Satanism Today - An Encyclopedia of Religion, Folklore and Popular ...

Cattle Mutilations 41
believed it knew generally who the culprits were—
members of one or another of Alberta’s occultist
groups—but no arrests were ever made. Iowa’s
Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) was able
to prove that a dead calf found near Keota in May
1980, necropsied at the Iowa State University
veterinary laboratory, had been killed and mutilated.
Again, authorities never arrested anyone for
the act, but they linked it with a letter apparently
written from one cult member to another, referring
to the Keota episode and citing details that
had never been publicized. It came to official
attention when an anonymous informant sent a
copy to a police officer. In late 1979, during its
investigation, the DCI learned of two abandoned
farmhouses littered with occultish graffiti and
Satanic symbols. There was no way of knowing
whether these had anything to do with the mutilation
incidents.
In 1979 a book titled Jay’s Journal told the story
of a teenager who gets involved in a youthful
Satanist group. Before the experience drives him
to suicide, he recounts in detail his participation in
cattle mutilations, culminating in literal blood
baths and blood-drinking. Though Jay’s Journal
was marketed as a novel, its author, Utah child
psychologist Beatrice Sparks, insisted that she
based its contents on what she had learned from
interviews with young people about their “witchcraft”
interests and activities. No one else has verified
the book’s extraordinary claims, but the book
helped direct the Alberta investigations in the
direction of possible Satanist involvement.
Meanwhile, in Montana, a wave of alleged cattle
mutilations in the mid- to late 1970s sparked
statewide speculation about cultists. On a wooded
mountainside near Butte, in August 1976, authorities
found a cult ritual site, with names of pagan
deities—Isis, Ariel, and others—painted on rocks
but, their suspicions notwithstanding, they failed
to prove any link with animal deaths elsewhere. In
Blain County, Idaho, a U.S. Forest Service
employee watching Forest Service land to be sure
that cattle did not graze there illegally observed
two figures in black robes with hoods over their
heads. They had their backs to the witness. They
seemed to want to avoid detection, walking amid
the trees and scurrying through a clearing. One
was carrying a bag. They were in view for about
three minutes. Again, though no connection with
cattle mutilations could be shown, the sighting
fueled yet more speculation. Scattered sightings of
similar figures from California to North Dakota
were reported from time to time during the same
period. In almost every instance, speculation—
though no real evidence—held them to be cattle
mutilators.
In Benton County, Arkansas, authorities examined
rock altars with symbols painted on them. In
August 1979 they circulated a document paraphrasing
the testimony of an alleged cult defector.
According to his testimony, the cult consisted of
wealthy, seemingly respectable citizens, including
lawyers, doctors, and veterinarians who owned
helicopters and a van with a telescoping lift. In the
dark of night, these Satanists “would use that to
extend a man out to the cow, and he would mutilate
it from a board platform on the end of the
boom and would never touch the ground. The
apparatus would telescope back into the vehicle
much as a wheelchair lift and not be noticed . . ..
[The Satanists] love the publicity that surrounds
the mutilations, and as long as the publicity is in
one area they will keep returning because they like
to baffle law enforcement” (Ellis 2000, 269). It is
probably no coincidence that this story sounds
like something out of the then-recently published
Jay’s Journal. In due course Arkansas investigators
learned, like law-enforcement personnel elsewhere,
that autopsies of “mutilated” cattle
inevitably produced mundane results, and they
dismissed mutilations as the consequence of
popular hysteria. In one instance officers went so
far as to purchase a calf, kill it, and monitor the
resulting physiological effects over time. They
found that these effects, including predator
damage, perfectly mimicked “mutilation” symptoms.
By the early 1980s the Satanic-cult theory
about cattle mutilations was passing out of the
popular imagination. The mutilations scare
continued—and continues—but government
conspirators and marauding extraterrestrials, or
both, are now the favored fringe interpretations.
According to a bizarre mythology that found
favor among some UFO buffs and conspiracy