ANYONE REMEMBER LISA DRUCK

[MHM]

And how sad that they all had some place inside them that could allow them to even consider torture.

Couple of things.

I don't know if you can classify electrocution as torture. There was a time when vet schools considered it a viable form of euthanasia. Not to mention that humans were executed in the electric chair not that long ago.

Obviously killing the horses for the insurance was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. However, the term torture is questionable to me when applied to the electrocution cases.

The crowbar case- well, I wish they had used the crowbar on the humans involved in that one.

As for Edwards, I think he did the same thing politicians have always done. He did something bad, then tried to cover it up. The difference is that the press has become more willing to report it in the last decade or two. As it was, the media seemed to really drag its collective toes on this story for more than a year. Again, wrong, wrong, wrong, but not that unusual.

[Donnalynn]

I get what you are saying. In fact, I had a hard time coming up with the word.

And, yes, euthanasia by electrocution was an acceptable practice. However, euthanising healthy animals wasn't.

And having read descriptions and talked with reporters who have been witnesses at executions of people by electric chair, I'm not sure what other word to use.

And the crowbar was used on more than one horse. At the request of more than one owner, or trainer in more than one part of the country.

So, if you have another word for what they accepted in some dark place in their souls, then you can let me know.

If you have any form of justification for it...I should probably be interested for the sake of understanding, but am finding it difficult.

[tidy rabbit]

I don't see how eletrocution can't be considered torture? I got shocked one time by a 110 fence and it hurt so bad I screamed out uncontrollably and then stood there dumbfounded for about 3 or 4 minutes before I could make sense of what had just happened to me.

[DMK]

well to be fair you could google "Rielle Hunter" all day long and not connect it to Lisa Druck until recently, and then unless you know the father;s name was "James"... It wouldn't stand up to serious scrutiny, but how much scrutiny do you give to a person who is an internet videographer for a single trip?

[Donnalynn]

It wouldn't stand up to serious scrutiny, but how much scrutiny do you give to a person who is an internet videographer for a single trip?

Probably not as much scrutiny as you might give someone you were about to, well, you know. That is, if you were a presidential candidate, if your wife loved you, if you had an ounce of sense to go along with your pound of pride.....

And, yeah, google probably wouldn't have turned up much, but some time to think with the big head might have helped. What am I saying? Probably not.

[tidy rabbit]

Probably not as much scrutiny as you might give someone you were about to, well, you know. That is, if you were a presidential candidate, if your wife loved you, if you had an ounce of sense to go along with your pound of pride.....

And, yeah, google probably wouldn't have turned up much, but some time to think with the big head might have helped. What am I saying? Probably not.

In the words of my mother "sex is a mighty powerful thing."

[gloriginger]

I was shocked right now to read that Henry the Hawk was on The Sandman's hit list. Did he execute him ? I read Hot Blood but I dont remember it mentioning this horse.

Does anyone know where I can find a list of all of the horses that were assasinated? Also of the players involved?

Thanks!

I think there is no way to get a complete list- hundreds of horses and owners were involved, only a few were prosecuted.

Here's an interesting twist--
Henry the Hawk was James Hulicks horse- sold to the Drucks...Hulick as in Marion who was George L's BM who went to prison for the insurance scandles.

[DMK]

but some time to think with the big head might have helped. What am I saying? Probably not.

But that's a whole other Google Free Place where the Rich and Powerful (of any political persuasion) rarely remember to go... sooner rather than later at any rate!

[MHM]

And, yes, euthanasia by electrocution was an acceptable practice. However, euthanising healthy animals wasn't.

Actually, healthy animals are euthanized every day. At most animal shelters (unfortunately), and in the process of making every hamburger you've ever eaten. Or pork chop. Or lamb chop. Or chicken sandwich. Etcetera.

It's my understanding the criminals were prosecuted for insurance fraud, not euthanasia of a healthy animal.

As for justification, I can't explain it. I've never understood it, particularly in the cases where the amount of money involved was a relative pittance to the owner.

[gloriginger]

It's my understanding the criminals were prosecuted for insurance fraud, not euthanasia of a healthy animal.

As for justification, I can't explain it. I've never understood it, particularly in the cases where the amount of money involved was a relative pittance to the owner.

Ego, If I can't get along with the horse/be successful with it, no one can. Plus, if the horse wasn't winning, more than likely it's value had depreciated, so it was much easier to "get rid of it" and use the insurance money to by a new one.

Not saying I agree in the slightest!

[DancingQueen]

So any owner of an animal can choose to have that animal eutanized for no other reason then that they want to?
That's sick!

[Beezer]

So any owner of an animal can choose to have that animal eutanized for no other reason then that they want to?
That's sick!

Basically, yes. Frankly, it's a whole lot kinder than a lot of other options out there. Of course, many vets don't exactly like the prospect of that, so in the vast majority of cases, there are extenuating circumstances when an otherwise healthy animal is put down. (And I am soooooooo not going to get into the slaughter debate here; I don't think that's what Dancing Queen is talking about.)

You have to remember that in the eyes of the law, the crimes in this case were not really in killing the horse(s); they were in the mail and insurance frauds.

Although I've always been of the mind that it was always and forever more about the horses, God rest their lovely souls.

[bunkerave]

I have read Hot Blood and a few ESPN and SI articles, but don't remember the examples of other crowbar deaths as stated in an earlier post. Can anyone elaborate?

[lolalola]

Poor Elizabeth Edwards. Losing her eldest son, dying of cancer, worrying about her young children being motherless, and this happens. Rielle aka Lisa makes Monica Lewinsky look good by comparison.

[hiddenlake]

I don't know if you can classify electrocution as torture...Not to mention that humans were executed in the electric chair not that long ago.... the term torture is questionable to me when applied to the electrocution cases.

When I was in high school I received a severe electric shock from a faulty appliance. When it failed, it was as though my fingers instantly locked on it--I couldn't let go no matter how hard I tried. I screamed at the top of my lungs and couldn't hear myself. My big brother heard me and ran in and pulled the plug, it was only then that I could release my grip. Two of my fingers were burned black.

Can't tell me it's not torture.

[Jaegermonster]

For the poster who asked about the crowbar incident, it's detailed in here if you didn't see it the first time

Viv55 and others - we all need to know and remember what happened. I'm sure someone else on this thread will provide pictures shortly.

Blood Money
5392 words
16 November 1992
Sports Illustrated
18
Volume 77; Issue 21; ISSN: 0038822X
English
Copyright (c) 1992 Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved.

On the rainy night of Feb. 2, 1991, in despair over the prospect of causing the death of a horse by breaking its hind leg with a crowbar, Tommy (the Sandman) Burns sat in a bar outside Gainesville, Fla., and got drunk on gin and tonic. "Really wasted," Burns recalls. "I had never done one like that before."

For a decade the cherubic 30-year-old had made a sporadic living as a hit man hired to destroy expensive horses and ponies, usually so their owners could collect on lucrative life-insurance policies. But no owner had ever ordered Burns to dispose of a horse by breaking one of its legs--that is, by causing a trauma so severe that a veterinarian would be forced to put the animal down with a lethal injection.

Burns's preferred method of killing horses was electrocution. It had been so ever since the day in 1982 when, he says, the late James Druck, an Ocala, Fla., attorney who represented insurance companies, paid him to kill the brilliant show jumper Henry the Hawk, on whose life Druck had taken out a $150,000 life-insurance policy. In fact, says Burns, Druck personally taught him how to rig the wires to electrocute Henry the Hawk: how to slice an extension cord down the middle into two strands of wire; how to attach a pair of alligator clips to the bare end of each wire; and how to attach the clips to the horse--one to its ear, the other to its rectum. All he had to do then, says Burns, was plug the cord into a standard wall socket. And step back.

"You better get out of the way," says Burns. "They go down immediately. One horse dropped so fast in the stall, he must have broken his neck when he hit the floor. It's a sick thing, I know, but it was quick and it was painless. They didn't suffer." And it was, for the collection of insurance claims, an ideal method of execution. According to doctors at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center, one of the nation's leading large-animal hospitals, even the most-experienced pathologist would be unlikely to detect signs of death by electrocution--unless, perchance, the pathologist was looking for it and the clips happened to leave singe marks. Many of the horses Burns electrocuted were assumed to have died of colic.

So Tommy Burns (a.k.a. Timmy Robert Ray), who had worked around horses since he had run away from home in Connecticut at the age of 15, became a serial killer of horses and got away with it for 10 years. According to federal agents, Burns destroyed some 20 horses, mostly show jumpers and hunters, on the show-horse circuit from Florida to Vermont to Illinois. "In 1989 it got crazy," Burns says. "I killed three horses in one week." Indeed, toting the canvas athletic bag in which he hid his deadly wires, Burns became such a regular presence among the wealthy show-horse crowds that he earned a sobriquet of which he would remain, until recently, unaware. "People knew what was going on," says a prominent West Virginia horsewoman. "When Tommy arrived at a show, they would say the Sandman was around. They knew a horse would be put to sleep." In almost every case, something about a horse--its performance, its health, its age--had made the unthinkable occur to its owner.

By that night of Feb. 2, Burns had, by his own admission, run "hard and wild for 10 years." A few days earlier he and his associate, Harlow Arlie, had driven a vanload of show horses from their base in northern Illinois to Canterbury Farms in Florida. Among the equine passengers was Streetwise, a sporty chestnut jumper with a white stocking on each leg, a blaze on its face and a $25,000 insurance policy on its life. Burns has told federal investigators that the 7-year-old gelding's owner, Donna Brown, a prominent horsewoman on the clubby show-horse circuit, had hired him for $5,000 to arrange a fatal accident for Streetwise. According to Burns, the insurance policy did not cover death by colic--Streetwise had a history of colic, a life-threatening condition in a horse--so Brown insisted that he break the animal's leg.

"I don't want to break his leg," Burns, at the bar near Gainesville, sang to Arlie in his executioner's song. "I'm not into that."

"I'll do it," Burns says Arlie told him. "For half your fee."

The two men left the bar and returned to Canterbury. Burns figured the rain that night would make the perfect alibi: They were loading Streetwise into the van when the horse slipped, fell off the ramp and broke its leg. At about 10:10 p.m., after helping to load three other horses into the van for a trip south to West Palm Beach, Burns stood in the middle of a brightly lighted lot and held a lead shank tethered to Streetwise's halter.

Unbeknownst to Burns, investigators for the Florida Department of Agricultural and Consumer Services, acting on a tip, had been * his van ever since it had rolled into Florida, and on this night they were staking out the farm. One of the investigators, Harold Barry, lay flat and still on the top of a beat-up horse trailer less than 100 yards away, watching helplessly as the dark, rain-swept scene suddenly turned from eerie to macabre.

The powerfully built Arlie appeared behind Streetwise's right rear leg, a crowbar in his hand. Arlie swung the bar like a baseball bat, and agents across the highway could hear a crack. Neighing loudly, in a high, panicky scream, Streetwise began thrashing on his dangling leg, fell to the ground as a stunned Burns hung onto the lead--"I'd never seen anything like it; the horse went into shock," he says--and then scrambled back to his feet. The keening horse tore the shank from Burns's hand and took off around the stable, disappearing in the night, * again, bellowing, only a sound now, an echo behind the barn now, in the dark now, in the quiet rain.

Tommy Burns punched numbers on a cellular phone, calling Donna Brown in West Palm Beach to inform her of events. Meanwhile Arlie informed Carlie Ferguson, president of Canterbury Farms, who summoned a vet. The vet phoned Brown, and on her instructions he called the insurance company on its 800 emergency number. Of course, the company authorized immediate euthanasia for the suffering animal. Moments after arriving on the scene, the vet put the horse down.

Burns and Arlie did not get far. After the death of Streetwise, Burns fired up the rig and took off. But two miles down Route 26, Florida Highway Patrol cars converged on the van from all directions. "They were even coming out of dirt roads," says Burns. He made a run for it, but he was quickly subdued, handcuffed and arrested at shotgun point. "What were you guys doing at the farm?" a cop yelled in Burns's ear.

They had him cold. Agricultural investigators found the crowbar and the electrocution wires in Burns's white pickup. An accomplice who had helped to load the horses at the scene, Chad Sondell, said in a sworn statement to state investigators that Burns and Arlie had told him they were to be paid $5,000 by Brown to kill Streetwise. Arlie confirmed Sondell's story, according to police reports, and admitted having struck Streetwise with the crowbar. Arlie soon pleaded guilty to charges of insurance fraud and cruelty to animals, and he eventually served six months of an 18-month sentence before being paroled.

Federal authorities had been investigating Burns for months--it was they who had tipped the Florida agricultural department that the Sandman was heading south with a potential victim in his van--and Burns's arrest turned out to be the major break in what had become a difficult collection of cases to crack.

Underscoring the importance of the arrest, an FBI agent and a top Justice Department prosecutor from Chicago, Steve Miller, descended on Gainesville only hours after Burns was taken into custody. Caught in the act, incriminated by Arlie and Sondell and * certain conviction and a jail term on charges of insurance fraud and cruelty to animals, Burns decided to cooperate with federal prosecutors. He spent three weeks in jail, and after the Alachua County Circuit Court finally released him on $100,000 cash bail--under an order that he stay away from horses--he returned to Chicago, where he began cooperating with a grand jury that has been looking into the killing of horses for insurance money.

Burns quickly unraveled his sordid tale to law-enforcement officials, giving names, places and dates from his history as a professional horse-killer and a co-conspirator in cases of insurance fraud. Burns faces sentencing Dec. 14 in the case involving Streetwise, and he expects the feds to seek leniency on his behalf on grounds that he is a key government witness in what has become an investigation of stunning scope.

"Tommy Burns turns out to be the tip of the iceberg," one federal agent says. In the next few weeks, as agents from the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms wind up their investigations, sources estimate that as many as 40 owners, trainers, veterinarians and riders will be indicted on various charges related to the killing of horses for insurance payments. Law-enforcement officials are piecing together felony fraud cases against the owners and trainers who hired Burns, and they're tracking down itinerant stable hands and grooms who can confirm details of the killings that the Sandman carried out for their bosses. The inquiries have led agents on a long, circuitous trail from one scene of electrocution to the next, and along the way investigators have picked up leads on other insurance-related deaths not involving Burns and on still other crimes that include suspicious stable fires and the fraudulent sale of overvalued horses.

In the 21 months since Burns's arrest, investigators have developed hard evidence that such crimes have not been confined to the show-horse business and that Burns is not the only hit man working expensive stables. During that time the investigators have concluded that killing horses for insurance claims is business as usual at all levels in the world of show horses.

This phenomenon is hardly new, nor is it confined to jumpers and hunters. Twenty years ago, at some prominent thoroughbred racetrack barns, animals were dying at such an alarming rate that insurance companies were refusing to insure the trainers' horses. At one Belmont Park barn where horses were expiring mysteriously in the night, cynical grooms would show up in the morning and ask, "Anyone die last night?"

Veteran insurance adjusters say, however, that the number of suspicious claims by horse owners has increased dramatically in the years since the 1986 Tax Reform Act eliminated performance horses as depreciable assets. That "reform" and the anemic state of the economy cut the bottom out of the horse business, leaving a cash-starved industry with farms and stables struggling desperately to stay afloat.

Unlike paintings by Renoir or baseball cards bearing pictures of Honus Wagner, horses experience wild, often unforeseen fluctuations in value. Say, for instance, that a thoroughbred investor spends $500,000 for a well-built, well-bred yearling, insures him for that sum and sends him off, as a 2-year-old, to a racetrack trainer. And say that the trainer then informs the owner that the colt is so slow that he couldn't beat a $15,000 maiden claimer. Or that he is an ill-tempered, untrainable rogue. Or that he is about to bow a tendon and will never race. The humane sportsman might wince and take the loss, but more than a few others would make other arrangements. "The insurance is there, and it is very tempting," says one federal agent.

Over the last few years, says Harvey Feintuch, a New York lawyer who specializes in the investigation of equine insurance claims, "we have had a very, very significant increase in the number of claims that just don't look right."

Given the current economic climate, the sudden deaths of expensive, stall-bound horses tend to raise suspicions, even at the highest levels of the horse business. A widely respected free-lance turf writer, Carol Flake, sent shudders through the thoroughbred industry when, in a meticulously reported article in the February 1992 issue of Connoisseur magazine, she raised the possibility that the death of Alydar--one of the most popular racehorses of modern times and one of the world's prepotent stallions--was not an accident (box, page 22).

In the investigation of thoroughbred fatalities, federal agents have found more than mere suspicions. In Brooklyn and South Florida, the feds say, they recently uncovered an insurance scheme that led to the death of one horse, a son of Seattle Slew named Fins, and nearly resulted in the death of another, Cutlass Reality, a New York stakes winner of $1.4 million. Prosecutors say that the scheme involved Victor Arena, the reputed head of the Colombo crime family; Howard Crash, a New York securities broker who is under indictment for bribery; and Larry Lombardo, a licensed owner and trainer of thoroughbreds who has been indicted on federal charges that he killed Fins "while making the death appear to be due to natural causes." Sources speculate that the horse was injected with parasitic bloodworms that brought on a case of thromboembolic colic, a fatal illness.

According to a 21-count indictment handed up in Miami on Aug. 4, Lombardo purchased Fins for $7,500, inflated the horse's value to $400,000 through a series of sales of phony shares, insured Fins for that amount and then collected on the policy after the horse died. Ron Rubinstein, Lombardo's defense attorney, claims that Fins died of natural causes and argues that the colt, at $400,000, was not overvalued as a breeding prospect. But Seth Hancock, the president of Claiborne Farm, which bred Fins and has been in the thoroughbred-breeding business for 80 years, said that Fins was a big, crooked-legged colt who couldn't run a lick.

Lombardo is also charged with conspiring to kill Cutlass Reality, the terrific winner of the 1988 Hollywood Gold Cup (and conqueror of the Horse of the Year, Alysheba), in an alleged insurance-fraud scheme. Crash and his former business associate Mark Hankoff--the two key government witnesses against Lombardo, according to sources close to the case--owned the horse in partnership with Lombardo and several others. What saved Cutlass Reality is unclear, but the hit was never made. "Somebody got scared and backed out," an FBI agent says. What is clear, according to the sworn testimony of an FBI agent involved in the case, is that Crash, Lombardo and Arena would have each received $1 million from the insurance settlement if the horse had been killed. Instead, Cutlass Reality will be standing stud in California next spring, servicing mares at $5,000 a pop--and that beats colic.

While the company that insured Fins had some doubts about the horse's stated value and was suspicious of the timing of the claim, which was made six months after the purchase of the policy, it nonetheless sent the $400,000 check to Lombardo and his cohorts. (Lombardo goes on trial next March 22; if convicted, he may be forced to make restitution to the insurance company.) Increasingly, however, insurance companies are balking at paying suspicious claims and are * them in court. The companies are also investigating suspicious claims more assiduously, looking for signs of fraud such as the bogus inflation of a horse's value and the concealing of ailments and infirmities. "We began to take more time and more care," says Feintuch, adding that Lloyds of London and other carriers have toughened their approach to paying claims.

Lloyds's increased vigilance dates back eight years to a case that rocked the highest levels of the thoroughbred breeding world and drove some of its biggest players to hide behind the woodshed in embarrassment. When, on March 25, 1984, an imported English horse named Pelerin died of vitamin D toxicosis shortly after ending his inconsistent career by * out of the money in a race in Louisiana, the underwriters of the insurance on the horse, all associated with Lloyds, had reason to be skeptical of the $1.45 million policy that Kentucky horseman Harold Snowden held on his half of the animal. Not only did Pelerin pear to have been poisoned, as the term toxicosis implies, but his value (Snowden and a partner had purchased him for $2 million) had dropped sharply in light of his less-than-stellar racing career.

Snowden, co-owner of the Stallion Station farm and breeder of two Kentucky Derby winners, Dust Commander (1970) and Bold Forbes (1976), had been one of the most active players in the business, the syndicator of more than 100 stallions and a prolific insurer of horses. In a gesture aimed at staying in Snowden's favor, the underwriters offered him $1 million--exactly what he had paid originally for half of the horse--to settle the claim. Snowden held out for $1.35 million. The carriers refused to budge, and Snowden took them to court. It was the first time that an equine insurance company had opposed someone of his stature.

Snowden came armed with 10 letters from fellow horsemen, all dated before Pelerin's death, in which each breeder expressed interest in buying a share in the horse for $75,000 upon his retirement to stud. At the 40 shares Snowden said he would have sold, Pelerin's claimed value now rose to $3 million. Among the nationally known breeders who sent letters were Warner Jones, then chairman of the board of Churchill Downs; J.T. Lundy, later head of Calumet Farm; and the late Leslie Combs II, then the aging pillar of Spendthrift Farm.

Snowden looked as if he would win in a gallop when--in a maneuver Perry Mason would have envied--Feintuch, acting on the underwriters' behalf, called two witnesses who destroyed Snowden's case and earned him the glowering wrath of the judge, Henry Wilhoit. One of the witnesses, a secretary for breeder Dwayne Rogers, testified that she had typed Rogers's letter to Snowden. The problem was that she had not begun working for Rogers until 10 months after Pelerin's death. She explained to the court that Rogers told her to backdate the letter to Jan. 5, 1984, two months before the horse's demise. The other witness, a receptionist at Spendthrift Farm, testified that she had typed Combs's letter to Snowden but that she did not go to work at Spendthrift until July 1984, by which time Pelerin had been dead four months. She testified that Combs had her type the backdated letter late one day, after everyone else had left the office.

Snowden was in trouble. His lawyers withdrew on him, leaving him to face a furious Wilhoit. Snowden hired F. Lee Bailey to put the toothpaste back in the tube, but that did no good. After a third horseman admitted that his letter was a fraud, Wilhoit concluded that "all 10 letters had been backdated." While never addressing the question of whether Pelerin was poisoned, Wilhoit charged that "a fraud had been practiced upon the court." Not only was Snowden out the $1 million that Lloyds had offered in the original settlement, but he was also left with a dead horse, a court-ordered judgment against him for $194,131.12 (to cover court costs and the amount Lloyds spent in legal fees * his claim) and bills from his own departed lawyers, not to mention from Bailey.

While the thoroughbred business has had its sorry share of cases involving insurance fraud, it has experienced nothing like the maelstrom that Burns is about to set spinning in the show horse business. Sources say that, based on Burns's testimony, some of the most celebrated figures in the game are targets of the grand jury probe. They include Donna Brown and her husband, Buddy Brown, a member of the U.S. equestrian team at the 1976 Olympics and still one of the nation's leading performers in Grand Prix jumping. Not only does Donna face allegations in connection with the death of Streetwise, but she and Buddy are also under investigation for the death of Aramis, another show jumper. According to sources, insurance records show that Aramis, while insured for $1 million, died under suspicious circumstances. (No charge has been filed in either case.)

Asked about the federal investigations into the deaths of two of the Browns' horses, the couple's lawyer, Mark Arisohn, a Manhattan criminal defense specialist, says, "I wish I could give you a response. We will plead not guilty. Our defense will be established in the courtroom."

Another horseman who has attracted the attention of investigators is George Lindemann Jr. of Greenwich, Conn., who has emerged as one of the nation's most accomplished equestrians since graduating from Brown University in 1986. Lindemann has ridden his stable of gifted show jumpers to victory in some of the Grand Prix circuit's richest and most prestigious events, but federal investigators are more interested in what role, if any, he played in the December 1990 death of his champion hunter Charisma.

Tommy Burns has told authorities that Charisma was insured for $400,000 when Burns electrocuted him for Lindemann in a stall at the Lindemann family's Cellular Farms, in Armonk, N.Y. According to another source, Lindemann had purchased Charisma for $250,000 in 1989. Minus Burns's alleged $35,000 fee for the hit, the insurance payoff would have left Lindemann with a $115,000 profit. It also left investigators wondering why, if Burns's allegations are true, the enormously rich Lindemann--the name Cellular Farms refers to cellular phones, the source of the family's wealth--would take so big a risk for so small a sum.

Asked about the inquiry into Charisma's death, Lindemann referred all questions to his lawyer, Elaine Amendola, who said, "Why should I be talking about this when George has the FBI hanging all over his neck?" She added, however, that "George is completely innocent."

Additionally, federal agents are looking into the possible involvement of veterinarian Dana Tripp, also an accomplished equestrian, in the death of Streetwise. Florida investigators say that Tripp's red pickup truck--with DANA TRIPP, D.V.M. emblazoned on its doors--was part of Burns's caravan as it made its way toward Canterbury Farms. It was Tripp, according to sources cited in the police report, who recommended to Donna Brown that she hire Burns to stage Streetwise's accident. Prosecutors have phone records revealing Tripp's numerous conversations with both Brown and Burns in the two days leading up to the death of Streetwise. Tripp has refused to respond to SI's questions about the matter.

The Sandman's trail has led federal agents to stables in at least eight states. Sources say that Paul Valliere of North Smithfield, R.I., one of the show circuit's leading trainers, is under federal investigation. Burns has told authorities that Valliere hired him to destroy Roseau Platiere, one of Valliere's own horses. Burns says he electrocuted the animal one night in its stall at a horse show in Sugarbush, Vt. Reached at his Acres Wild Farm in Rhode Island, Valliere refused to answer any questions. Seeking corroboration of Burns's Sugarbush story, SI spoke to a woman who said that she had picked Burns up at the airport in Burlington, Vt., and taken him to the horse show. (The woman said she had given this information to the FBI.) SI also spoke to others who described Roseau Platiere as vigorous and healthy in the hours before Burns's visit. Burns says he has told federal agents that Roseau Platiere was one of the three horses he destroyed in 1989 during the busiest week of his career as a contract killer.

Agents are also * up Burns's account of the death of a show horse named Rainman. His owner, Chicago businessman Allen Levinson, collected a $50,000 insurance policy on Rainman's death, but he denies any wrongdoing. "I have never heard of Tommy Burns," Levinson says. "I was trying to sell that horse. I had it sold for more money than the insurance policy. There was a complete autopsy."

For the agents, investigating horse killings has been a difficult, unfamiliar experience. Only rarely has there been a body on which to perform a necropsy, as there was in the case of Streetwise; the carcasses usually have been lost to the rendering plants. So this has been in good part a paper chase. In some cases agents have served subpoenas on claims adjusters who had long before paid the owners for their losses. But the owners' files and personal financial records have been valuable, frequently confirming details of Burns's story of a horse's death--including in some cases the exact barn and stall where it occurred.

In fact, investigators have been struck by the ease with which they were able to follow the paper trail that some of Burns's clients left behind. Burns's presence on the circuit and the things that tended to happen when he was around became so accepted that he was treated like the feedman or the farrier. His employers frequently paid him with personal checks and sometimes with cashier's checks purchased at their banks.

Even federal agents, who thought they had seen everything, were shocked by the insouciance of some of those who dealt with Burns. Burns recalls one woman's approach to him at a horse show: "She said, 'Do you think you could kill my horse for $10,000?' So I did. She bought another horse with the insurance money and came up to me two months later and asked me to kill her new horse. She didn't like it."

There is a troubling banality about the evil at work in these cases. "We are dealing with a way of life here," one investigator said. "These people thought they had some sort of right to do these things."

Largely because of the nature of the crime ("These animals are so vulnerable that I'd compare it almost to hurting children," says Florida agriculture commissioner Bob Crawford), some law-enforcement officials have pursued the investigation with an inspired intensity. "This is a case where you can lose your detachment," says one federal agent. "These were beautiful animals. They were standing there helpless in their stalls. Most of these people had plenty of money. So you get outraged. And you work a little harder."

Burns knows better than anyone how the horses were standing in their stalls, wearing their halters and alligator clips and watching him curiously, like deer in a clearing, as he stepped outside and moved for the socket. He wants it known, as he has been telling the feds, that he wasn't there on his own. "I was not alone in all of this." he says. "I feel terrible about what I did. But I did not advertise. I did not do any sales calls. People found me and came to me. Very important people. Very wealthy people. They came to me because they somehow knew that I might be willing to do something they wanted done. They wanted these horses dead."

What the clients wanted, the clients got. However well he warbles, Burns knows he will do some jail time, just as he knows there will be no escaping, ever, what he did for so long with his life. There's no escaping that night in Florida, in the dark, in the rain, and the sight of Arlie with the crowbar, and the crack and the screams, the horse * and thrashing, rising and running. Burns can still hear the cops yelling at him after his arrest: "You killed all those horses, and we know you did!"

"They were right," says Tommy Burns.

They always will be. That is his sentence.

QUESTIONS ABOUT ALYDAR

On Nov. 15, 1990, when Calumet Farm announced that its great thoroughbred stallion Alydar had been humanely destroyed after he kicked his stall so hard that he shattered his right hind leg, there was no reason to believe that one of America's most popular racehorses was the victim of anything but a tragic accident. In the ensuing months, however, as Calumet slipped into bankruptcy, some observers began thinking the unthinkable. Had Alydar, whose life had been insured for $36.5 million, been the victim of an insurance scam?

The 15-year-old horse was Calumet's most prolific cash cow, bred to more than 100 mares a year for service fees totaling $12 million. But as financial records soon made clear, Alydar might have been worth more dead than alive. On the eve of the horse's destruction, according to court records, Calumet owed a total of $120 million to various banks, vendors and investors. Foremost among them was First City Bancorporation of Houston. As Calumet's debt had grown, the farm's president, J.T. Lundy, had sold and bartered away so many lifetime breeding rights to Alydar that the stallion's projected cash income to the farm in 1991 had dropped to about $7 million, of which $2 million would have gone to pay his life-insurance premiums.

Indeed, the farm was $2.6 million behind in its total premium payments. John Mabee's Golden Eagle Insurance Co. had said two weeks before Alydar's death that it would not renew its $5 million policy on the horse in December. Lundy needed a large infusion of cash to ward off foreclosure. He was barred from selling Alydar by the will of Calumet's former owner, Lucille Markey. The farm's quickest source of money, court documents reveal, was the $36.5 million in policies on Alydar--of which $15 million eventually went to owners of breeding seasons in Alydar, $20.5 million to First City and $1 million to Calumet.

In the months after Alydar's death, a few veterinarians expressed doubts that he could have shattered his hind leg, the strongest, densest bone in a horse's body, by kicking the door of his stall. They said such an injury was usually caused by a powerful blow--say, being hit by a car. On the night of the accident, Lundy's insurance agent (his sister, Kathy Jones) had hired Lexington insurance adjuster Tom Dixon to do the investigation. The next day, after Alydar underwent surgery to repair the break and then broke the leg again by putting weight on it, he was destroyed, and Dixon recommended to Lloyds of London that it approve the $36.5 million claim. It was the largest equine payoff in U.S. history.

Significant factors in his assessment, says Dixon, were the concern people at Calumet displayed toward Alydar, and the desperate surgery performed on the horse. "Why would they go to all that trouble?" he asks. Skeptics say there are 36.5 million reasons.

In the end the insurance payment on Alydar's life was not enough to save Calumet for Lundy. He lost the farm in 1991, and it was eventually purchased at auction, for $17 million, by owner-breeder Henryk de Kwiatkowski. Alydar is buried in Calumet's historic cemetery. There, with the glory days long gone, only the doubts surrounding his death yet linger.

Some greedy horse owners have hired killers to murder their animals for the insurance payoffs. Tommy Burns made his living for ten years as a hit man hired by horse owners to kill their animals.

[Jaegermonster]

Jesus christ. I read through the third paragraph and about got sick. I had to stop reading.

Not wanting to start a train wreck, please God no, but maybe now people will understand why so many here get so bent out of shape about Paul Valliere. This is the situation he was part of.

[RNB]

Basically, yes. Frankly, it's a whole lot kinder than a lot of other options out there. Of course, many vets don't exactly like the prospect of that, so in the vast majority of cases, there are extenuating circumstances when an otherwise healthy animal is put down. (And I am soooooooo not going to get into the slaughter debate here; I don't think that's what Dancing Queen is talking about.)

You have to remember that in the eyes of the law, the crimes in this case were not really in killing the horse(s); they were in the mail and insurance frauds.

Although I've always been of the mind that it was always and forever more about the horses, God rest their lovely souls.

This is true but everyone must remember ......the laws regarding mail and insurance frauds carry more weight than killing a horse. Sad but true. But do not think for a moment that the folks who brought charges against this group were unfeeling or unmoved by the events. They wanted to bring charges that would get the maximum sentences for the crimes...and fraud carried the most weight.

[JanM]

I hate to cite a National Enquirer reporter as a source-but the lead reporter on the story was interviewed on tv and confirmed everything I thought about Lisa (Rielle) being just like daddy. When the reporter was asked why she was still trying to stonewall he said that sources told him that Rielle isn't cooperating with reporters or doing a paternity test for two reasons-1. She's still being paid off by Edwards supporters. and 2. She is convinced Elizabeth will die soon and Rielle will be Mrs. Edwards. I think she's the type of person that will do literally anything to get what she wants, and that includes keeping quiet about daddy and the killing of her own horse.

[LetsChat]

I think there is no way to get a complete list- hundreds of horses and owners were involved, only a few were prosecuted.

Here's an interesting twist--
Henry the Hawk was James Hulicks horse- sold to the Drucks...Hulick as in Marion who was George L's BM who went to prison for the insurance scandles.

That's nuts. Poor horse never had a chance. I just think it's gross that people don't care about the animals. Oh and for those that say humans were just recently killed by electrocution, they were criminals, these poor horses did nothing wrong but went lame, or stopped performing at their highest level. Probably due to age, or over use, not to murder. So I don't think it is fair, I feel it is acceptable to torture a murderer, NOT A HORSE!!!!!