THE BAKER FARM 1967

John Baker, father of three children, husband of Anne Baker lived in Lower Slaughter for eighteen years prior to the first mutilation on June 28th, 1967. It was in the early morning hours, John would begin his day's work, tending to the cattle. On this particular morning, he would discover “Margie”, his four year old Hereford, dead in his field. Her body was described as“mangled”. It was so mangled in fact, John said he couldn’t tell which of his cattle it was until he saw that Margie was missing. This is the first case of the phenomenon known as “Cattle Mutilation” being recorded in Lower Slaughter.

John reported no animals or insects went near Margie. Police Constable Anthony Marsan was called to the site to file a report. His report read:

DETAIL OF EVENT : FARMER AWOKE TO CATTLE BEING KILLED. BODY DISCOVERED IN

FIELD. NO SIGN OF ANIMAL TRACKS. CATTLE HAS BEEN STRIPPED DOWN TO BONE

FROM NECK UPWARDS. VAGINA AND RECTUM HAVE BEEN DESTROYED. EYES

REMOVED. NO BLOOD AT DEATH SITE. GROUND BENEATH BODY IS BURNED.

ACTION TAKEN: N/A

SUMMARY: N/A

On October 6th, 1971, 29 year old Jill Perkins was traveling from London to Lower Slaughter to visit her grandfather who lived in St. Williams Assisted Living Home located on the east side of the town. As she entered the town, her route was obstructed by the body of a cattle laid in the middle of the road. Her statement:

“It was about 9:00 or so. I was getting in a bit later than I had wanted, so it was dark. Especially

with no street lamps. I didn’t see the cow was dead at first, so I beeped on the horn a couple of

times thinking it would move out the way. When it didn’t, I got out my car to see what had

happened. That’s when I saw all of the cuts on its body.”

Jill called authorities when she realized the cow was still breathing, hoping she had time to save it. As Police Constable Aaron Wright arrived at the scene, the breathing subsided. The police report reads:

Henry Melling, along with his son Thomas Melling, lived on a cattle farm on the south side of the town. There, they would regularly breed and raise mainly Old Gloucester breeds. On the morning of December 17, 1972, Thomas would enter their barn to discover “Daisy” and her two
month old calf dead in their stalls. Thomas and Henry described their bodies as smelling “rotten” even though they had only been killed hours prior.

As shown in the first photograph, Daisy’s jaw has been stripped of its skin with seemingly
surgical precision. This is a common detail amongst cattle mutilations. This is known as a “Jaw
Strip”. Both of Daisy’s eyes had been removed. Her rectum was removed, along with her vagina
being mutilated. Her calf’s jaw also had been stripped, as well as his penis being removed.
There had been a previous incident at the Melling Farm a few months prior when a wolf killed
three of their cattle. Thinking this was happening again, Thomas was frightened his father would
blame him, so he hid the bodies in the nearby woods, thinking animals would eat the bodies and
rid the evidence. After two weeks, Thomas would go back to the site of where he left the bodies
to see they had been completely untouched.




SYLVESTER FARM 1974

Patrick Sylvester lived alone on his farm. He was a veteran WWII Spitfire Pilot. He had bouts of mental health issues stemming from post traumatic stress diagnosed by Dr. Matthew O’Connor.

On August 3, 1974, Patrick claimed to have awoken in the middle of the night to what he
described as “demonic screams” coming from his barn. 

He went to investigate only to find his Hereford “Maddie” writhing in pain, having her stomach cut open. She was pregnant at the time
and her calf was nowhere to be found.

The strangest detail to Patrick was that it seemed someone had just attacked Maddie only moments before Patrick arrived on the scene, but there was no blood anywhere. Nothing was coming from the wounds, nor was there any blood on the ground. No predator tracks were found near the site.

Susan Hynes was a nurse at nearby hospital, Passmore Edwards. She had recently lost her
husband to cancer only a year prior. T o help her grieve she adopted a Bully T errier named Nicky.
She would regularly take him on long walks around Dovestone Pool, the town’s lake, to pass thetime. Being a nurse gave her an erratic
work schedule, which means she would go on walks at
strange times. On October 19, 1975, she would walk at around 11:00 at night. It’s not
uncommon for Lower Slaughter to have a thick layer of fog in the evening hours and this night
was no different. She described her dog Nicky as timid and shy around strangers, so she was
caught off guard when Nicky began growling and barking at a silhouette in the fog just a few
yards in front of them. Not only did Susan find this behavior strange, but she normally never
sees anyone around because of the time of night she walks. She began to feel unnerved, so
she turned and began to walk in the other direction. Nicky suddenly ran off toward the
silhouette, into the fog, barking frantically. She called out for him and said she kept profusely
apologizing because she thought Nicky was harassing this person. After a moment, the barking
came to an abrupt stop. She followed the direction Nicky ran to and found nothing. Nicky and
the silhouette were gone. Two weeks later Nicky’s body turned up on her doorstep having had
both eyes removed.

On the evening of February 22, 1975, Thandie Carpenter was driving through the town to get to
her cabin, secluded in the woods of Bankenwald when she noticed a pile of mutilated animals
near a local campground, including nearly a dozen deer.
“It looks like someone killed them, and then played with them or mutilated them.” She found one deer with its eyes gouged out, one
with its hooves removed, each one with various body parts removed, including heads and legs.
“I was mortified. I thought it was something out of a horror film. I was asking myself why am I
getting out of my car? Why am I photographing this? Is the person who’d done this still here?”

Ollie Norton lived alone on his cattle farm. He would often be referred to as reclusive by lowerslaughter residents. He began making reports of “trespassers” on his farm and would claim he heard them “mucking about” at night. He would hear the sound of “snapping branches”, so much so he would be awoken from sleep and run outside to investigate, only for the trespassersto retreat into the nearby woods. Ollie would eventually wake up to “nearly a dozen” of his cattle mutilated on his farm. His claim was later disputed by local police who said he was capitalizing off of the town’s paranoia and was attention seeking. Many found this hard to believe considering Ollie’s reclusive nature. Many people found themselves questioning why someonewho is known to keep to themselves would suddenly seek out attention on an extremely public scale. Ollie would be found dead in his house only weeks later in an apparent suicide bygunshot wound.

In certain cases of cattle mutilation, farmers had reported that no grass would grow in the patch of ground the body was found on. In 1978, Patrick Sylvester reported that even after 4 years of having found his pregnant cattle, Maddie, having her calf violently removed, there is a dead patch of grass where she laid. He claimed to have felt shortness of breath and nausea if he stayed near for too long.

“My guess would be radiation. Whoever did this might’ve used a device or something of the

matter to kill Maddie. In the war I saw people deal with radiation poisoning. I feel the same way

if I stand near the spot too long.”

By the time the press began picking up on this pattern of mutilations, the narrative that devil
worshippers were behind the murders began taking over the small town. This was supported by
the mutilations resembling “ritualistic” sacrifices, all having commonalities of precision,
“jawstrips”, the mutilation of sexual organs and certain body parts completely removed as well as
being drained of blood.