Santa Fe man aims to solve mystery of cattle mutilations

Cattle mutilation is no bull, says Santa Fe resident David Perkins. He’s been studying this strange phenomenon since the 1970s. He’s written magazine and newspaper articles about it — one recent story even won him a journalism award in Colorado — and co-authored a 1982 book called Altered Steaks. He also has spoken at who knows how many forums, including one organized by a U.S. senator.

But after all these decades, Perkins, 69, says he really doesn’t know who or what is responsible for the mutilations.

“I honestly think there’s something very significant behind it. I don’t know what,” he said, laughing, during a recent interview at a downtown Santa Fe coffee shop. “But I know that there’s something there. … It’s hard to dispute that there’s something unusual going on, just by the sheer number of cases, news reports, interviews, law enforcement and on and on. It’s clearly a cultural phenomenon. And that’s how I’ve approached it from the very beginning.”

Cattle mutilation, he said, is “almost a Rorschach test of the American psyche, you might say.”


 

Though there hasn’t been much talk about cattle mutilations in recent years, back in the mid-1970s there were constant news reports here and elsewhere about dead cows with body parts that witnesses said had been removed in what appeared to be mysterious ways.

“Ranchers reported finding their animals dead with sexual organs removed, blood drained, and missing some combination of ear, tongue, eye, udder or patch of skin,” Perkins wrote in the introduction of Stalking the Herd: Unraveling the Cattle Mutilation Mystery by Christopher O’Brien, published last year. “Rectums were frequently described as ‘cored out’ … the incisions were frequently described as being performed with ‘surgical precision.’ ”

Through the years, theories have abounded. Is this the work of UFOs? Strange cults? Some secret government project? Or some strange combination — a Satanic cult within the government?

Or is it just completely nuts? Is it something that only some kind of kook would pursue?

“I’m always battling the credibility issue, because it’s such a weird topic,” Perkins said in the interview. “It’s bizarre, scary, strange, kooky, whatever. But that hasn’t deterred me.”

Skeptics who mock tales of mutilations and all paranormal activity aren’t the only people who have questioned Perkins’ credibility. He’s also been dismissed by true believers of UFOs and those who embrace other mutilation theories — they say Perkins is too much of a skeptic.

“My conclusion after almost 40 years of devoting myself to this is that every theory has a fatal flaw,” he said. His insistence in pointing out those flaws gets him in trouble with those dedicated to advancing the theories. Perkins has had a pet theory of his own — that mutilations are connected with nuclear activity. This theory, too, has “fatal flaws” he said, but he still thinks “that may have some relevance.”

Perkins for decades has maintained homes in Santa Fe and in southern Colorado.

His obsession with cattle mutilations began in the mid-1970s after he moved with his wife at the time, Roberta Price, to Libre, a rural commune in Colorado’s Huerfano Valley. Perkins recently had graduated from Yale with a degree in American studies and political science. Price, now an intellectual property lawyer in Albuquerque, wrote a book about the commune called Huerfano: A Memoir of Life in the Counterculture (2004) and another about Libre and other communes called Across the Great Divide: A Photo Chronicle of the Counterculture (2010). Perkins took the cover photo for the latter.

A cattle mutilation occurred just down the road from his house at Libre, he said. It was the first mutilation scene Perkins had ever seen.

He described it in his introduction to Stalking the Herd. “The only evidence was a few drops of blood leading toward my home. I later learned from my local sheriff that since I was a relative newcomer to the area, I was briefly considered a suspect.”

A local newspaper editor told Perkins, “We think we know who did it. … those hippies up at Libre.” The editor didn’t know Perkins lived there.

“In those days, [Charles] Manson was still hanging in the air,” Perkins said, referring to the convicted mass murderer. “There was still that aspect of Mansonite hippie types, which was pervasive for awhile.”

At the time, Perkins was a musician (he later was in a Santa Fe group called The Dog Brothers) and a freelance writer; the latter profession he’s stuck with through the present. He said he started “a little file” on mutilations.

The file grew.

“One thing led to another, and I got more and more into it,” Perkins said. He made connections with local law enforcement officials investigating mutilations and interviewing ranchers whose cattle had been mutilated. “It just picked up steam. I thought, ‘This is a great story. And I’m going to solve it.’ ” Perkins laughed at himself before adding, “And I’m going to do it.”

In 1979, Perkins was the first speaker at a conference in Albuquerque about cattle mutilations organized by former astronaut and then U.S. Sen. Harrison Schmitt. “What other topic could possibly draw this motley crew into one room?” Perkins wrote in Stalking the Herd. “A moon-walking astronaut, FBI agents, state police, sheriffs and local police from around the country, Indian pueblo governors, tribal police chiefs, Los Alamos scientists, veterinarians, New Agers in robes, hippies, news media, spooky agent types, dusty ranchers in beat-up cowboy hats, independent researchers and, of course, ufologists of all stripes and colors.”

Shortly after Schmitt’s conference, then-Santa Fe District Attorney Eloy Martinez got a federal grant and hired retired FBI Agent Ken Rommel to investigate cattle mutilations all over New Mexico. He concluded “the vast majority of mutilations are caused by predators and scavengers.”

Rommel, who died in 2012, remained a skeptic. Years after his investigation, he told The New Mexican “I have a certain amount of sympathy for people whose lives are so dull and boring they have to get their kicks by fantasizing about the decomposition of dead animals.” (This was in 1994, a time when dozens of cattle mutilations had occurred in Northern New Mexico.)

Perkins, however, is skeptical of Rommel. He said he had a breakfast meeting with Rommel before he was officially appointed to head the investigation. Rommel had already made up his mind before he’d even started, Perkins said. He said Rommel told him at the breakfast that that cattle mutilations were “all baloney” and “creative journalism.”

Though Perkins considers Rommel’s investigation “lame,” he said, “I must say, in Rommel’s defense, the attitude of law enforcement in dealing with it at the time was that it was a public safety issue. People were shooting at helicopters in New Mexico and Colorado and Kansas and Nebraska.” (Some who live near mutilation scenes have reported hearing helicopters in the area.) “These vigilante groups were out running around at night, armed to the teeth. And that could have gone wrong easily.”

While there have been few if any news reports of cattle mutilations in New Mexico since the mid-’90s, up near Walsenburg, Colo., last summer there was a series of reported mutilations that got Perkins’ attention. He interviewed area ranchers, sheriff’s deputies and others and wrote a series of articles published by the weekly Huerfano World Journal. The paper recently announced that Perkins’ series won an award from the Colorado Press Association for best feature series in a weekly paper.

Perkins and O’Brien, the author of Stalking the Herd, are beginning work on a follow-up, tentatively titled “MuteSpeak: Stalking the Stalkers,” which will contain what Perkins says will be a deep analysis of the major theories about who or what is behind the mutilations.

“What Chris and I have going for us is a healthy skepticism and a sense of humor,” Perkins said.

Source