Investigators collar suspect in multiple thefts of cattle

FORT WORTH, Texas, June 21, 2006―A Brazoria County rancher has confessed to a series of South Texas cattle thefts that spanned nine months, eight counties, 13 victims and 289 cattle valued at more that $250,000.
      Tommy Johnson and Brent Mast, special rangers with Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, have been investigating the thefts since receiving a call from Nolan Ryan’s foreman last September.
      Seventeen cows and 14 calves were missing from Ryan’s China Grove Ranch at Rosharon, Texas. Another 16 calves were stolen from the Hall of Fame pitcher two weeks later.
      It was the beginning of case that eventually involved 14 thefts from 13 victims and an unusual lack of information that puzzled investigators.
      “We’ve had several thousand dollars of reward money out here for seven or eight months and nobody’s talked,” said Special Ranger Mast.
      The break finally came on June 13 when 10 calves, including one with unusual scars, were stolen from the Navasota sale barn.
      “The calf had a bunch of scars all over him from an accident where he was hung up underneath a feed trough,” explained Johnson. “An order-buyer recognized the calf when it was taken to a sale in Groesbeck and knew it had been stolen.”
      The astute owner had alerted local order-buyers when his calves turned up missing. When the calf came up for sale, the order-buyer called the owner, who immediately contacted Johnson.
      “We were able to trace the calf back to the Navasota barn, and the license plate on the drive-in ticket at the sale barn came back to our suspect,” he explained.
      The investigators finally had a name that could be checked against the database at TSCRA headquarters in Fort Worth.
      TSCRA employs 80 market inspectors who inspect every head of cattle sold at the 119 auction markets in Texas, recording descriptions of the cattle and information on the buyer and seller. During 2005 TSCRA market inspectors identified a total of 4,766,235 head.
      The market inspectors send their reports to TSCRA’s Fort Worth headquarters, where the information is processed for computer retrieval and distributed to more than 700 law enforcement agencies nationwide. That database is usually the first stop in any investigation conducted by TSCRA’s commissioned law enforcement officers.
      Johnson and Mast are two of the 29 officers TSCRA has stationed strategically throughout Texas and Oklahoma. All are thoroughly trained in law enforcement, have in-depth knowledge of the cattle industry and are commissioned as special rangers by the Texas Department of Public Safety and/or the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. In 2005 TSCRA special rangers recovered or accounted for stolen livestock and ranch equipment valued at more than $6.2 million.
      A search of the database turned up a stack of forms detailing the specifics of cattle sold by the suspect on certain dates that matched the descriptions of the stolen cattle.
      “I had a big stack of those forms when we were interviewing him for the first time,” said Mast. “He thought right then that we knew everything that he’d done.”
      The suspect’s family hired an attorney who met with the investigators two days later. He told them the suspect wanted to cooperate. He would confess, show them whereabouts of 80 to 90 head of stolen cattle and give them back to their owners.
      The interview with the suspect explained the puzzling lack of information about the thefts.
      “He told me in an interview with him and his attorney that he did this all by himself,” said Mast. “He knew if he had a partner, his partner might talk and he’d get caught.”
      The suspect’s method of operation explained even more.
      “He took the stolen cattle to a pasture that he had leased and mixed them with his own cattle,” said Johnson. “He sold the calves periodically over a month or two at several different sale barns.
      “He didn’t sell any of the branded cattle. He kept those on a leased pasture. He was just going to let the cows calve out and sell the calves.
      “He told us he targeted people that didn’t have a TSCRA blue sign posted,” Johnson continued. “He said that when he saw those signs, he knew that the Cattle Raisers Association had special rangers who would continue the investigation until they found out who did it.
      “The majority of the individuals that we worked for weren’t TSCRA members when this thing started,” he added. “But that’s not a question we ask.”
      The investigators returned 83 of the stolen cattle to their owners on June 19 and hope to round up another 10 head today if they can get into the rain-sodden pasture.
      Mast said their next steps will be to get the remaining cattle penned, get the suspect’s confession on video tape and have him arrested in Brazoria County, and file formal criminal charges in eight different counties―Austin, Brazoria, Fort Bend, Galveston Grimes, Harris, Houston and Walker.
      “Now we’re in the paperwork stage―the lengthy recording of all the material that we need to make our criminal cases plain. All of those cases involve more than 10 head of livestock, which makes each one a Third Degree Felony punishable by two to 10 years in the Texas prison system.”
      The special rangers praised the cooperation among all the investigators, particularly Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office Investigator Jack Langdon. Other investigating agencies included the Texas Ranger’s office in Texas City; the sheriff’s offices in Fort Bend, Houston, Grimes and Walker counties; and police departments in Houston, Pearland, Manvel, Alvin and League City.
      “We knew that if we kept turning over enough rocks, we’d find out who was doing it,” said Johnson. “Nobody ever quit. We all kept working until we got the right break.”

      Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association is a 129-year-old trade organization whose 13,700 members manage approximately 4.9 million cattle on 66.6 million acres of range and pasture land, primarily in Texas and Oklahoma.

TSCRA-18-2006