Horse murders
Encyclopedia
The horse murders scandal were cases of insurance fraud
in the United States
in which expensive horse
s, many of them show jumpers, were insured against death, accident, or disease, and then killed to collect the insurance money. It is not known how many horses were killed in this manner between the mid 1970s and the mid-1990s, when a Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) investigation brought the horse killings to light, but the number is thought to be well over 50, and may have been as high as 100. In addition, in 1977, the heiress Helen Brach
disappeared and was presumed by law enforcement agents to have been murdered by the perpetrators of these crimes, because she threatened to report their criminal activity to authorities; continuing investigations into Brach's death began to uncover the insurance fraud in the 1990s.
The scandal has been called "one of the biggest, most gruesome stories in sports" as well as "the biggest scandal in the history of equestrian sports."
Thirty-six people were indicted and tried for insurance fraud, mail and wire fraud
, obstruction of justice
, extortion
, racketeering, and animal cruelty in connection with the horse murders; 35 were convicted. Of the 23 people indicted in Chicago
in July 1994, 20 pleaded guilty.
The disappearance and murder of Helen Brach was never fully solved, although one man, Richard Bailey, is serving life in prison for soliciting her murder.
In some cases, the owner of a horse was temporarily strapped for cash and decided to insure and then kill the animal despite the fact that it was a promising or even prize-winning performer. This was the situation in the 1982 murder of the show jumper Henry the Hawk.
Sometimes people bought over valued horses. Rather than take a loss on a poor investment, these owners chose to finance their next horse purchase by defrauding the insurance company that had insured the unwanted horse.
Another aspect to the scandal went beyond insurance fraud and involved racketeering. This scheme, a form of confidence game, consisted of bilking wealthy widows of their money by encouraging them to invest in horses. The animals were usually over-valued or under-performing, and the conspirators killed the animals in order to prevent the owners from uncovering how much they had overspent. In some cases, before the women invested, these non-performing animals were first "bid up" in value by the co-conspirators, in an attempt to make them seem more desirable to the purchasers. In other cases, a shill
buyer would offer to co-purchase the horse from a conspiring owner or trainer, with each buyer putting up half the stated purchase price. The check from the shill buyer would be destroyed and the two con artists would deposit and split the money paid by the wealthy woman buyer. If she began to suspect that the horse she had purchased was relatively valueless, it would be killed for the insurance money, which would soothe her financially, and if the conspirators still had her confidence, she would then be encouraged to invest in another co-owned horse, repeating the cycle. The men who worked this form of confidence game often acted as gigolo
s to the widows they bilked. It was one of these schemes that the wealthy widow Helen Brach
uncovered, and — when she announced her intention to report the fraud that had been perpetrated on her — led to her disappearance and murder.
. Because she was underage (born June 6), her father, the Ocala, Florida
attorney James Druck, owner of Eagle Nest Farm, controlled her finances. Druck's legal practice consisted of defending insurance companies against claims, and he knew that if a horse were electrocuted in a certain manner, it would be very difficult for a veterinary pathologist to find signs of foul play and the death would be chalked up to colic
. According to ABC News
, Druck was "a prize-winning equestrian
when her father was implicated in an insidious plot to electrocute horses for insurance money."
In the early 1990s, following James Druck's death, convicted horse-killer and FBI informant Tommy Burns told authorities and reporters that James Druck had first attempted to sell his daughter's horse for $150,000, but the highest offer he received was only $125,000. He then hired Burns and personally taught him how to electrocute horses, even going so far as to buy his first set of electrocution tools for him. The first horse that Druck hired Burns to kill was Henry the Hawk, whose life insurance policy was worth $150,000. James Druck thus started Tommy Burns on a 10-year-long career as a "horse murderer".
James Druck collected on a $150,000 insurance policy for arranging the killing of his daughter's horse in 1982, but he was under investigation by the FBI when he died of cancer
in Tampa
, Florida
in 1990.
was another prominent victim. Brach was a millionaire candy
company heiress and animal lover who vanished in 1977 at the age of 65. While her body was never found, she was declared dead in 1984. Investigators suspected that she was murdered because she threatened to reveal what she knew about the over-valuing of horses, which would have led authorities to the string of horse killings perpetrated by Richard Bailey, a man who was later indicted for a role in her murder.
The events surrounding Brach's murder were summarized by the United States Court of Appeals
for the Seventh Circuit in adjudicating an appeal
made by Richard Bailey:
In 1984, seven years after she disappeared, Helen Brach was declared legally dead. In 1997, the connections between her death and the conspiracy involving socially prominent horse owners and their hired horse killers became the subject of a true crime
book, Hot Blood: The Money, the Brach Heiress, the Horse Murders, written by Ken Englade.
, visiting stables with his athletic bag full of electrocution equipment and, for fees ranging from $5,000 to $40,000 — generally for 10 percent of the insurance price on the horse — he would kill horses for their owners, who would then pay him off from the money obtained by defrauding the insurers. Burns justified his destruction of the animals on the grounds that electrocution — the technique that he had learned in 1982 from James Druck — was quick and painless.
In 1992, the investigative reporters William Nack and Lester Munson, writing for Sports Illustrated
, interviewed Burns, who told them a great deal about how the conspiracy operated:
and thus could not be insured against that disease, electrocution was ruled out as a method of murder. Brown's wife, Donna Brown, insisted that Burns break the animal's leg and make it look like an accident so that the horse would have to be put down by a vet. Burns decided to sub-contract the deed to a man named Harlow Arlie, who was willing to cripple the horse with a crowbar.
By this time, the FBI had Burns under surveillance, and although the agents were too far away to prevent the fatal injury to Streetwise, they were able to capture Burns and Arlie after a short chase. The two men confessed to the crime, and Burns, in retaliation for being left without legal aid by his powerful former employers, turned FBI informant and revealed the names of dozens of people who had hired him. As a result of his confession, 36 people were arrested for animal cruelty and insurance fraud, of whom 35 were convicted.
After testifying before the federal grand jury in Chicago
investigating insurance fraud in the horse show industry, Harlow Arlie served eight months in jail for breaking Streetwise's leg.
Burns, who revealed the names of many other conspirators, was sentenced to a year in jail for his crimes, including breaking Streetwise's leg; he served six months. He still resides in Florida, where he has legally changed his name to Tim Ray; he currently sells auto parts for a living.
looked profitable, an entire stable could be burned to the ground, to collect on the building insurance as well as the horse insurance. Richard Bailey, who feuded with his brother, and Frank Jayne and his family, were said to have left "a trail of violence" in the horse-club world of the upper Midwest states of Illinois
and Wisconsin
over the course of decades.
Richard Bailey pleaded guilty to racketeering, mail and wire fraud, and money laundering
charges in 1995 and was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the murder of Helen Brach.
s also participated along with Burns in the conspiracy, including Paul Valliere, the owner of Acres Wild Farm in North Smithfield, Rhode Island
. In 1994, Valliere admitted that he hired Burns to electrocute his show horse, Roseau Platiere, so that he could collect $75,000 in insurance money. Once he was apprehended, Valliere turned state's evidence. He wore a wire for a year, gathering information for the federal authorities who were investigating the conspiracy.
Due to his cooperation with law enforcement, Paul Valliere was sentenced in 1996 to four years of probation
and ordered to pay a $5,000 fine; he also was indefinitely suspended from participating in horse shows sanctioned by the American Horse Show Association. In 2006, Valliere attempted to gain reinstatement to the United States Equestrian Federation (formerly AHSA) causing outrage among those who recalled his crimes, and sparking an online campaign to have him permanently barred from participation in equestrian events.
-born trainer Barney Ward, who owned Castle Hill farm in Brewster, New York
, also arranged horse-killings for wealthy owners; Burns said Ward arranged for Burns to commit 15 horse killings.
Ward was charged in 1994 with arranging the killings of four horses. Although he claimed to be innocent of the charges, he pleaded guilty in 1996 to conspiring to kill four horses for their insurance payouts between 1987 and 1990: Charisma, Condino, Rub the Lamp and Roseau Platiere. In court papers he "admitted that he told the horse killer to keep quiet about the people who hired the killer to slaughter the horses, and, if he kept quiet about [Ward's] friends and business associates, [Ward] would pay him money. [and] that [Ward] later spoke with the horse killer and [...] said that he would kill the horse killer if he did anything to hurt [Ward]."
Ward was sentenced to 33 months in prison, followed by three years of probation, and ordered to make restitution of $200,000 to one of the defrauded insurance companies. Upon his release, Ward sued the AHSA, which had barred him from attending its sanctioned shows. He claimed that it was his right, as a private citizen and no longer a member of the AHSA, to watch his son compete in equestrian events. In 2000, the Supreme Court of New York found that argument meritless, ruling that Ward's membership in AHSA at the time of his criminal conduct, plus his promise to be bound by the organization's rules, authorized the AHSA to discipline him, regardless of his current membership status.
(USEF), then known as the American Horse Shows Association (AHSA), which sanctioned 2,500 equestrian events, told The New York Times
that her organization was giving federal authorities its complete cooperation and noted that she was "eager to see the investigation completed and any guilty parties brought to justice." By 1995, the AHSA (now USEF) had expelled a number of members who had been indicted for various crimes connected with the horse murders, including Marion Hulick, Barney Ward, and Paul Valliere.
" novelist Jay McInerney
based a roman à clef
novel, titled Story of My Life
, on the young adulthood of his former girlfriend Lisa Druck
, James Druck's daughter. McInerney's novel implies that the cause of protagonist Alison Poole's "party girl" behavior is her father's abuse
, including the murder of her prize jumping horse.
McInerney has said that he chose to write about Druck and her friends because he was both "intrigued and appalled" by their behavior, and the lead character, Alison Poole, who was closely modeled after Druck, was described as "an ostensibly jaded, cocaine
-addled, sexually voracious 20-year old." Story of My Life
opens with Alison Poole's description of her father and her seemingly casual comment that she gave up riding when her horse — called "Dangerous Dan" in the story — suddenly "dropped dead," details that closely parallel Lisa Druck's early life.
In the novel, Allison Poole's horse is poisoned, not electrocuted, but at the end of the story, the orchestrator of the murder, just as in Druck's actual life, is revealed to have been the young woman's father:
There was open speculation that Story of My Life was a roman à clef
novel when it first appeared; to New York Magazines questions "Is it real? Did it happen?" McInerney replied, "I'm anticipating some of that kind of speculation, but I'm utterly confident of not having any lawsuits on my hands. The book is a fully imagined work of fiction. On the other hand, it's not to say that I didn't make use of … That's why I live in New York. Mine is not an autonomous imagination."
McInerney's references to the horse murder conspiracy went unremarked by sports journalists or the general media at the time of the novel's publication, because the scandal itself had not yet come to light in the national press, but the novel received renewed interest in the wake of the Edwards-Hunter extramarital affair
. In August 2008, Vintage Books
ordered an additional 2,500 copies of the book in the wake of the interest generated by the Hunter-Edwards scandal.
Insurance fraud
Insurance fraud is any act committed with the intent to fraudulently obtain payment from an insurer.Insurance fraud has existed ever since the beginning of insurance as a commercial enterprise. Fraudulent claims account for a significant portion of all claims received by insurers, and cost billions...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in which expensive horse
Horse
The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...
s, many of them show jumpers, were insured against death, accident, or disease, and then killed to collect the insurance money. It is not known how many horses were killed in this manner between the mid 1970s and the mid-1990s, when a Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
(FBI) investigation brought the horse killings to light, but the number is thought to be well over 50, and may have been as high as 100. In addition, in 1977, the heiress Helen Brach
Helen Brach
Helen Vorhees Brach , was an American multi-millionairess widow whose wealth had come from marrying into the E. J. Brach & Sons Candy Company fortune; she endowed the Helen V. Brach Foundation to promote animal welfare in 1974....
disappeared and was presumed by law enforcement agents to have been murdered by the perpetrators of these crimes, because she threatened to report their criminal activity to authorities; continuing investigations into Brach's death began to uncover the insurance fraud in the 1990s.
The scandal has been called "one of the biggest, most gruesome stories in sports" as well as "the biggest scandal in the history of equestrian sports."
Thirty-six people were indicted and tried for insurance fraud, mail and wire fraud
Wire fraud
Mail and wire fraud is a federal crime in the United States. Together, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341, 1343, and 1346 reach any fraudulent scheme or artifice to intentionally deprive another of property or honest services with a nexus to mail or wire communication....
, obstruction of justice
Obstruction of justice
The crime of obstruction of justice, in United States jurisdictions, refers to the crime of interfering with the work of police, investigators, regulatory agencies, prosecutors, or other officials...
, extortion
Extortion
Extortion is a criminal offence which occurs when a person unlawfully obtains either money, property or services from a person, entity, or institution, through coercion. Refraining from doing harm is sometimes euphemistically called protection. Extortion is commonly practiced by organized crime...
, racketeering, and animal cruelty in connection with the horse murders; 35 were convicted. Of the 23 people indicted in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
in July 1994, 20 pleaded guilty.
The disappearance and murder of Helen Brach was never fully solved, although one man, Richard Bailey, is serving life in prison for soliciting her murder.
Background
Over the 20-year period during which the horse murders took place, several different motivations led horse owners and trainers, often affluent and well-respected people, to become involved in what ultimately became a widespread conspiracy.In some cases, the owner of a horse was temporarily strapped for cash and decided to insure and then kill the animal despite the fact that it was a promising or even prize-winning performer. This was the situation in the 1982 murder of the show jumper Henry the Hawk.
Sometimes people bought over valued horses. Rather than take a loss on a poor investment, these owners chose to finance their next horse purchase by defrauding the insurance company that had insured the unwanted horse.
Another aspect to the scandal went beyond insurance fraud and involved racketeering. This scheme, a form of confidence game, consisted of bilking wealthy widows of their money by encouraging them to invest in horses. The animals were usually over-valued or under-performing, and the conspirators killed the animals in order to prevent the owners from uncovering how much they had overspent. In some cases, before the women invested, these non-performing animals were first "bid up" in value by the co-conspirators, in an attempt to make them seem more desirable to the purchasers. In other cases, a shill
Shill
A shill, plant or stooge is a person who helps a person or organization without disclosing that he or she has a close relationship with that person or organization...
buyer would offer to co-purchase the horse from a conspiring owner or trainer, with each buyer putting up half the stated purchase price. The check from the shill buyer would be destroyed and the two con artists would deposit and split the money paid by the wealthy woman buyer. If she began to suspect that the horse she had purchased was relatively valueless, it would be killed for the insurance money, which would soothe her financially, and if the conspirators still had her confidence, she would then be encouraged to invest in another co-owned horse, repeating the cycle. The men who worked this form of confidence game often acted as gigolo
Gigolo
Gigolo may refer to:* A male prostitute, escort, or dancer, who offers services to women* Gigolo , a 2006 single by Helena Paparizou* Gigolo , a 2003 single by Nick Cannon...
s to the widows they bilked. It was one of these schemes that the wealthy widow Helen Brach
Helen Brach
Helen Vorhees Brach , was an American multi-millionairess widow whose wealth had come from marrying into the E. J. Brach & Sons Candy Company fortune; she endowed the Helen V. Brach Foundation to promote animal welfare in 1974....
uncovered, and — when she announced her intention to report the fraud that had been perpetrated on her — led to her disappearance and murder.
Drucks' Henry the Hawk
Henry the Hawk was a show horse owned and ridden by 17-year-old Lisa Druck, now known as Rielle HunterRielle Hunter
Rielle Hunter , August 1, 2008, San Jose Mercury-News. is an American actress and film producer. She is known for having had an affair with and conceiving a child with 2004 Democratic Party vice-presidential nominee John Edwards., August 8, 2008, Chicago Tribune. She is said to be the basis of a...
. Because she was underage (born June 6), her father, the Ocala, Florida
Ocala, Florida
Ocala is a city in Marion County, Florida. As of 2007, the population recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau was 53,491. It is the county seat of Marion County, and the principal city of the Ocala, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area, which had an estimated 2007 population of 324,857.-History:Ocala...
attorney James Druck, owner of Eagle Nest Farm, controlled her finances. Druck's legal practice consisted of defending insurance companies against claims, and he knew that if a horse were electrocuted in a certain manner, it would be very difficult for a veterinary pathologist to find signs of foul play and the death would be chalked up to colic
Horse colic
Colic in horses is defined as abdominal pain, but it is a clinical sign rather than a diagnosis. The term colic can encompass all forms of gastrointestinal conditions which cause pain as well as other causes of abdominal pain not involving the gastrointestinal tract. The most common forms of colic...
. According to ABC News
ABC News
ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...
, Druck was "a prize-winning equestrian
Equestrianism
Equestrianism more often known as riding, horseback riding or horse riding refers to the skill of riding, driving, or vaulting with horses...
when her father was implicated in an insidious plot to electrocute horses for insurance money."
In the early 1990s, following James Druck's death, convicted horse-killer and FBI informant Tommy Burns told authorities and reporters that James Druck had first attempted to sell his daughter's horse for $150,000, but the highest offer he received was only $125,000. He then hired Burns and personally taught him how to electrocute horses, even going so far as to buy his first set of electrocution tools for him. The first horse that Druck hired Burns to kill was Henry the Hawk, whose life insurance policy was worth $150,000. James Druck thus started Tommy Burns on a 10-year-long career as a "horse murderer".
James Druck collected on a $150,000 insurance policy for arranging the killing of his daughter's horse in 1982, but he was under investigation by the FBI when he died of cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
in Tampa
Tâmpa
Tâmpa may refer to several villages in Romania:* Tâmpa, a village in Băcia Commune, Hunedoara County* Tâmpa, a village in Miercurea Nirajului, Mureş County* Tâmpa, a mountain in Braşov city...
, Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
in 1990.
Helen Brach
The wealthy socialite Helen BrachHelen Brach
Helen Vorhees Brach , was an American multi-millionairess widow whose wealth had come from marrying into the E. J. Brach & Sons Candy Company fortune; she endowed the Helen V. Brach Foundation to promote animal welfare in 1974....
was another prominent victim. Brach was a millionaire candy
Candy
Candy, specifically sugar candy, is a confection made from a concentrated solution of sugar in water, to which flavorings and colorants are added...
company heiress and animal lover who vanished in 1977 at the age of 65. While her body was never found, she was declared dead in 1984. Investigators suspected that she was murdered because she threatened to reveal what she knew about the over-valuing of horses, which would have led authorities to the string of horse killings perpetrated by Richard Bailey, a man who was later indicted for a role in her murder.
The events surrounding Brach's murder were summarized by the United States Court of Appeals
United States court of appeals
The United States courts of appeals are the intermediate appellate courts of the United States federal court system...
for the Seventh Circuit in adjudicating an appeal
Appeal
An appeal is a petition for review of a case that has been decided by a court of law. The petition is made to a higher court for the purpose of overturning the lower court's decision....
made by Richard Bailey:
In 1984, seven years after she disappeared, Helen Brach was declared legally dead. In 1997, the connections between her death and the conspiracy involving socially prominent horse owners and their hired horse killers became the subject of a true crime
True crime
True crime is a non-fiction literary and film genre in which the author examines an actual crime and details the actions of real people.The crimes most commonly include murder, but true crime works have also touched on other legal cases. Depending on the writer, true crime can adhere strictly to...
book, Hot Blood: The Money, the Brach Heiress, the Horse Murders, written by Ken Englade.
Tommy Burns
Tommy "The Sandman" Burns (a.k.a. Timmy Robert Ray) earned his nickname because he "put horses to sleep" for the conspirators. He traveled the show circuitHorse show
A Horse show is a judged exhibition of horses and ponies. Many different horse breeds and equestrian disciplines hold competitions worldwide, from local to the international levels. Most horse shows run from one to three days, sometimes longer for major, all-breed events or national and...
, visiting stables with his athletic bag full of electrocution equipment and, for fees ranging from $5,000 to $40,000 — generally for 10 percent of the insurance price on the horse — he would kill horses for their owners, who would then pay him off from the money obtained by defrauding the insurers. Burns justified his destruction of the animals on the grounds that electrocution — the technique that he had learned in 1982 from James Druck — was quick and painless.
In 1992, the investigative reporters William Nack and Lester Munson, writing for Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated is an American sports media company owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the...
, interviewed Burns, who told them a great deal about how the conspiracy operated:
Harlow Arlie
In 1989, Burns was hired to kill a jumper horse named Streetwise. This horse was owned by the former U.S. Olympic rider Buddy Brown, who had once been a trainer at Paul Valliere's farm in Rhode Island. Because the animal had already suffered from colicHorse colic
Colic in horses is defined as abdominal pain, but it is a clinical sign rather than a diagnosis. The term colic can encompass all forms of gastrointestinal conditions which cause pain as well as other causes of abdominal pain not involving the gastrointestinal tract. The most common forms of colic...
and thus could not be insured against that disease, electrocution was ruled out as a method of murder. Brown's wife, Donna Brown, insisted that Burns break the animal's leg and make it look like an accident so that the horse would have to be put down by a vet. Burns decided to sub-contract the deed to a man named Harlow Arlie, who was willing to cripple the horse with a crowbar.
By this time, the FBI had Burns under surveillance, and although the agents were too far away to prevent the fatal injury to Streetwise, they were able to capture Burns and Arlie after a short chase. The two men confessed to the crime, and Burns, in retaliation for being left without legal aid by his powerful former employers, turned FBI informant and revealed the names of dozens of people who had hired him. As a result of his confession, 36 people were arrested for animal cruelty and insurance fraud, of whom 35 were convicted.
After testifying before the federal grand jury in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
investigating insurance fraud in the horse show industry, Harlow Arlie served eight months in jail for breaking Streetwise's leg.
Burns, who revealed the names of many other conspirators, was sentenced to a year in jail for his crimes, including breaking Streetwise's leg; he served six months. He still resides in Florida, where he has legally changed his name to Tim Ray; he currently sells auto parts for a living.
Richard Bailey
Not only electrocution and leg-breaking were employed as methods to kill insured horses. When arsonArson
Arson is the crime of intentionally or maliciously setting fire to structures or wildland areas. It may be distinguished from other causes such as spontaneous combustion and natural wildfires...
looked profitable, an entire stable could be burned to the ground, to collect on the building insurance as well as the horse insurance. Richard Bailey, who feuded with his brother, and Frank Jayne and his family, were said to have left "a trail of violence" in the horse-club world of the upper Midwest states of Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
and Wisconsin
Wisconsin
Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...
over the course of decades.
Richard Bailey pleaded guilty to racketeering, mail and wire fraud, and money laundering
Money laundering
Money laundering is the process of disguising illegal sources of money so that it looks like it came from legal sources. The methods by which money may be laundered are varied and can range in sophistication. Many regulatory and governmental authorities quote estimates each year for the amount...
charges in 1995 and was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the murder of Helen Brach.
Paul Valliere
Horse trainerHorse trainer
In horse racing, a trainer prepares a horse for races, with responsibility for exercising it, getting it race-ready and determining which races it should enter...
s also participated along with Burns in the conspiracy, including Paul Valliere, the owner of Acres Wild Farm in North Smithfield, Rhode Island
North Smithfield, Rhode Island
North Smithfield is a town in Providence County, Rhode Island, United States, settled as a farming community in 1666 and incorporated into its present form in 1871. North Smithfield includes the historic villages of Forestdale, Primrose, Waterford, Branch Village, Union Village, Park Square, and...
. In 1994, Valliere admitted that he hired Burns to electrocute his show horse, Roseau Platiere, so that he could collect $75,000 in insurance money. Once he was apprehended, Valliere turned state's evidence. He wore a wire for a year, gathering information for the federal authorities who were investigating the conspiracy.
Due to his cooperation with law enforcement, Paul Valliere was sentenced in 1996 to four years of probation
Probation
Probation literally means testing of behaviour or abilities. In a legal sense, an offender on probation is ordered to follow certain conditions set forth by the court, often under the supervision of a probation officer...
and ordered to pay a $5,000 fine; he also was indefinitely suspended from participating in horse shows sanctioned by the American Horse Show Association. In 2006, Valliere attempted to gain reinstatement to the United States Equestrian Federation (formerly AHSA) causing outrage among those who recalled his crimes, and sparking an online campaign to have him permanently barred from participation in equestrian events.
Barney Ward
One of Valliere's close friends, the Rhode IslandRhode Island
The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...
-born trainer Barney Ward, who owned Castle Hill farm in Brewster, New York
Brewster, New York
Brewster is a village within the town of Southeast in Putnam County, New York, United States. Its population was 2,162 at the 2000 census. The village is the most densely populated portion of the town...
, also arranged horse-killings for wealthy owners; Burns said Ward arranged for Burns to commit 15 horse killings.
Ward was charged in 1994 with arranging the killings of four horses. Although he claimed to be innocent of the charges, he pleaded guilty in 1996 to conspiring to kill four horses for their insurance payouts between 1987 and 1990: Charisma, Condino, Rub the Lamp and Roseau Platiere. In court papers he "admitted that he told the horse killer to keep quiet about the people who hired the killer to slaughter the horses, and, if he kept quiet about [Ward's] friends and business associates, [Ward] would pay him money. [and] that [Ward] later spoke with the horse killer and [...] said that he would kill the horse killer if he did anything to hurt [Ward]."
Ward was sentenced to 33 months in prison, followed by three years of probation, and ordered to make restitution of $200,000 to one of the defrauded insurance companies. Upon his release, Ward sued the AHSA, which had barred him from attending its sanctioned shows. He claimed that it was his right, as a private citizen and no longer a member of the AHSA, to watch his son compete in equestrian events. In 2000, the Supreme Court of New York found that argument meritless, ruling that Ward's membership in AHSA at the time of his criminal conduct, plus his promise to be bound by the organization's rules, authorized the AHSA to discipline him, regardless of his current membership status.
Donna Brown
Donna Brown, the wife of Paul Valliere's former associate Buddy Brown, was convicted of hiring Tommy Burns and Harlow Arlie to break Streetwise's leg.The aftermath
In 1993 Jane F. Clark, president of the 60,000-member United States Equestrian FederationUnited States Equestrian Federation
The United States Equestrian Federation is the national governing body for most equestrian sports in the United States. It began on January 20, 1917 as the Association of American Horse Shows, later changed in 1933 to the American Horse Shows Association...
(USEF), then known as the American Horse Shows Association (AHSA), which sanctioned 2,500 equestrian events, told The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
that her organization was giving federal authorities its complete cooperation and noted that she was "eager to see the investigation completed and any guilty parties brought to justice." By 1995, the AHSA (now USEF) had expelled a number of members who had been indicted for various crimes connected with the horse murders, including Marion Hulick, Barney Ward, and Paul Valliere.
A literary parallel
In 1988 — long before the arrest of Tommy Burns and the subsequent unraveling of the horse murders conspiracy of silence — "Brat PackBrat Pack (literary)
The expression "literary Brat Pack" refers to the three young, East-coast American authors, Bret Easton Ellis, Tama Janowitz and Jay McInerney, who emerged in USA in the 1980s...
" novelist Jay McInerney
Jay McInerney
John Barrett McInerney Jr. is an American writer. His novels include Bright Lights, Big City; Ransom; Story of My Life; Brightness Falls; and The Last of the Savages...
based a roman à clef
Roman à clef
Roman à clef or roman à clé , French for "novel with a key", is a phrase used to describe a novel about real life, overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship between the nonfiction and the fiction...
novel, titled Story of My Life
Story of My Life (novel)
Story of My Life is a novel published in 1988 by the American author Jay McInerney.-Plot and characters:The novel is narrated in the first-person from the point of view of Alison Poole, "an ostensibly jaded, cocaine-addled, sexually voracious 20-year old." Alison is originally from Virginia and...
, on the young adulthood of his former girlfriend Lisa Druck
Rielle Hunter
Rielle Hunter , August 1, 2008, San Jose Mercury-News. is an American actress and film producer. She is known for having had an affair with and conceiving a child with 2004 Democratic Party vice-presidential nominee John Edwards., August 8, 2008, Chicago Tribune. She is said to be the basis of a...
, James Druck's daughter. McInerney's novel implies that the cause of protagonist Alison Poole's "party girl" behavior is her father's abuse
Child abuse
Child abuse is the physical, sexual, emotional mistreatment, or neglect of a child. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Children And Families define child maltreatment as any act or series of acts of commission or omission by a parent or...
, including the murder of her prize jumping horse.
McInerney has said that he chose to write about Druck and her friends because he was both "intrigued and appalled" by their behavior, and the lead character, Alison Poole, who was closely modeled after Druck, was described as "an ostensibly jaded, cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
-addled, sexually voracious 20-year old." Story of My Life
Story of My Life (novel)
Story of My Life is a novel published in 1988 by the American author Jay McInerney.-Plot and characters:The novel is narrated in the first-person from the point of view of Alison Poole, "an ostensibly jaded, cocaine-addled, sexually voracious 20-year old." Alison is originally from Virginia and...
opens with Alison Poole's description of her father and her seemingly casual comment that she gave up riding when her horse — called "Dangerous Dan" in the story — suddenly "dropped dead," details that closely parallel Lisa Druck's early life.
In the novel, Allison Poole's horse is poisoned, not electrocuted, but at the end of the story, the orchestrator of the murder, just as in Druck's actual life, is revealed to have been the young woman's father:
There was open speculation that Story of My Life was a roman à clef
Roman à clef
Roman à clef or roman à clé , French for "novel with a key", is a phrase used to describe a novel about real life, overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship between the nonfiction and the fiction...
novel when it first appeared; to New York Magazines questions "Is it real? Did it happen?" McInerney replied, "I'm anticipating some of that kind of speculation, but I'm utterly confident of not having any lawsuits on my hands. The book is a fully imagined work of fiction. On the other hand, it's not to say that I didn't make use of … That's why I live in New York. Mine is not an autonomous imagination."
McInerney's references to the horse murder conspiracy went unremarked by sports journalists or the general media at the time of the novel's publication, because the scandal itself had not yet come to light in the national press, but the novel received renewed interest in the wake of the Edwards-Hunter extramarital affair
John Edwards extramarital affair
The John Edwards extramarital affair refers to the extramarital affair admitted to in August 2008 by John Edwards, a former United States Senator from North Carolina and Democratic Party presidential candidate...
. In August 2008, Vintage Books
Vintage Books
Vintage Books is a publishing imprint founded in 1954 by Alfred A. Knopf. Its publishing list includes world literature, fiction, and non-fiction...
ordered an additional 2,500 copies of the book in the wake of the interest generated by the Hunter-Edwards scandal.