Halloween cattle mutilation in Ponchatoula

Something mutilated the last of the Allen Ranch livestock on Halloween night, 1988, approximately two months after the television talk shows and tabloids stopped talking about Ponchatoula.

Seven months earlier, I drove down Sisters Road to the Allen cattle ranch in Ponchatoula for the first time. Betty Allen Hebert and her mother, Rose Allen, met me in front of the house. After exchanging greetings, Rose Allen thanked me for coming out as she climbed aboard a 3-wheeled all-terrain vehicle and sat next to her shotgun.

Betty Allen Hebert unstrapped a handgun and holster from her hip and said, “You’re with me,” before dropping both items into the back of a pickup truck.

Riding to the back pasture, Betty told me how the two widows ran the cattle ranch and a small vegetable farm with little outside help. She said the property had been mainly self-sustaining until the morning they found the first mutilated calf. When I arrived, they had lost seven cattle over a 4-week period. They lost two more before the year ended.

As Betty and I reached the back pasture, Rose stood near her ATV, looking down at the freshest carcass. The heifer had died two nights earlier. Her eyes and ears were gone, and she had a gaping hole in her chest the size of a basketball.

“What makes you certain a person did this?” I asked.

“That first morning,” Betty said, “We lost a calf and thought maybe a coyote or something got it. We’d seen vultures take the eyes and ears before.”

“But take a look at this hole,” Rose said, pointing, “That wasn’t coyote or buzzard.”

Stooping down, I looked at the edges of the cavity, expecting teeth or claw marks of some kind. But to my surprise, the outer edge of the circular incision appeared burned and cauterized.

“We’ve got a neighbor working for us,” Betty said. “He claimed a laser did that. He’s watched too many X-Files, believes aliens killed our cattle.” She shook her head and grinned broadly.

“Betty, don’t tell him that,” Rose said. “That guy’s not all there. He also claims we have black helicopters circling the pasture at night.” She looked at me. “We don’t think the government or little green men killed our livestock. People did this, crazy people, but people, plain and simple.”

Rose picked up a straight limb from the pasture and marked the width of the hole in the cow’s chest. After breaking the stick to that length, she flipped it 90 degrees, demonstrating the same circumference at any angle.

“Pretty smart coyote, huh?” Rose asked, looking up at me.

She brought along the stick as we walked the road from carcass to carcass. She repeatedly confirmed that all seven cattle bore the same size and shape incision in the exact location.

“We’ve both called the sheriff’s office at different times,” Betty told me. “I guess they think we’re crazy. They won’t send anybody out; we’re outside the Ponchatoula Police Department’s jurisdiction.”

“We did get a game warden out,” Rose said. “He took samples and said he’d get LSU to run some tests, but we never heard back from him.”

“That was about three weeks ago,” Betty added.

“So,” I finally got the nerve to ask, “How did you conclude that devil worshippers did this? Did you see a movie or documentary or something?”

“No. None of that,” Betty said. “That game warden told us about kids in a cult, worshipping Satan and killing animals, and then we found where kids painted graffiti in an old shack at the back of the property.”

“Kids painted those signs,” Rose said, “But they didn’t kill these cattle and cut that kind of hole. My doctor couldn’t cut a circle that precise.”

The following week, the front page of the Ponchatoula Times newspaper featured the first of my four-part series describing Satanism in general and examining reports of suspected cult rituals in South Louisiana. In addition to the events at the Allen ranch, the series interviewed locals about activities near Hammond High School, including alleged satanic rituals at Skulls Creek. Inside Bankston Cemetery, police found mutilated animal carcasses nailed trees and circled with candles.

A Livingston Parish sheriff’s deputy provided me with a handbook of satanic symbols. The deputy said Chief Deputy Wayne Sanders distributed the manual after attending training at Louisiana State Police headquarters. When I shared this information in The Ponchatoula Times, Sanders reprimanded the deputy. The deputy, a friend I had known since grammar school, did not speak to me for over a decade after. However, the handbook he provided proved that the symbols found in the shack on the Allen property did not originate with Satanists.

After the first part of the series ran, the phones started ringing, readers stepping forward, on the record and off, reporting ritual sightings, animal mutilations, and satanic graffiti in three parishes. The anonymous calls were the worse. Some provided threats against my life and the lives of my family and others.

Imagine my relief the day WWL-TV’s Bill Elder called, volunteering to take the heat off and investigate these stories backed by the CBS television network. Eventually, that action landed him in front of an Amite grand jury, explaining what he knew about human sacrifice on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain.

Elder’s report also convinced Sheriff Eddie Layrisson to send deputies back to the Allen ranch. However, the livestock remains had decomposed to only hide and bones.

One week later, the sheriff held a press conference hoping to debunk Elder’s report. Layrission produced photos of a cow killed by a dog in Natalbany and told reporters that “a pack of wild hounds” killed the animal.

The sheriff insisted the Allen cattle died the same way, prompting “devil dog” jokes to be shared parish-wide.

Lab results from LSU eventually came back inconclusive. The examiner would not rule out or confirm the sheriff’s wild dog or coyote attack. Still, he did suggest a more sinister possibility, believing the circular holes were consistent with shotgun exit wounds. The sheriff’s office followed up with a report suggesting the cattle may have been killed by neighbors, angry with the Allens concerning a dispute over a bridge on ranch property.

After the last cow died that Halloween, the Allen cattle faded from the headlines. However, the Bankston Cemetery at Skulls Creek did not.

Three months after the last cattle mutilation, mourners found the lifeless body of a 30-year-old Ponchatoula woman in the graveyard, shot four times in the chest and abdomen.