Autopsy Finds Innards Missing, Dead Horse UFO Mystery Deepens
The Washington Post
October 10, 1967
ALAMOSA, Colo., Oct. 9 (AP) - An autopsy on a horse - believed by its owner to have been killed by inhabitants of a flying saucer - revealed that its abdominal, brain and spinal cavities were empty, the pathologist who performed the autopsy said.
The pathologist, a Denver specialist who wished to remain anonymous, said yesterday that the absence of organs in the abdominal cavity was unexplainable.
Witnessing the autopsy were four members of the Denver team of the National Investigating Committee on Aerial Phenomena. The team included Dr. and Mrs. Ken Steinmetz, Dr. Herb Roth and Capt. Dick Cable of the North American Air Defense Command Center in Colorado Springs.
When the pathologist sawed into the horse's brain cavity he found it empty. "There definitely should have been a good bit of fluid in the brain cavity," the pathologist said.
"This horse was definitely not killed by lightning," he added. That had been the official conclusion of Alamosa County authorities.
Snippy, a 3-year-old gelding, was found dead Sept. 9.
All the flesh had been stripped from the horse's neck and head and only bones remained.
Ranch owner Harry King called the owners of the horse, Mr. and Mrs. Burl Lewis, and together they investigated the area in which the horse had been killed.
They said they found areas where the chico brush had been squashed to within 10 inches of the ground. What appeared to them to be 15 circular exhaust marks were found 100 yards from the horse. Another area was punched with six identical holes, each two inches wide and four inches deep.
The investigating committee yesterday measured markings on the ground and found the largest to be a circle 75 feet in diameter. Several smaller areas where the chico brush had been flattened were 15 feet in diameter.
The committee returned to Denver last night with several samples taken from the horse and an object, presumed to be a tool, Mrs. Lewis said she found Sept. 16.
Mrs. Lewis said she found the object on her second visit to the site. It was covered with horse hair and she said when she tried to wipe the hair off her hand turned red and began to burn.