counties of the district, particularly Rio Arriba County. And third, he had requested that the FBI assist in that investigation. He noted that over a third of all cattle mutilations in the state had been confirmed in the First Judicial District, mostly by New Mexico State Police officer Gabe Valdez. The attendees at the cattle mutilation public hearing were generally in two camps. On the one hand were the UFO aficionados, whose presentations told of the various and sundry ways McHenry / Coyotes, Cows, & UFOs 3 EXCERPT UFOs were probably involved with cattle mutilations. On the other hand were the law enforcement officers who came to the meeting with the understanding it would be a closed-door event for officers only, to compare investigation notes. As it turned out, however, law enforcement officers sat silent and listened in open- mouthed amazement at the bizarre UFO presentations during the hearing. Tommy Thompson, an Inspector with the Nebraska Agriculture Department put it best when I asked him about the public hearing during our interview in 1980. Me: Lieutenant Omer at the Nebraska State Patrol said you attended Senator Schmitt’s public hearing at the Albuquerque Public Library last year, in April of 1979. Thompson: Yes, I did. It began when Governor Exon received a letter asking him to send a representative to the meeting. Governor Exon contacted the Director of the Agriculture Department, and he chose me to attend. Me: Were you a brand inspector? Thompson: No, no, I’m sworn as a Special Deputy Sheriff. My job is to investigate agriculture crimes, things like weights and measures, strange animal deaths, that kind of stuff. But it was one of our Brand Inspectors and I who did go to the meeting. McHenry / Coyotes, Cows, & UFOs 4 EXCERPT Before we left, we met with Lieutenant Omer, and he briefed us on what they had found out about critters dying natural deaths and then being scavenged. He made copies of lab reports and a bunch of their investigative reports for us to take along to the meeting. We also had a bunch of our own reports that we combined with his, so we went down there with quite an arsenal of information. Well, it was our impression that it was going to be a closed meeting for law enforcement officers only, kind of like the meetings our State Patrol had with the sheriffs here, where they would have to stand in front of an audience of other sheriffs and describe their mutilations and then justify them based on the evidence. Nobody could. In New Mexico, we expected that everyone would just lay their cards on the table and we could get to the heart of the problem. Instead, it was an open meeting with the public invited. Every UFO and mutilation kook in the world was there. They were like a bunch of wild Einsteins - but with no common sense. We just sat back and listened, didn’t say a thing. McHenry / Coyotes, Cows, & UFOs 5 EXCERPT The worst part was when Gabe Valdez – the state cop – spoke. He pranced and danced up there in front of everyone like he was an expert on everything, an authority. It was disgusting. After the meeting was over, we asked a captain on the New Mexico State Police who was there, why they kept a man like that around. We told him that back in Nebraska he would have been looking for a job a long time ago. Well, he said they couldn’t get rid of him, though they’d like to. He said they had concluded that cattle mutilations were just like what the Nebraska Patrol said they were, but Valdez was loved by all the ranchers in his district. They were convinced they were having mutilations and he agreed with them. They loved him, and he became politically untouchable. [Interview with Tommy Thompson, Inspector, Nebraska Department of Agriculture, South Centennial Mall Office, Lincoln, Nebraska, September 4, 1980] Perhaps you find yourself wondering what Inspector Thompson’s “UFO and mutilation kooks” had to say. Fortunately, the entire public hearing was transcribed, including remarks by a dozen or so speakers, so I can give you a couple of representative examples. You can read what all of them had to say in the New Mexico chapter of Coyotes, Cows, & UFOs. McHenry / Coyotes, Cows, & UFOs 6 EXCERPT Introducing David Perkins, Animal Mutilations Probe Director The first person Senator Schmitt recognized from the floor was paranormal investigator/author David Perkins. From the podium, he identified himself to the audience as being associated with the Department of Research, Libre School, Farisita, Colorado. In addition, he added, he was also the director of A.M.P (Animal Mutilations Probe), which he described as being a “a clearinghouse for the systematic collection of data relating to the animal mutilations.” In that capacity, he informed, he had been working on cattle mutilations since 1975, and represented a “nationwide network of independent researchers, law officials, scientists, and journalists.” As to his background, Perkins told the audience that he was educated as a sociologist, with an interest in “aberrant mass psychology, including the study of cults, religious sects, mass delusions, fads, and other belief systems which lie outside the mainstream.” His education appears to have failed him, however, Albuquerque Journal, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 21 APR since he failed to recognize a mass delusion 1979, p1 when he was standing up to his neck in one. From the transcript: David Perkins: As a general rule, the more impenetrable the subject, the greater the chances for striking scientific pay dirt. In all of my studies, I’ve never run across a phenomenon which has McHenry / Coyotes, Cows, & UFOs 7 EXCERPT presented more of a challenge to the rational mind. In fact, mutilations are an outright frontal assault on all our notions of reality. Clearly we are faced with an enormous challenge; perhaps the greatest challenge man has ever faced. The mutilations seem to say to us, “Everything you know is wrong.” I feel that the answer may well have something to do with man’s survival on this planet. But in terms of summarizing the conclusions of our group and our studies, I would say that we should take a very long, hard look at the possibility that UFOs could be involved with these mutilations. This is not idle speculation on my part, this is based on several years of research and investigations with many members of the people in this room. [Proceedings, p9 – 13] One of the “members of the people in this room” Perkins referred to was Richard Sigismund, of Boulder, Colorado, one of Inspector Thompson’s “wild Einsteins.” Introducing Richard Sigismund, UFO Aficionado After recognition by Senator Schmitt, UFO aficionado Richard Sigismund told the group he had been investigating the UFO phenomenon for over twenty years, and that his academic training and subsequent course of study had been primarily the social sciences, heavily into psychology. Sound familiar? McHenry / Coyotes, Cows, & UFOs 8 EXCERPT Also like Perkins, Sigismund rambled on and on, telling participants that newspaper reports of UFOs around the world were all the evidence needed to prove their existence. As his trump card, he read from an undated article in the Washington Post that described UFO sightings at a few U.S.

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