I did not want to become involved in the case. In New York, where I live, there had been several small items about the mutilations in the press in early 1975; I had added the clips to my file marked AN-SAC (animal sacrifices)—opened during my investigation of the Manson clan in 1970 and 1971—and forgotten about them. My mind had been bombarded for too many years with gore data, and I really wanted a respite from the images of violence and snuff-buffery, especially regarding the killing of cattle.
The one morning—it was June 18, 1975—I received a phone call from the office of my literary agent. The caller said that a package forwarded to me from the publisher of my Manson book was evincing ovoriferousness. Upon my urging, the wrappings were removed; inside was a box in which resided a large cow's tongue. I instantly recalled my file of mutilation clips and the fact that tongues were often missing from the animals.
My cow tongue had been postmailed in Sacramento, California, and the s... had used Christmas stamps with ... robed angels on them. Aha! I tho... a clue! For were not Squeaky Fro.... and her pal Sandy Good running at ... Sacramento right at that time, annou... imminent gore—and were they not attired in red robes and red tennis ... Had they sent the tongue? I was a question I was never able to answer. .... I could arrange to have someone ... girls if they had sent the tongue. Squeaky... had lunged at President Ford with ... and was in jail.
About a month after I received the tongue, however, I was in Boulder, Colorado, for a poetry reading and a k... and I decided to drive down to County, which had been bauly... the 1975 mute wave. My family ... drove along Colorado's Route 8 ... area of vast terrain and fences th... for miles, broken occasionally by a ... entrance.
When we arrived in Kiowa, the c... seat, I went to the sheriff's office and learned that a mutilation had been covered that very morning. As I was talking with undersheriff Bill Waug... deputy Bill Orr, sheriff George Y... returned from the Colorado State ....airy laboratory in Fort Collins, where ... taken the animal—a female Short... for an autopsy. Later, xxx xxx menxxx of the sheriff's posse stopped by—... dressed men with silver-buckled b.... Western shirts, who looked at them frankly, as Merrie Haggard's xxx band. The conversation was thought... mutilations.
Elbert County had had its first mutilations in early April 1975, and was visited in July, the number was ... 30; the figure was to swell to around by fall. The county was a breeze ... mutilators, as there were only three sheriff's officers to cover 1364 square miles extremely rugged land. And the M...agers—no one could catch them. The officiers would get close, and then the ... would vanish. The sheriff told me ... Vietnam the copter pilots had lead ...hug the landscape even in rugged ... so as to muffle their own sound.
There was an unstated attitude ... the sheriff and his men that, because of the implications, was awful to think ... Somehow, in some way, the Government is involved in the mutilations.