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This is Connective Tissue. I'm Darren Marlar. In 1967, a
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horse named Lady was found on her side near Alamosa, Colorado,
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with the flesh stripped from her head and neck and
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no blood on the ground. In Montana, ranchers kept finding
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cattle dead with their organs missing and no tracks leading
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in or out. On a ranch in Utah, a wolf
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took six shots and walked off into the trees. In
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this series, I'm taking you through my book, Connective Tissue,
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one chapter at a time, following the dead cattle to Bigfoot,
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alien abductions, mind control, and the men in black. The
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cases come from government records, police and court files, published accounts,
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and the people who were there. A word of warning
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before I begin. Several chapters do describe real violence against animals,
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household pets included, and against people. And now, Connective Tissue,
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How Cattle Mutilations Link Bigfoot, Alien Abductions, Mind Control, and
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The Men in Black. You know that cattle mutilation is
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going to be a large focus in this book, and
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I can only assume that doesn't bother you because you
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saw it right there on the cover and decided to
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begin reading anyway. But I also know the human heart,
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and some people who love dogs... hate cats, and some
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people who couldn't care less about cows find horses to
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be majestic and would struggle to learn of one's suffering.
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If that's you, this is going to be a tough chapter.
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In September 1967, sources differ on the exact date, a
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three-year-old Appaloosa horse failed to come in for her evening
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feeding on the King family ranch near Alamosa, Colorado. She
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belonged to Nellie Lewis, who boarded her with her mother,
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Agnes King, and brother, Harry King. When the horse didn't
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appear at the fence line for her usual treats, Harry
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and Agnes went looking for her. They found her on
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her side. The flesh of her head and neck had
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been stripped cleanly down to the bone. The cuts on
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her body were precise enough that neither of them believed
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a predator had made them. there was no blood anywhere
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on her or on the ground around her, despite wounds
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that should have produced a great deal of it. The
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horse showed no bloating and no sign of decomposition, even
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though she appeared to have been dead for several days,
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and no scavengers had touched the carcass. Her own tracks
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stopped abruptly, about a hundred feet from where her body lay,
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with no explanation for how she'd covered the remaining distance. Nearby,
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the ground bore burn marks, Some of them arranged in
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a distinct, circular pattern. And despite the belief that what
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had happened to Lady took place several days earlier, a
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strong chemical smell still hung in the air around the site.
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Agnes King would later say she'd seen an unidentified object
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pass over the house in the days before the discovery.
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The horse's name was Lady. Early press coverage confused her
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with her sire, a horse named Snippy, and the mistaken
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name stuck through decades of retelling. The Aerial Phenomenon Research Organization,
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one of the most active UFO investigative groups operating at
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the time, sent investigators to the scene. Among those who
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examined Lady's remains was Dr. John Altshuler, a pathologist with
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a specific expertise in blood coagulation. He found that her heart, lungs,
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and thyroid had been removed. along with portions of her
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brain and abdominal organs, all with cuts he described as
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among the cleanest he had ever encountered. What struck him
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most was the absence of blood. Years later, describing the
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scene to a reporter, Altshuler said, I have done hundreds
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of autopsies. You can't cut into a body without getting
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some blood. But there was no blood on the skin
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or the ground. The record shows two official examinations of
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Lady's remains, and each reached a different conclusion. The Condon Committee,
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a University of Colorado research group funded by the U.S.
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Load full transcript
Air Force to study UFO reports, sent its own pathologist, Dr.
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Robert Adams, to examine the case. Adams concluded that Lady
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had been suffering from a leg infection at the time
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of her death and that someone, presumably to end her suffering,
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had slit her throat. he attributed the missing organs and
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tissues to the ordinary work of bacteria, birds, and coyotes
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over the following days. The committee's final report stated there was, quote,
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no evidence to support the assertion that the horse's death
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was associated in any way to abnormal causes, unquote. Locally,
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Alamosa County Sheriff Ben Phillips offered a different, mundane theory
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without ever visiting the site himself, suggesting Lady had been
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struck by lightning. Yes, lightning. that targeted only the heart, lungs, thyroid,
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specific portions of the brain, and certain abdominal organs. That's
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a very finicky bolt of lightning there, Sheriff. Neither explanation
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accounted for the absence of blood that Altshuler described, for
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the surgical appearance of the cuts that had been made,
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or for the tracks that stopped a hundred feet short
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of the body. Maybe all of that was magic lightning, too.
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You might be wondering, as I did, if any of
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those missing body parts from Lady have anything to do
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with each other, aside from being body parts of a horse.
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Why would those specific pieces, the heart, lungs, thyroid, a
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portion of the brain, and abdominal organs, have been taken
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while the rest of the organs were left behind? Not surprisingly,
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you and I are not the only ones to wonder
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about that. Beyond simply being soft tissue, they share something
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more specific. The heart and lungs sit at the center
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of the circulatory and respiratory systems. The thyroid is a
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major hormone-producing gland. The brain and abdominal organs handle neural function, filtration,
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and metabolism. Together, they represent some of the most vascular, hormone-rich,
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and biologically active tissue in the body. Christopher O'Brien, the
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San Luis Valley researcher whose work appears throughout this book,
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has pointed to that same detail in support of what
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he calls an environmental monitoring theory, that whoever or whatever
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is responsible may be sampling the tissue most useful for
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tracking contamination, radiation, or biological agents moving through a herd,
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rather than targeting these organs at random. Despite the fact
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that she is a horse, Lady's death is usually credited
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as the case that introduced cattle mutilation to the wider public.
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but the pattern itself goes back much further than 1967.
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The earliest documented outbreak on record comes from early 1606
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in the official court records of James I of England,
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describing whole slaughters of sheep around London and the surrounding
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shires in which nothing was taken from the animals but
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their tallow and certain internal organs, the carcasses and fleece
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left otherwise untouched. Writer Charles Forte who spent much of
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his life cataloguing reports that mainstream science ignored, documented further
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outbreaks in his 1931 book, Low. During the winter of
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1904 and 1905, amid a wave of religious revivalism in Wales,
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witnesses reported strange lights in the sky alongside a series
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of attacks on sheep. In 1910, something killed sheep across
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the same region on a large scale, several animals a night.
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while rabbits were found nearby with their backs broken. In 2013,
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a wave of sheep mutilations swept through Calhoun County, Texas,
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near the town of Port Lavaca, one farmer alone losing
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21 animals, males castrated and females stripped of their reproductive organs.
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The sheriff investigating the wave, George Ailman, told reporters he
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remembered a nearly identical pattern from decades earlier. a self-proclaimed
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Satanic group blamed for several cattle mutilations in that same
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county during the late 1970s. While he didn't believe the
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same group was responsible the second time around, whatever was
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behind the original wave had a remarkably similar pattern to
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what had appeared again in the same stretch of Texas
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35 years later. It wouldn't be the last time the
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word Satan got attached to a pile of dead animals
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in these pages. a pattern this book returns to directly
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in the chapter on the Satanic Panic. Reports of similarly
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mutilated cattle and other livestock began climbing through the early 1970s,
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and kept climbing. Between April and October of 1975 alone,
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Colorado authorities logged close to 200 reported cattle mutilations, and
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the Colorado Associated Press named it the state's top story
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of the year, which is no small claim. seeing as
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1975 also saw the inauguration of a new governor who
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had defeated the incumbent, a plane with 131 people aboard
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crashed during takeoff at Denver's Stapleton Airport, the Red Dirt
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Fire chewed through nearly 4,400 acres of the White River
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National Forest in what was called the largest firefighter effort
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in state history, and John Denver named the Country Music
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Association's Entertainer of the Year. The cow mutilations beat them
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all for coverage. Colorado Senator Floyd Haskell pressed the FBI
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for federal assistance, citing more than 130 confirmed cases in
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his state. Nationwide, more than 1,500 alleged mutilations were reported
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across 22 states between 1973 and 1976, and by the
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end of the decade, researchers tracking the phenomenon put the
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cumulative total above 10,000 incidents. the FBI's involvement when it
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finally came was less than many locals had hoped for.
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Bureau jurisdiction over cattle mutilations was limited to cases occurring
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on Indian reservations, and for most of the 1970s, that
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left the vast majority of reports to local sheriffs and
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county veterinarians with neither the funding nor the forensic tools
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to investigate them properly. In December 1978, New Mexico Senator
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Harrison Schmitt a former astronaut with a doctorate in geology,
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wrote to Attorney General Griffin Bell asking the Justice Department
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to
re-examine its jurisdiction and reopen the question. On April 20, 1979,
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Schmidt chaired a conference on animal mutilations in Albuquerque attended
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by roughly 180 people. The FBI opened its investigation into
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mutilations on New Mexico's Indian lands that same year. The
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investigation was carried out by Kenneth Rommel, a retired FBI
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agent operating under a grant of just over $ 44, 000 from
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the Justice Department's Law Enforcement Assistance Administration and working through
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the first judicial district attorney's office in New Mexico. Rommel
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ultimately examined 90 reported mutilation cases. In June 1980, he
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submitted a 297-page report. At a press conference that April,
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ahead of the report's formal submission, he'd already announced his conclusions. quote,
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after laboriously weighing and analyzing the evidence, I have come
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to the conclusion that the vast majority of mutilations are
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caused by predators and scavengers, unquote. Rommel's report closed the
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FBI's formal involvement in the mutilation question. It did not
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close the case files being opened on ranches across the country,
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which by 1980 numbered in the thousands and showed no
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sign of slowing down. Rommel's report remains the closest thing
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this phenomenon has to an official verdict. It didn't stop
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a single rancher from finding another mutilated animal in the
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years that followed. Nor did it explain why predators and
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scavengers would be traveling with scalpels to cut steak. The
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chapters ahead will follow this same unresolved signature into Bigfoot country,
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into UFO abduction reports, into a declassified Cold War mind-control program. Yes, really.
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and into a moral panic that swept the country a
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decade and a half after Lady's death. Even stranger than
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cattle mutilation itself is what you discover it has connections to.
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Thanks for listening. I've been reading from my book, Connective Tissue,
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How Cattle Mutilations Link Bigfoot, Alien Abductions, Mind Control, and
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the Men in Black. The book is currently on pre-sale,
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releasing Friday, November 13th on Amazon for Kindle and paperback,
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and the Kindle edition is included with Kindle Plus. You
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can pre-order the Kindle edition right now on that same page, weirddarkness.com
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slash connectivetissue. That's weirddarkness.com slash connectivetissue. Or find all of
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my books, fiction and non-fiction, at weirddarkness.com slash books.