EDGEWATER PARK – In this small community along Lake Ellsworth in northern Comanche County, something very disturbing and sinister took place on or about October 11, 2020. It was the day when two calves, barely a full-day old, were horribly mutilated by unknown subjects in a large grazing field just west of Edgewater Park, between Edgewater Boulevard and U.S. Highway 281, south of Apache.
At DJ’s Bait Shop, here in Edgewater Park, a building which also doubles as a bar, bartender Sue Noll remembers cattle owner Cody Zimmerman and his wife coming into the bar soon after the gruesome discovery.
“He was very upset,” Noll said. “And even though he had a $2,500 reward, he didn’t care about the cost. He was disturbed by how they killed (the two calves). He said he wanted to find out why.”
Noll said she had not seen Zimmerman in the bar before that day. He gave Noll a reward poster to hang in the bar featuring a map showing the location of where the calves were killed, the reward amount, and very graphic photographs of the mutilated animals.
The reward poster notes that “the heart, tongue, testicles, and penis were cut out and removed from the animals.” In an interview with cattle mutilation investigator Linda Moulton Howe, Zimmerman says that “it looked like the bottom of the hooves” on one of the animals “went through a cheese grater.”
And there was no evidence of blood, save for a tiny amount on a nearby rock, Zimmerman noted. Again, there is no evidence of wild animal attacks or scavengers, which would normally rip and tear the flesh. This instance shows body parts removed in a surgical manner.
In any event, Zimmerman, who has ranched here for eight years, taking over his father’s herd, is concerned.
“It’s just pure evil is what it is,” Zimmerman told Howe at Earthfiles.com.
A phone call to Zimmerman went unreturned as of Tuesday afternoon.
In an emailed statement to Southwest Ledger, Howe said, “Bloodless, trackless animal mutilations have been ongoing without stop in both hemispheres of Earth since at least the 1960s to date.” She has been looking into these cases since the late 1970s and has concluded that the mutilators are likely extraterrestrial in origin.
Regardless of who or what is behind these mutilations, it is a baffling mystery and has been going on around North America for many years, as noted in Christopher O’Brien’s detailed 2014 book Stalking the Herd: Unraveling the Cattle Mutilation Mystery. Noting Alabama cases in the 1990s O’Brien writes, “The same things are always taken. Bovine jaws are stripped to the bone, reproductive organs are removed, digestive tracts and rectums ‘cored’ out. There is little to no blood at the scene.” And in the bovine blood, O’Brien writes, pharmaceuticals – not veterinary drugs – have been found, including anticoagulants.
It’s a head-scratcher. And then there is the cost to the farmers and ranchers. These animals are often worth thousands of dollars. Outside of Oklahoma, there have been recent, unsolved cattle mutilation cases in Oregon, Arizona, and Colorado.
Noll said after a while, she hung it outside the bar because it was making some bar patrons woozy and uncomfortable.
A man seated at the bar said he remembers going out on Hilltop Road and seeing a Channel 7 News vehicle go out into the field to get camera footage of the carcasses. Noll said it happened in the field behind the “octagon house,” a flying-saucer-shaped home that appeared abandoned when Southwest Ledger took a closer look at the location at the lonely corner of Hilltop Road and Southhill Road.
Noll said this area of the county has a lot of ranching and farm fields and a lot of cattle. Still, the news of the cattle mutilation has caused folks to be a little concerned.
“We think it was really strange,” Noll said. “That they scraped the bottom of the hooves. Cult purposes? Devil worshippers? All I know is that I do hope they find the people who did it.” Added Noll: “We don’t need no more of that.”
Comanche County Sheriff Kenny Stradley is investigating this crime, a crime which is considered cruelty to animals. Stradley did not return a phone call to Southwest Ledger as of press time.
This is reportedly the second cattle mutilation case to pop up in Comanche County since June. In fact, there was another cattle mutilation case in January 2019 involving a cow belonging to Betty Bessire, as reported in The Chronicle that month.
The article noted that Bessire “noticed the cow laying down as she left for town and assumed the pregnant animal was giving birth.” The report later states that when Bessire returned from her trip to town, “the cow was still laying there.” Bessire examined the cow and was shocked to find that the right ear was gone, and all of the internal organs had been cut out.
“Sheriff Stradley,” reported The Chronicle, “Confirmed that not only were the innards missing, so was the (unborn calf). The man that helps (Bessire) with her cattle reported that the cow had been fine at 9:30 a.m. that morning,” which was thirty minutes before Bessire had seen the cow as she headed into town.
When Bessire was interviewed by KSWO reporter Caitlin Williams at the time, the cattle owner speculated that there was an occult angle to the animal’s death.
“They were getting ready to make a sacrifice to the devil over that Red Moon,” Bessire said in the interview. “Any time you get a bad change in the moon like that you’ll see this stuff come up.”
Indeed, a “Super Blood Moon” lunar eclipse did take place at the time of the mutilation on Bessire’s property, leading to speculation about occult activity in the area.
Talking to folks in Fletcher, in eastern Comanche County, some remembered the puzzling cow death.
“I hate to see any cattle mutilated,” said Cement resident Floyd Turner, who was getting water in Fletcher following a severe ice storm.
Meanwhile, rancher Cody Zimmerman is offering a reward of $2,500, through Lawton Crime Stoppers for the arrest and conviction of those involved. Both Zimmerman and Sheriff Stradley request anyone with information to contact Crime Stoppers at (580) 355-4636.