Recently I received documents that are a record of an investigation into the discovery of burro carcasses in Big Bend Ranch State Park in Texas. As these documents have not yet been made public, my source has asked to remain anonymous for the time being. The documents in question are the transcripts of interviews conducted by an Internal Affairs officer who was following up on complaints of potential animal cruelty.
Park rangers, having discovered the bodies of burros rotting by the road in the park, dutifully reported the crime to state authorities. The only problem was that the shootings had been carried out by the Deputy Director of Texas State Parks, Dan Sholly, and States Parks Region 1 Director, Michael Hill, with the full support of the State Parks Director, Walter D. Danby. When interviewed in early November, the three men freely admitted that the killings had taken place, and had only just recently stopped.
According to Mr. Sholly's testimony, they started shooting the burros in April of 2007 until they were ordered to stop on October 23rd, 2007 (although he did admit that a final burro was shot on Oct. 26th, three days after the stop-kill order was issued). According to Sholly, they "kept a running total in our mind, and initially in our reports, the number we had shot was 71 burros." He also said he had shot burros on five or six trips into the park, but not every time he went there, mainly because he didn't see them every time he went into the park.
In his testimony, Mike Hill said that July of 2007 was the last record he has of burros being shot, and that Dan told him to keep killing burros and not to write anything down about it after that time. He said Dan had told him something had been said in Austin (State government offices for Texas are located in the city of Austin) about the burros being killed. It's interesting to note that, in his testimony, Dan Sholly claims he never told any park employee to stop recording the number of burros being shot.
It's also interesting to note that in his initial interview with the investigating officer, the dates Mike Hill said the shootings took place contradicted those given by Mr. Sholly, but two days later he claims to have reviewed "contemporaneous notes" to refresh his memory and changed the dates to coincide and agree with those offered by Mr. Sholly. He had said in his first interview that the killing of burros had started in April of 2006, a full year earlier than the date he came back with of April 2007. He might have simply confused the dates, but then again, since Sholly denied telling him to stop recording his kills, I have to wonder.
Article comments
1 - sierra
i think that we should keep a better look out for them if their in danger of going into to exstinction if we keep a closer look out for them then they should be fine and not in danger