In 1989, UM did a story about wild horses in Nevada that were being shot to death, presumably by local farmers. I just got in a video of an NBC summer rerun of the episode in question, and surprisingly, there was an update indicating that five unnamed men were arrested in connection with the deaths of over twenty horses. They all plead not guilty. A police official who was interviewed claimed that others were involved, and urged viewers to come forward if they had any additional information. Just thought I would mention it, as I don't recall seeing this update on Lifetime.

This is a really good case and I wanted it on my "Unsurpassed Mysteries" series but it fell at the final hurdle. We often talk about how scary the camerawork and the like is on UM - I think this segment in a lot of places with all the horses running around the plains shows how beautiful the camerawork was as well.

Stupid psycho bastards. How can people be so heartless to shoot those animals?

Stupid psycho bastards. http://www.sitcomsonline.com/ubb/icons/icon8.gif How can people be so heartless to shoot those animals?

Hmmm well maybe i can give you some perspective on how people "could do something like that" - without trying to justify it, I've been a hunter for most of my life - obviously I would never participate in something as tragic as the Nevada horse slayings but the men who probably killed the horses were likely hunters to begin with. There are a lot of people I've known over the years who really don't hunt for SPORT at all and they take the whole "hunting experience" (for lack of a better word) in a very UGLY context.

You take all this and throw in someone probably offering them a huge ton of cash to kill the horses and perhaps add some motivation (that being the belief that the horses were overpopulating the land where their livestock were) then yeah I could see someone like that slaughtering any number of horses without much of a blink of the eye.

DarkDante -

As always, I think you make some good points. I had always assumed that the horse killers were probably either disgruntled farmers, or perhaps bored, yet callous hunters who thought the horses were easy targets. However, when we take into consideration just how many dead horses were found in that specific location at one time, it does make one wonder if there was in fact some financial incentive to slaughter the horses. Perhaps one of the local disgruntled farmers had a "bounty" on them.

Those guys should have been hunted down like the horses were.

DarkDante -

As always, I think you make some good points. I had always assumed that the horse killers were probably either disgruntled farmers, or perhaps bored, yet callous hunters who thought the horses were easy targets. However, when we take into consideration just how many dead horses were found in that specific location at one time, it does make one wonder if there was in fact some financial incentive to slaughter the horses. Perhaps of the local disgruntled farmers had a "bounty" on them.

Actually poster, the people in the area that had the most problems w/ the horses in the area were ranchers, not farmers. There's a general "idea" in Nevada held by a number
of them that the public land they use for grazing is actually THEIRS. This was probably the reason for at least some of the killings.

Here's a recent news article (that unfortunately has nothing to do w/ the case) that highlights a recent horse killing conviction:
http://www.ksby.com/news/2-nevada-men-accused-of-killing-wild-mustangs/

Wonder if Deloyd deals in horse meat?

https://clustrmaps.com/person/Satterthwaite-6ilke3