Judging from the evidence gathered so far, the killer, or killers, drove along the dirt tracks that snake through the area and, over the course of four or five hours, gunned down the grazing horses with one or more high-powered rifles. "If it was moving and breathing, they shot it," concludes Tyson. "I gotta believe they enjoyed every God-danged minute of it." The victims were easy marks. Though horses are ordinarily startled by loud sounds, those living in Nevada's Virginia-range foothills often ignore them because the area has become a mecca for hunters and target shooters. Deliberately or not, most of the animals were shot in the gut or hind legs, ensuring a slow, agonizing death. "I found one on the hillside; she was lying there 12 to 14 hours, just struggling," says David Thain, the state veterinarian who examined the corpses. "This is the most horrific thing I've ever seen."
The massacre galvanized national outrage, and within days various animal protection organizations had contributed more than $35,000 toward, a reward. "I'd call it a hate crime against the wild horse," says Betty Kelly, who belongs to Wild Horse Spirit Ltd., a local equine rescue group. Because the horses were deemed state property, the shootings are considered grand larceny, carrying a l-to-10-year sentence. Unlike the thousands of wild horses roaming U.S. Bureau of Land Management property throughout the West, the 1,000 or so in the Virginia range, which is almost all privately owned, are not federally protected. Nor are they regulated. "These horses have proliferated and become a nuisance in a lot of respects," says Dennis Journigan, deputy chief of the state Bureau of Livestock Identification, noting that they often wander onto highways or graze on private land. "They get to be like pests."
Nevertheless, Tyson, who is helping coordinate an investigation involving several state and local agencies, has treated the killings just as he would 33 homicides. "It was a matter of documenting every dead animal," he says. "I walked a lot of miles looking for shell casings." Tyson juggles police work with his regular day job: As a reporter for KOLO-TV, Reno's ABC affiliate, he hosts the John Tyson Journal, a show in the Charles Kuralt vein celebrating Nevada's Old West heritage.
Silver-haired, with a bushy moustache, Tyson looks like a Hollywood embodiment of that heritage. In fact he grew up in Pennsylvania, where his late father, John Sr., was an engineer for Bethlehem Steel. His path to Reno has been a winding one. After graduating from Williamsport High School in 1962, Tyson enlisted in the Air Force, and in 1966 he was sent to Vietnam, where he spent a year as an air base security officer outside Saigon. Following his discharge, Tyson held two law enforcement jobs in California before becoming police chief in Eureka Springs, Ark., in 1979. "I suffer from the 'Screw you, I quit' syndrome," he admits. "That caused me to move around a lot."
Tyson next headed for Nevada, where he worked first as a cowboy, then as a range management officer and brand inspector, patrolling 80,000 acres in Storey County on horseback. To boost his income, he landed a job as a local radio deejay and in 1986 signed with KOLO. The father of two grown daughters, he married his third wife, Carol, 48, a psychiatric nurse, in 1995. The couple now share a ranch near Virginia City called the Rafter 7-Bar-M.
Little in Tyson's colorful résumé prepared him for the carnage he found Dec. 27. The stench of decomposing flesh pierced the chill high desert air as he and other investigators used trucks to haul carcasses to a makeshift outdoor morgue. There horses were X-rayed in hopes that embedded slugs might help identify the weapon that killed them. "When we find this guy, he's going to be the kind of person who has no conscience," says co-investigator Journigan, who knows the type well: As a California Highway Patrol officer in 1969, he arrested Charles Manson.
Tyson has little doubt that the killer will be brought to justice. "We will get him, because he's bragged to somebody," he says. "Or he's got a girlfriend he'll knock around and she'll snitch him off." Contempt drips from his voice. "This is an offense to our senses as Westerners," says the transplanted Easterner. "It's like somebody desecrating the flag."
Richard Jerome
Michael Haederle in Reno
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- Michael Haederle.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
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